Cock of the Rock

Today- 9 January- started at 5:00 am for bird watching. We had a "pre-breakfast" of coffee, cake, banana and met at the lobby.

I was overdressed for the rain I thought I heard and we drove to the park entrance, walking down a slippery path to the bird hide.

We heard them before we saw them, and eventually saw/photographed the Cock of the Walk.

Next we stopped at several places along the way to see Toucans, water birds, and beautiful birds before returning to the hotel for breakfast at about 10. Many of the good pictures of birds were taken on Lisa's phone through the scope. Here's Marcelo with the scope

Here's our list of birds:

Colored aracari (no photo)

Snowy egret (no photo)

Pinnate bitterns

Bronze wing parrot (no photo)

Swallow Tanager male and female

crimson rump tucanate (no picture)

Collared trogon

Ketzal

Broad billed Motmot (no photo)

Quetzal (no photo)

Swallow tail kite (scissor tail)

Choco Toucan

Red headed barbet (no photo)

Ornate Fly catcher

Crested guan (no photo)

Yellow tailed oriole

Tropical kingbird (no photo)

Yellow throated toucan

Here are our food menus for breakfast, lunch/dinner.

For breakfast we had yogurt with homemade granola and fruit and Tigeillo made from plantains, cheese and onions with a fried egg on top.

We decided to skip lunch and went to the butterfly garden where one sat on my cap.

The garden had some beautiful flowers in it, like these red ginger lilies

There were some beautiful and unique chrysalides

I bought what I thought was butterfly food but turned out to be fish food.

I haven't seen many orchids, but I did see this one

I found this green guy on the floor, and very pretty it was too

Next was the Yumbos Chocolate Factory Tour in Mindo. This is a small boutique chocolate factory which grows it's own cocoa for export, as well as making a small amount of chocolate with some interesting additions, like nibs, chilli and sea salt, and ginger, for example.

Ann was brave enough suck on one of the cocoa seeds, as the factory representative recommended. It looked disgusting when she dug the first seed out because the covering was all liquid and gooey. She said it wasn't particularly nice.

Here are some pictures of the team:)

Back at the hotel there were a really interesting version of an anthurium with a curly stamin

And some other pretty flowers which hung down from a vine

We came back for a rest while I changed rooms and met for a sangria before having trout and yucca for dinner.

Had a shower with not too much hot water (pilot light was out) and came to bed