Rhianna Banana

Holiday festivities

It has been a long time since I wrote a blog entry. My main excuse is that I’ve been entertaining a lot of visitors. Pierre was here for 2 weeks for the holidays, and after he left, I had a 10 day break before my next group of visitors arrived. Nathan, Julia, my mom, Sasha, and Julia’s mom Charlene came for about a week to visit the Galapagos and to travel around a little. They left in late January, and now I have about a week before my final visitor arrives, the lovely Rakhi.

I will try to give a brief recap of the past 7 weeks. I think I’ll break this entry up so it’s not too long.

Part 1: holidays with Pierre
Part 2: Galapagos trip with family and Trent and Maggie (mis panas)
Part 3: Carnaval!

Pierre wrote a good summary (with pictures!) of his trip here for his blog. You can click on his blog link to the right to read his description of our adventures. I don’t have too much to add to what he wrote. I did get stung by a jellyfish when I was swimming in the ocean on Christmas Day. That was mildly painful and annoying. So, in the 2 years that I’ve been in Ecuador, I’ve been stung by a jellyfish, a crazy giant bumblebee, and a wasp. I now have a very healthy fear of Mother Nature =)

In addition to bringing me some Christmas presents, Pierre also brought a few NPR podcasts with him. This was very exciting for Trent and I, because we both love NPR. We got to enjoy some “Wait wait don’t tell me” and “Car Talk”. It was heavenly! In just 6 weeks, I’ll be able to listen to NPR whenever I want. . . I wonder if there are any new programs I don’t know about.

After Christmas on the beach, Pierre and I returned to my site. The highlight of our time there was a morning hike in La Perla. We got to see so many active breeding birds! We heard the sounds of manakins, and saw them flying away from us. We also saw some trogons, who seemed to be establishing their breeding pairs and territories. The coolest part was seeing a male hummingbird perform a mating dance for a watching female. She was perched below him on a branch while he flittered about above her. Pierre got a video of that, which you can see by clicking on his Picassa web album link in his blog. Lastly, we got to hold a blink kinkajou. The kinkajou was brought to La Perla because it had been beaten and subsequently lost its sight. It was the cutest thing and it didn’t seem to mind being held.

For Pierre’s last week in Ecuador, we went to the Amazon and took the tourist train in Riobamba. We had many unforgettable, slightly scary adventures in the Amazon. I think Pierre described our time there pretty well.

posted by Unknown @ Friday, February 08, 2008