The journey to Mindo from Napo took most of the day, so we did not have much chance to take stock of our new surroundings until the following day. This started at the crack of dawn (4.30) in order to make our way to witness one of the famous local institutions – the mating ritual of the “cock of the rock”, which takes place at dawn every morning and involves the male of the species strutting, dancing and squawking loudly to attract the attention of the female. So at about 5.30, we found ourselves being introduced to Rolando, the local farmer on whose land this ceremony was acted out and the master of ceremonies, and then walking through dark fields and woods to the venue.
Having had some exposure to the semi-professional end of the bird-watching business over the last few days, it was a bit of a come-down to find that there were no facilities at all to assist the observation of the ritual, such as a hide, and with the thick forest cover, the process of seeing anything at all depended on our guides creeping up and down a narrow path and then pointing out the occasional glimpse of some red feathers that were barely visible even with binoculars. The birds made quite a lot of noise but only one allowed us any real sight of the dancing ritual and then only fleetingly. The action, such as it was, was all over in about 15 minutes, a lot shorter than usual, apparently. As anti-climaxes go, it was difficult to beat, but the walk through the cloud forest in the early morning sunshine was far superior and even went some way to justifying the brutally early start.
Then back for breakfast and then more walking along the forest trails in the grounds of the lodge for a few hours before lunch.
The owners of the lodge had given it the ambitious name of Septimo Paraiso or 7th Heaven and it was clear to us from an early stage that it was never going to live up to its name. Although it has a superb position and grounds, the whole place smacked of having seen better days and in need of some TLC. It had a large outdoor swimming pool, which could be really impressive, but the pool was not kept clean (lots of flies on the water surface) and the area around the pool had broken tiles and in need of some weeding.
The building was virtually all timber with gaps in the walls, floor and ceilings so that noise permeated the whole building. Our room was directly above the dining room and we could hear almost every word spoken below. Also, there was no escaping the noise made by the groups when they left the lodge, normally at some incredibly early pre-dawn hour. The lack of any sound-proofing enabled us to find out how many serious anoraks were sharing the lodge with us. There were 2 birding groups, one British and one American but they both participated in the same end of the day ritual in going through the guide book to the birds of Ecuador and identifying (by number not by name) the birds they had seen that day. We found this reduction of a day’s experience in a beautiful foreign country to an exercise reminiscent of bingo pretty appalling and a warning about the risks of getting too closely involved with the birding community. It was all S could do, not to shout out “clickety click 66 !”
We also found ourselves for the first time marginalised by not being part of a group. Dinner was prepared en masse to be ready for the first group at whatever time they requested and then kept for everyone else. This made for some very unappetising and sometimes cold food. One redeeming factor in all this was the area in front of the lodge given devoted to the many species of humming bird to be found here, there were feeders with sugar water attracting these beautiful birds who dart around at great speed and all you can hear is the sound of their very fast beating wings. But all in all this was not a place or an experience we would wish to repeat, although the sights and sounds of the cloud forest were a memory that will remain longer in the memory for the right reasons.
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