Argentina & Ecuador 2024

  We arrived in Quito yesterday morning after an overnight flight from Buenos Aires to Lima then a morning flight to Ecuador.  We were very tired!  We also probably had to adjust to the altitude - 2800 m ASL.   Today we spent the morning in a big public park and at the Jardin Botanico.  The Quito Jardin Botanico is very small but very well maintained and has some excellent exhibits.  There are glasshouses for orchids and for carnivorous plants and a large display of bonsai plants.  The park around the Botanic Garden was full of families enjoying Easter Saturday.  There were sports activities of all kinds (though no Aussie Rules that we saw), yoga and meditation, carnival rides and bouncy castles, street food and just general hanging out.  There were people everywhere.  It was a glorious sunny morning and most people live in apartments so why not!  One aspect of the park that bemused us was the numbers of callistemons, melaleucas and...

  There is more to do in Iguazu than marvel at the falls. Of course there is birding!  Some people really enjoy forest birding so we did more of that.   There are plenty of other things to look at in the forests if you can't see the birds.  The fungi in particular are many and varied.  I enjoy looking at the flowers and the interesting shapes of leaves.  There are many plants native to the forests here that we have as house plants and in our gardens in Australia for instance Jacaranda.  Also many that have become invasive pests like lantana! Wasp nests We went birding at a small lagoon just out of Iguazu in the jungle.  It is in a large area of jungle where the original inhabitants of the area, the Garani, live, driven there as the city of Iguazu grew.  Now that same jungle is dotted with resorts because of tourists' wish to be in the jungle. No consultation, no compensation. There has been conflict but the Garani have again been dispossessed...

  Iguazu falls is a series of cascades on the Iguazu River on the border of Argentina and Brazil at the northern tip of Misiones Province. The falls are spectacular!  At the moment only one million litres per second is going over compared with the usual flow of one and a half.   Floods in the 80s saw water going over at 25 million litres per second.  The walkways were destroyed.  The contractor who put in the new walkways was supposed to remove the destroyed infrastructure - hasn't happened yet! All peaceful and serene above the falls. A representation of what happened to the giant jaguars - a statue at the service station near San Antonio.

  We are staying on a private nature reserve called Yvtyu, in the north of Misiones province, which is one of a dozen or so that link two major national and provincial park systems.  It is a wildlife corridor that will hopefully allow native fauna, including the jaguar, that use these habitats to recover and thrive. The jaguar has had its habitat severely reduced and it has also been shot by landholders in the past so its numbers are very much diminished.  But efforts are being made to give it space to recover here and in other parts of Argentina including Ibera in Corrientes province where we were last week. Steve has gone off looking for forest birds - tedious in the extreme! - so I am sitting on my veranda enjoying the serenity and the internet.  Also the wildlife - an agouti just came and grabbed an avocado from under the tree and headed back int the forest.  Maybe a jaguar will come next to get the agouti.  There was a jaguar here just a few nights ago...

  White-spotted Woodpecker Surucua Trogon Squirrel Cuckoo Spotted Nothura Rufous-capped Spinetail Pampas Fox Greater Rhea Ferruginous Pygmy Owl Black-goggled Tanager Band-tailed Manakin

  We are now in the Misiones Province of NE Argentina.  We've had a couple of long days in the car and we're not able to lose the thunderstorms and rain that have been tracking us. (I feel guilty complaining as I know how desperately Victoria needs rain.)  This morning we walked on a muddy forest track in the rain (who says travelling has to be fun) near Santa Ana.  Then on to San Pedro. The Araucaria Provincial Park is something special.  It's only a couple of hectares in the middle of a town but it feels like you're in something vast and unending.  It's wet forest with a wetland in the centre.  It is there to preserve a remnant of Atlantic forest with araucaria conifers as a major species.  This also safeguards for now the Araucaria Spinetail, a small bird that relies on araucaria fruit.  The park is well maintained and has a lovely 1 km walking track.  Steve saw quite a few new species and I enjoyed the hummingbirds and woodpeckers. G...