Arah's 2nd day at MSP, waiting for a plane to take her to Quito. Lunch at Smack Shack! (She was not crying: the shrimp po' boy here is delish!)
Arrival in Quito! Finally! I have crazy eyes! Mom arrived 24 hours later. Tucking into our room at the lovely Hotel Rincon de Puembo.
Day 1: a day trip over the Andes to the eastern side. Here, we got off the bus to climb up to 14,000' to look for a snipe (we found him but my camera did not).
Heads up: lots of alpine plant and cloud forest hummingbird photos and videos, ahead. Mom missed this part of the adventure so I tried to capture a lot of it for her to see, here.
Cushion plant: not a rock with moss. The whole thing is plant, and squishes down about an inch, but you can walk on them. About which I felt guilty. But there were a lot of them.
THIS is where we were. Just over the Andes, on the eastern side: Parque Nacional Cayambe-Coca.
Waayyy high up.
Detail (click to zoom!) on one of the many cushion plants.
Cushion plants
Spectacled bear crossing.
Polylepis forest.
We got a soak for an hour at the Papallacta Hot Springs. LOVELY! It had been a cold morning during which I really wished I'd packed mittens.
Buff-tailed coronet?
Walking sticks.
Spectacled bear?
An orchid, impersonating a vine.
The hallway outside my room at Rincon de Puemba.
A little bit of Quito.
