Category: Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, January 2024

After an excellent lunch we met up with our guide Santi and two more guests who had just arrived.  This afternoon we were going to experience the “Sky Bikes”, a bike you ride on a cable across a deep gorge in the rain forest.  Here is Santi explaining to us how the bikes operate.

The bikes hold two people, but the person in back does all the work, pedaling across the gorge.  It’s a total of 200 meters across.  If you look ahead of us in this photo, you can see the cable goes straight through a clump of trees.

There are two bikes that are side by side.  Fletcher is doing all the pedaling on his bike.  He didn’t seem to mind, particularly with the cute girl riding shotgun.

If you are afraid of heights, this may not be the best activity for you.  Fortunately we don’t have that fear.

Fletcher got well ahead of us, showing that 27 year old legs are definitely in better shape than 61 year old legs.

The views of the cloud forest are stunning!  I had to keep stopping the bike so I could take photos, and being careful not to drop my phone into the gorge below, which has apparently happened more than a few times.

I noticed it was getting much easier to pedal the final 50 meters or so.  Then I saw that there was a staff member on the other side of the ride that was also pedaling away on a stationary bike, giving me an assist.  Once on the other side, they turned the bikes around and we headed back.

Pro tip:  Just keep your feet off the pedals when you depart the station, and the bike will speed away to near the midpoint of the ride.  Just keep your feet away from the pedals, as they spin like crazy if you try this!

Once again, Fletcher went zooming past us.

I didn’t mind taking my time, as the views are excellent!

Even if you are afraid of heights, I would highly suggest doing this and just not looking down.  The scenery is well worth it.

Once off the bike, we hiked up the adjacent viewing tower, which turned out to be a lot higher than we expected.  Fletcher said it felt like we were hiking up the Eiffel Tower!

The views are well worth the climb.  You can barely make out the Mashpi Lodge below us.

I forget, are we up to Christmas Card photo #7 at this point?  Not a big fan of the rubber boot look, so maybe we’ll just keep it on the blog.

We continued hiking so we could visit one of the many waterfalls in the Mashpi area.  There are incredible views seemingly around every turn in the trail.

We hiked to a spot where the river was crossing the trail, and then proceeded to hike up the river.  The boots, despite looking dorky, came in quite handy for this trek.

While it was a smallish waterfall, it was still a nice spot for a visit, and another opportunity for a family photo.

On the way back to the lodge we passed some beautiful flowering plants.  These are Impatiens according to Plant Net.

Not even Plant Net can identify this one.  I should have asked Santi.  The plants in the forest take on these colors to attract their best pollinators, hummingbirds.

After yet another excellent dinner at the lodge…the food here has been quite good…we had a night hike into the forest to look for nocturnal animals.  I’m so glad I remembered to bring my super bright flashlight!

First up, Santi immediately found this Rain Frog.

Then another Rain Frog.  We saw these in the day time as well…do they ever sleep?

Santi had an ultra-violet light he shined on a wall, which exposed a scorpion that looked ready for action.  These guides have all the tricks for finding things in the forest.

We spotted this huge grasshopper on the underside of a leaf.

We started hiking on a narrower trail and Santi’s UV light picked up this arachnid right on the trail.  He said it wasn’t a spider, but I forget what he actually called it.

Then Santi actually picked the thing up!  He would be handy to have around when there is a spider in the bathroom.

I know, I’ve mentioned Santi too much, but they guy can do it all!  He goes scrambling off the trail and into the water….and comes back with a new species that the Mashpi staff just discovered recently, the Mashpi Glass Frog.

It’s interesting to note that Mashpi staff have discovered 10 new species of plants and animals over the last 10 years.  Of those, I like the Glass Frog the most…they are just so damn cute!

The bottom side of the frog is translucent (hence the name), allowing you to see their organs.  This photo doesn’t quite do it justice.

Somebody in the group spotted this tarantula off the side of the trail.  It’s amazing how much wildlife you can see at night!

Santi picked up this Ecuadorian Whip Spider.  Nothing seems to faze him.  Look at the barbs in those claws!  No thanks!

Our last find of the night was this iguana.  If you come to Mashpi make sure you go on a night walk at least once.

Up next, more Mashpi!

 

 

 

There is just so much to see here at Mashpi that I will need to break down Day 2 into two posts.  First, we started with breakfast in the gorgeous dining room.  The view of the surrounding forest is amazing!

Our guide Santi greeted us after breakfast and we hiked down to the Mashpi Life Center.  We saw this beautiful Beehive Ginger plant along the trail.  The stalks growing with it look just like corn.

A little further along the trail we saw Santi scrambling to grab something on the ground, a scene he would repeat often.  He had caught this little Rainbow Forest Racer.  After he put it back on the ground it zipped away so fast I have no idea how he caught it in the first place!

Santi then spotted this little Rain Frog off the trail.  It’s smaller than it looks in the photo, so I’m shocked at how easily he can see these things.

Santi then plucked this little praying mantis off of a plant he was walking by.  Now he’s just showing off!

Fletcher actually spotted this spider lurking under a bamboo handrail.  Santi took the photo, showing off his varied skills.

Fletcher also spotted these butterfly larva just outside the Life Center.

Also just outside the life center was this Seven-Lined Whiptail.  What a combination of colors!  The vivid blue color of the tail indicates that this is a youngster.

Santi took us inside of the Life Center so he could give us a tour of their butterfly lab.  This first shot is baby butterfly larva on the back side of a leaf that they are chomping away at.

Those little larva will turn into these huge guys soon enough.

This larva is about full size, and will become a pupa with a home inside a chrysalis in the next few days.  This is the larva of the Uniform Giant-Owl, the largest butterflies we would see at Maspi.

Here is one of the Giant-Owl butterflies in the Mashpi butterfly enclosure.

Santi carefully handled the above butterfly to show us the reason it has it’s name.  To a predator at a distance, it looks like it could actually be an owl.  These butterflies are so huge that unless they evolved like this, they never would have survived.

They have several of these cases set up with all of the chrysalis’ on display.  You can see the butterflies who have recently emerged and are drying their wings before they take their first flight.

As we stood before these cases, the sun broke through and seemed to spur on the pupa to emerge.  We watched for maybe 10 minutes and one after another came out of their chrysalis!  I was able to catch one on video.  I don’t see how the damn thing can hang on after he emerges…some sort of instinctual behavior.

The Mashpi enclosure has about 8 species of butterflies.  This one is called the Confusing Mistwing (who comes up with a name like this?), and you can see right through their wings….which could cause some confusion I suppose.

The Giant-Owl butterflies really seemed to like Fletcher…or at the very least the color blue.

We stepped out of the butterfly enclosure and immediately felt cooler.  It had to be 10 degrees warmer in there, and trust me, it’s already warm (and near 100% humidity) here!  We relaxed on their beautiful deck in hopes of seeing some of the local birds.

This is the view from the deck.  I gotta say, it was a rough place to hang out!

Santi baited some logs in front of the deck with fresh bananas, and almost immediately we had a visitor.  This is a Flame-Rumped Tanager.

This is the Moss-Backed Tanager, which Santi advised us was the bird in the Mashpi logo.

Santi set up a spotting scope to see some of the birds that wouldn’t come close enough for my camera.  He actually took this photo of a Tropical Kingbird with my camera via the spotting scope.  This guy was about 100 yards away!

I believe this is a Flame-Faced Tanager, but I can’t find anything to confirm it.  I even used an app that Santi recommended called “Merlin”, designed by Cornell University, but it came back with no matches.  If anybody can confirm please let me know.

As we were departing the Life Center, Santi pointed out this beautiful little Dragonfly.  I would have never seen it on my own.

He also spotted this iguana on the trail.  He spotted it from maybe 30 yards away…as they don’t stick around if you get near them.  This was taken with maximum zoom, and even at that distance he’s keeping an eye on me.

We were back at the lodge just in time for lunch.  I took a shot from the viewing terrace, as the sun was out and it was fairly clear towards the distant mountains.

Up next, we ride the Sky Bikes, and climb a viewing platform in the heart of the forest.