Mule-Back Riding and Howler-Monkey Watching

It started out one morning when I decided to explore the bird life around Puerto López. After bypassing lots of beach getaways and whale-watching boats, I finally found a travel agency which offered a guided birding tour of San Sebastián, the humid forest within Machalilla National Park.

The next morning, I waited at corner at 6:00am. A man named Joel picked me up on his motorized scooter. We had been driving through the warm dawn on dusty back-roads for less than half an hour when we arrived at Rio Blanco, a community within the commune of El Pital. The whole town was populated by thirty families, only around 250 people. I met my birding guide, a middle-aged man named Gastón. We were served breakfast in his house by his mother: queso fresco sandwiches, a fried egg, tea of hierba luisa, and tomate de árbol smoothies.

Garzon's house in Rio Blanco where we ate breakfast.

Garzon and his mother in the kitchen, as seen from the dining room table.

Then we set out on our horses: mine, a small red mare named Amelia, and Gastón's, a stubborn brown mule named Yomayra. Pretty soon we had to switch mounts because my little mare was actually more stubborn than Gastón's mule!

Amelia, my stubborn-as-a-mule horse.

We rode up the Bola de Oro trail through bamboo and dry moss. We crossed a stream where I watched a beautiful hummingbird hover and dip its bill underwater multiple times to drink. We paused at a crumbling wooden hut where tourists can camp and eventually reached the summit where we could see all the way to the ocean from a two-story wooden mirador, or lookout.

The view from the mirador.

Gaston and I took a timer-selfie on the lookout platform.

We heard the incessant hooting of howler monkies, and Gastón led the way on foot down a steep wooded slope towards the rucous. Then, there he was: a big, black, furry male howler, grunting to the all the world. Occasionally a distant troop across the valley would return his howls.