Southern Arizona

Our travels took us to state parks and National Forests in southern Arizona, and even to a small private RV park in Bisbee, overlooking an open pit copper mine. In Catalina State Park, About 20 km north of Tucson, we hiked some birding trails and saw quite a few familiar southwest birds.

On a trail in Catalina State Park

 

The Saguaro in Catalina St Pk have many arms and must be very old. They don't begin to make arms until they are about 50 years old.

 

Another fat cactus

 

This cactus is home to a little owll

 

Patagonia Lake St. Pk. was a favorite last year and was excellent again for the birding opportunities, both in the park and at Pattons in the town of Patagonia. The Pattons, who are now deceased, created a bird haven with feeders throughout their large yard, and invited birders to come to view the birds. The tradition continues and the property is managed by a volunteer who lives on the propoerty and maintains the yard and the feeders. Guests contribute donations which are used to keep the bird feeders full. The variety and sheer numbers of birds that stop there is amazing and we almost always see something new each time we visit.

The acorn woodpecker at Pattons' yard

 

Looking for the elegant trogon in the mesquite woods at Patagonia Lake

 

The Coronado National Monument doesn't have any camping, but we went for a walk there before driving to Bisbee to find a place to camp.

Coronado National Monument

 

Last year's seed pods on an agave

 

About 20 minutes drive from Bisbee, where we camped overlooking the copper mine pit, we went on a bird walk with Rick and Cindy in the San Pedro wildlife refuge. We met Rick and Cindy in Mindo, Ecuador in January when we asked Rick about a bird we were looking at and he shared his Field Guide to Ecuadorian Birds with us. They live in Ramsey Canyon near the San Pedro refuge and offered to take us out to look at some birds while we were in that area. We spent a pleasant morning with them, saw a few new birds and got some tips on sparrow identification.

Kathy with Rick and Cindy

 

Our last camp in Arizona was at Portal on the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains. We had a beautiful campsite here in a forest campground. A pyrrhuloxia lived in the brush beside our van and the bridled titmice came every morning, along with some mexican jays, to eat from our feeder. We hated to leave there and will definitely add it to our list of favorite camping places in Arizona.

Our campsite, in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains

 

Pyrrhuloxia on our feeder

 

Bridled titmouse - one of the cutest birds we have ever seen

 

A hiking trail in the forest near our campground

 

Lost Dutchman State Park

We left Sedona for warmer weather at Lost Dutchman State Park, east of Phoenix. Daytime temperatures were in the teens, which made good hiking weather. The nights were still very cold so we had to run our furnace.

The Superstition Mountains in Lost Dutchman State Park

 

We spent three nights at Lost Duchman. We hiked the trails around the campground and up the mountain.

We loved seeing the saguaro cactus again

 

On one of the mountain trails we hiked

 

 

The lights of Phoenix in the distance

 

This was a long hike to the basin at the top of this mountain

 

Because of the recent moisture the cacti were fatter than usual

 

 

Full moon with saguaro

 

Arizona 2013

On our way to Arizona this year we drove though the Moab, Utah area again. The spectacular scenery impressed us again. This year we didn't encounter any snow storms in the mountains, though there was still snow in the mountains as we traveled south.

 

A sunny day as we drove into Utah

 

It was still quite cold in southern Utah, and the latest snow hadn't melted on these monuments

 

In Sedona we visited our friend Carol and enjoyed some sunny weather with great hiking, and some snowy weather with great shopping.

This was a beautiful sunny day, a bit cool, but great weather for hiking. We hiked on a trail with amazing views of the red rocks and the countryside around.

 

Us with Bodhi, Sune and Piper

 

Beautiful views on the trail

 

We love the red rocks in Sedona

Then came the snow and colder weather. This was taken on our shopping day in Sedona.

The weather was cool and wet for most of our time in Sedona. The snow did look very pretty on the trees and the mountains.

Coffee Pot Rock

 

Evanna with a large Juniper

 

 

Carol and Evanna with Piper, Bohdi and Fendi on our way to Flagstaff

 

On our last day in Sedona we were able to go on a trail that dried up a bit more quickly than most others. We had a good hike with all the dogs in their fresh haircuts.

 

 

Santa Marta and the Caribbean Coast

We flew from Medellin to Santa Marta with Colombia's new low cost airline, Viva Colombia. Santa Marta is northeast of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. We stayed there for two nights and visited the small town of Minca, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is known for birdwatching.

The cathedral in Santa Marta

 

We traveled to Minca by collectivo, which is a kind of shared taxi that leaves for its destination when it is full. The collectivo we traveled in was an ancient jeep with the interior all ripped up, a gear shift that was obviously not original to the vehicle, and pretty much shot shocks. The road to Minca is in pretty bad shape, loads of pot holes and broken up pavement, so you wouldn't really want to take a good car up there.

We spent most of the day hiking and birdwatching. We saw some beautiful new birds and some that were familiar to us, and we learned the names of a couple we have been seeing elsewhere. We were fortunate to have a chance to talk briefly to a man who knows the birds and the area. He told us where to find the nests of the Oropendola, a crow-sized black bird with a yellow tail.

In the collectivo bound for Minca

 

Oropendola nests

 

We had lunch at a place with a spectacular view back out to the ocean. The restaurant was rustic with a tree slab table with legs planted into the earth. The food was cooked in a large brick oven with a section where the proprietor could scoop coals under a rack to heat soup, etc, and the other side was the open fire where he grilled meat on a skewer. We had some meat and yucca, which is a starchy root vegetable similar to potato. The soup looked a bit grey and we saw his water supply was from a bucket so we declined salad which may have been washed in that water. Our friend Maria says we have teflon stomachs and that meal proved it as neither of us suffered any ill effect from the meal.

View to the coast in the far distance

The little local "restaurant"

 

Our "chef" in his kitchen

 

At the end of the day we took another collectivo - this time an ancient Datsun or something similar - back to Santa Marta. The driver was delivering two huge gunny sacks of cilantro to the Santa Marta market and the car reeked of the herb, which has never been a favourite of Kathy's.

The next morning we packed one of our carry on bags and one day pack and went by local bus about 1.5 hours to Costeño Beach Surf Camp for 4 days. It is on the north coast of Colombia, just east of Tayrona National Park. It is a beautiful and quite secluded location - you walk in from the road about a 30 minute walk, unless there is a motocycle taxi at the road to give you a lift to the camp. They have a couple of buildings with private rooms, some beach huts with mattresses and mosquito nets, and a hut with sleeping hammocks with mosquito nets. We were in one of the private rooms with an attached bathroom - going for a bit of luxury in our old age!

The hammock hut at Costeño Beach Surf Camp

 

Playing in the surf

 

The building where our room was located, on the second floor

 

We saw many birds and four howler monkeys, one with a baby. We didn't see the caimans that were reported to sometimes come out from a marshy area behind the camp.

Female howler monkey with her baby

 

Red headed woodpecker on a palm tree

 

We walked about 30 minutes down the beach to the west to where a river flows into the Caribbean sea. There were great numbers of cormorants, egrets, herons and vultures there and a few kingfishers and another hawk-like bird we have yet to identify.

Fishers preparing their net in the fishing village near the river

 

The river

 

We spent lots of time lying on the beach and reading, mostly in the shade of the huge coconut palms, visiting with the folks who came here to surf, and going for walks through the coconut palm plantation looking for creatures and birds.

Our last two days were spent in Cartagena where we did some sightseeing in the old walled city, and shopping before catching our flight back to Canada.

On the city wall in Cartegena

 

After a brief stop in Regina to wash clothes and get haircuts we are off again, this time in our van with our hairy, wild-looking poodles. We are heading to Arizona and Texas for the remainder of the winter!

 

Last days in Medellin

El Castillo is a stately home built in 1930 by the Echeverri family. At that time the area around the estate was farm land. Now it is the neighbourhood of El Poblado. The estate has extensive formal gardens, designed in a French style - symmetrical fountains and planting beds. The house looks like a castle and is a marvel of hardwood floors, doors and paneling, coffered ceilings with ornately carved mouldings and full of antiques and paintings, both originals and reproductions. We toured the gardens first and saw scarlet macaws, humming birds, flycatchers, tanagers and a few birds we couldn't identify.

View of the house from the gardens

 

The formal gardens at El Castillo

 

We often rode on the metro system in Medellin, which is modern and very well organized. The system includes a section that goes so steeply up hill that a regular rail car was not possible, so they have Metrocable, which is a cable car line going up into two neighbourhoods. We rode the metro cable to the last station where we transfered to another cable car system which takes you to a park on the top of the mountain on the east side of Medellin. Parque Arvi is a huge area with a varitey of activities, but we were mainly interested in a hike and some birdwatching. Maria and her mother Christina went along on the cable car ride, but did not come hiking with us. We did a 3 hour hike and near the end of the hike we got caught in a series of thunderstorms.

 

The cable car from one of the stations

 

On the trail in Parque Arvi, just before the rain

 

Our final tourist adventure in Medellin was to visit the zoo, which Maria told us has some good bird displays. We did get to see a few birds that are very difficult to see in the wild. The cock-of-the-rock is one of the birds that is a real challenge to see in its natural habitat. This bird puts on a spectacular mating display at about 6:00 am daily during mating season. When we were in Mindo, Ecuador it was mating season and the birding hikes to see this display left at 4:00 amd and hiked through the forest in the dark for a couple of hours looking for the birds. That was a bit more than we were prepared to do, so we were happy to have a look at the bird, even though it was at the zoo. We also saw scarlet Ibis, and three kinds of toucans.

Flamingos at the zoo

Cock-of-the-rock

 

Little Parrots that were very tame

 

We had a wonderful time visiting Carlos and Maria, being included in family activities and being fed all manner of Colombian foods that we might not have tried on our own. We visited markets where people sell their produce from little stalls and supermarkets similar to Superstore or Sobeys, but with totally different products.

Look at the size of those papayas! And they are so delicious!

 

From Medellin we flew to the caribbean coast to spend a few days at the beach before returing to Canada.