Maquipucuna

For the next few days we will be staying in the forest at the Maquipucuna reserve. Escaping the city, just two hours north of Quito along a winding road and bumpy track, there is a 'cloud forest', on the edge of which is a small bamboo lodge.

Maquipucuna lodge

We arrived shortly after 10am to find tropical paradise that reminded us instantly of the earlier months in this trip spent in SE Asia among bamboo and banana trees. The humidity was not so intense, but the 'bosque tropical' had a familiar scent to it.

Around the open eating area, hummingbirds in a great number - usually so rare to see - swarmed around purpose-built feeders. Despite their ubiquity and numbers, they were frustratingly hard to photograph, owing to their speed and skittish movements.

Stay still!

The manager and guide, Arsenio, informed us casually that it was 'bear season'. This was unexpected and exciting news, as the cloud forest is home to the Andean spectacled bear, or oso de anteojos, but in its usual habitat it is almost impossible to see. However, for a couple of months a year, the bears descend from the hills to where the aguacatillo fruit is ripe. The aguacatillo looks like a small black olive with flesh like an avocado) and, when ripe, the bears relocate to gorge themselves on the fruit. The season varies from one year to the next, and we were extremely lucky to hit the right time of year.

Arsenio

Almost as soon as we had arrived, Arsenio received a call from another guide in the forest with a sighting of the bears, and excitedly led us out to the spot. Barely twenty-five minutes' walk through green and humid forest brought us to a clearing where a brown-black bear sat incongruously in a slender-looking tree, tearing off a branch, before turning it in its paws, stripping it of the fruits and discarding it.

Spectacled bear

We watched, open mouthed, at the bear, seemingly unaware of the small group of people staring and emitting barely concealed gasps and exclamations. Occasionally the bear would climb precariously higher up into the thin canopy of the tree in search of more fruit before settling into a nook between two branches. In this position, the bears apparently sleep without incident. Around the corner of the trail, another bear with the distinctive black-and-white 'spectacle' markings looked quite comfortable in tree. This one took more of an interest in us, returning our stares (albeit without binoculars) as though sizing up the threat we posed.

After such an unexpected and magnificent sight so early in our stay, we returned, stunned, to the lodge, where we were served lunch. We ate, hummingbirds flitting and darting above our heads, quite unable to process the stark contrast between Quito and this rural retreat.

Lunch was the inevitable quinoa soup, followed by potatoes, red cabbage salad, and fried wheat gluten. Unfortunately, without proper preparation, wheat gluten had about as much flavour as a dry piece of toast. I'm not sure what the Buddhist restaurants do to it to make it so delicious, but I have never managed to recreate the same flavour and texture. A post-lunch cup of the reserve's own shade-grown coffee was much appreciated.

Lunch in the forest

After lunch it was time for another walk along the crisscrossing trails. Passing heliconias, palms, banana trees, and the same coffee trees that yielded the beans for our cup earlier, we listened out for the forest's fauna. Thanks to Arsenio, we heard a toucanet, and caught glimpses of a crested guan, motmots, and a squirrel cuckoo.

Dinner was an improvement on lunch, with veggie spaghetti bolognese followed by a moist pineapple cake and more of the delicious coffee.

Everyone at the reserve seems to have multiple jobs, and Carlos the barman invited us on a post-dinner night walk. Sharpeyed Carlos - who also seemed to be known as Sambito - managed to pick out the nighttime fauna in the pitch black. He even saw through the camouflage of stick insects and those pretending to be leaves, and directed us to crickets and grasshoppers, a large and fearsome-looking "tailess whip scorpion", a pair of frightening glowing red eyes, and innumerable spiders, each of which we asked whether it was dangerous, to which the answer was always no.

Creepy crawlies

After a while we stopped asking the question, until we discovered a hairy grey spider on a leaf. "This one," said Carlos, "will bite". We kept our distance after that.

Surprise!