Buenaventura, Ecuador

Pre-trip/Extension

 March 18 - 21, 2009

Reservations and prepayment are required on all Ventures. Your place on this Venture will be reserved when your deposit of $100 has been received. Please make your check payable to VENTURES, Inc. and send it to this address or call the office with your VISA or MasterCard #. 

Limited to 12 participants.

Venture Description

Even though Ecuador is the size of the state of Georgia, it has 1,540 species of breeding birds - that is nearly ten times the number that breed in Georgia. This pre-trip will visit the Jocotoco Fundacion's new reserve - Buenaventura. Our target birds are the fantastic Long-wattled Umbrellabird, the weird Club-winged Manakin, the newly-described El Oro Parakeet and El Oro Tapaculo, and the endemic Emerald-bellied Woodnymph. 

With the recent publications of The Birds of Ecuador and Birds of Northern South America: an identification guide, there is not a better time to visit this small, yet wonderfully diverse, Andean nation. Our accommodation will be comfortable and convenient to the best birding spots. The food is excellent and the people very friendly. If you have never been to South America before, this trip to Ecuador will open your eyes to the beauty and diversity that is South America.

Leader: Simon Thompson

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Cost of Venture

$699 per person (single room may or may not be available; if so, this will be $125)

Price includes: All transportation throughout (with driver), all accommodation, all meals, entrance fees and gratuities (except for leader/guide), trip information, packet & bird checklist, and guide/leader service throughout.

Not included: Round-trip airfare from the US to Ecuador or internal flights to and from Loja, airport departure tax, alcoholic beverages, any meals specified in the itinerary, laundry, and other items of a personal nature.

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Itinerary

This Buenaventura Extension/pre-trip Ecuador tour may be combined with either our Western Ecuador or Southern Ecuador tours. You may wish to arrive in Guayaquil the day before in order to explore the city or rest before our early start on Day 2.

Day 1 (Wednesday, March 18) Guayaquil 
We'll arrive in Guayaquil late in the day and transfer to our downtown hotel. Alternatively, if you are continuing from our Western Ecuador Tour, you will meet the group at the hotel this evening. Night at Hotel Continental, Guayaquil

Day 2 (Thursday, March 19) Churute to Buenaventura 
Today, we'll make our way to Buenaventura via Churute and along the way we'll hope to find Pearl Kite, Savanna Hawk, Croaking Ground-Dove, Saffron Finch, Scrub Blackbird and Peruvian Meadowlark. At Churute-Manglares we will look for the bizarre Horned Screamer. As we approach Buenaventura, we will look for Tumbesian endemics such as Henna-hooded Foliage-gleaner but at Buenaventura near Penas we can expect higher elevation species. We should arrive in the late afternoon where we will look for the El Oro Parakeet and Long-wattled Umbrellabird in patches of remnant Pacific slope montane tropical forest that still exist. We'll take time to enjoy the hummingbirds at the feeders and hope to find such cool hummers as Emerald-bellied Woodnymph and White-vented Plumeleteer. An evening walk might turn up Black-and-white Owl. Night in Umbrella Lodge, Buenaventura Reserve, Jocotoco Fundacion

Day 3 (Friday, March 20) Buenaventura 
We will concentrate our birding activities in the Buenaventura area, where we will look for the following Choco endemics: Rose-faced Parrot, Brown Inca, Gorgeted Sunangel, Pacific Tuftedcheek, and Club-winged Manakin. We will also look for the following Tumbesian endemics: Gray-backed hawk, Rufous-headed Chachalaca, Ecuadorian Ground-dove, Ochre-bellied Dove, Red-masked and El Oro Parakeet, Pacific Royal-Flycatcher, Gray-breasted Flycatcher, and Gray-and-gold Warbler. This area is famous for large, multiple species tanager flocks and flocks with 15 tanager species are not uncommon. Several difficult to locate hummingbird species inhabit the area and we may locate both White-tipped Sicklebill and Wedge-billed Hummingbird. Several antbirds and antwrens are also present including Chestnut-backed and Immaculate Antbirds, and Rufous-rumped and Slaty Antwrens. Night in Umbrella Lodge, Buenaventura Reserve, Jocotoco Fundacion

Day 4 (Saturday, March 21) Buenaventura to Loja 
We will spend the morning trying to locate any Choco and Tumbesian endemics we missed yesterday. We would want to make sure we saw the three specialties of the reserve: El Oro Parakeet, El Oro Tapaculo and Long-wattled Umbrellabird. We'll leave Buenaventura around mid-day and drive to Loja. Along the way, we'll stop at several localities looking for Gray-cheeked Parakeets and Loja Hummingbird. Night in Hotel Libertador, Loja This itinerary continues onto our Southern Ecuador trip. If you are continuing from the Western Ecuador tour, you can finish in Loja this evening, spend the night and head to the airport in the morning.

Due to weather and other conditions, this itinerary is subject to change.

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