Animals of the Amazon

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Feeling slightly more human today after the drenching we got yesterday but it´s amazing what a hot bath and good night´s sleep can do. Absolutely gorgeous sunny weather today which was just a slap in the face coming the day after our soaking jungle venture.

Still, better weather meant we could actually do something today instead of skulking in the hostel as we had planned so we decided on visiting a nearby exotic bird sanctuary to see some of the jungle inhabitants who were so shy yesterday at closer quarters.

Started off a bit weird as they seemed to have the largest collection of pigeons I´ve seen outside of Trafalgar Square but then I suppose pigeons are technically éxotic birds´here.

The best of the bunch had to be a funny reddish-brown pigeon with red eyes (truly no idea what it was) sitting happily with the sign ´Magpie - Inglaterra´next to it. I didn´t quite have the heart to tell the owners how wrong they were and so I´m equally unsure whether the others were all labelled correctly!

Random discoveries of the day:

1. Ecuadorians get very excited by ostriches - apparently there are barely any here even in zoos.
2. Peacocks in Spanish translate as ´Royal Turkeys´- gotta love the name!

I personally got rather more distracted by the parrots, none of which could fly poor things. They just kind of hobbled around their fake trees. Really see no need to cripple the poor birds when there are a million and wild ones flying around anyway.

As well as various Amazon birds and in addition to their extensive pigeon collection, the sanctuary also housed many monkeys, tortoises and some kind of South American warthog thing which was less than prepossessing, even more so when the owner said he had named it after his wife. Charming!

The birds were going crazy by the time we had almost finished as it was lunchtime and we were flagging due to the heat. At least the weather bodes well for the beach!

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