Manglares Churute Revisited

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After my somewhat unpleasant first visit to the Manglares Churute reserve I thought I should give it another try. Especially since Isabelle and Simon of the hostal had invited them to their finca which is on the other side of the reserve.

So I went by bus from Guayaquil to the ‘Tres Cerritos’ where I was picked up by motorbike by José, who takes care of the finca. We went on a hike up to the hill behind the finca. During the whole hike we could hear the very strange whining of the ‘monos aulladores’, the howler monkeys. I had heard them before on Cerro Blanco and on the San Sebastian hike, but never managed to catch a glimpse of them. They make a very strange noise, sometimes sounding like a strong wind, sometimes more liek a rapid huhuhuhu. When I first heard the noise on Cerro Blanco. I had no clue what it was. I even wasn’t sure whether it was an animal or some machine. On the San Sebastian hike we heard again the same noise and Nestor, my guide, explained, that it was the howler monkeys. During the whole day we had been searching for them but were not lucky and did not see any.

So it is probably understandable that I was really keen to find them finally on this trip. And indeed we were lucky: we saw two groups of about 15 animals each. They hang around really high up in the trees, and jump from tree to tree. It was an amazing sight, they are quite big, especially the males. Some of them had babies on their backs. Still, because of the distance and the monkeys constantly moving, the pictures are not too good, sorry,....

The next day I went back to the other side of the reserve, to the official park headquarters where I had been before. I had arranged a guide the day before, but unfortunately the man was not really prepared. He came in white sports shoes and neat clean jeans, while I had been told that on the trip there was a lot of mud and so came in rubber boots and light hiking pants. The guide was not happy at all to go more than a a couple of hours and to get dirty, but finally I pursuaded him to go all around the Laguna El Canclón. Yes, there were some difficult parts, with A LOT OF mud and in some places the path was not available any more at all (and the guide did not know the way), but overall I found it beautiful, as we saw lots of birds and the landscape was very pretty (this was clearly NOT the opinion of the guide).

The laguna got its name from the bird canclón. The canclón only has three species in Central and South America, one of which it's in Churute, and is in extinction danger (150 to 180 individuals). So I was happy to see a few of them.

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