We should start off this blog by saying we are back home in Victoria. The decision to come home happened fairly quickly but the journey to get here was long and tiring.

Meantime, we spent 8 wonderful days at Cheryl's 'Above the Clouds' guest house. We had settled into a routine while we were here. We would usually be up with the sun and the birds singing at about 6:30, have a quick bite to eat and then walk the 400 meters to the mirador (lookout) to watch for birds. I don't think there was a time when we did not see something special. One morning we saw 4 kinds of toucans: a Choco Toucan, a Red Rumped Toucan, Pale Mandibled Aracari and Toucan Barbets.

After being amazed at the bird life we would come back home (we had taken to calling this place home) and have a proper breakfast and cup of great Ecuadorian coffee on our deck. Jacklin learned how to make oatmeal. I had originally balked at this idea because I grew up on porridge, having it every single day when I was a kid and I grew sick of it. I surprised myself by really enjoying Jacklin's oatmeal and looked forward to it every morning.

After breakfast we chose a project or 2 to do for the afternoon, either weeding in the garden, cleaning inside the house, putting up tape on the windows to prevent the birds from hitting them, or gathering the cows that escaped the pasture. It would be hard to repay Cheryl for her extreme kindness and I don't think what we did came close to this.

In the late afternoon we would choose a route to walk down to the river and waterfall. One afternoon one of Cheryl's friends, Freddy, took us to a Cock-of-the Rock lek. A lek is where the male birds would compete with each other to entice the female birds to be their mate. They would flap their wings, do funny dances and make loud and weird calls, much like a men do to attempt to impress the ladies in a bar. This particular lek used to attract 15-20 males but since there had been some human interference done to the place the week before, only one male has returned. We did see one Cock-of-the-Rock while we were there and we hope and pray that the others come back eventually.

Cheryl took us into town to do some shopping as we thought we would be here for a while. The town of Nanegalito was not completely shut down but was pretty close. There were a few grocery stores and the odd shop open. One of the bombero (firefighter) trucks was driving around town making anouncements on the loud speaker for people to stay in their homes. We put on our masks and entered one grocery store and stocked up food for the week. This grocery store was only letting a few people inside at a time, another store had a barrier at the entrance and people had to put in their order with the staff and they retrieved what you requested. We were quite impressed with the measures that were taken to prevent the spread of the virus.

So this was how we spent our days and it certainly suited us. We were at a very low risk to have contact with the virus and we got our bird fix each day.

On the evening of March 23 I received an e-mail from the Canadian Embassy in Ecuador advising that they arranged for a flight from Quito to Toronto on the morning of March 25 and provided a link to the Air Canada website with a special code. Even though we did not want to leave we felt it was for the best that we make an attempt to get on this flight.

So, I tried several times to get on the Air Canada website to book the tickets. Much to my surprise I was able to get on. It was like trying to get tickets for a Springsteen concert at a small venue when thousands of others are trying the same thing. Once I was in I looked up at Jacklin and said, "Uh, I'm able to get the tickets." We were both kind of disappointed but we knew that we had to try to get home. Who knows what was going to happen in the future with the borders, food, the travel restrictions.....etc??

After purchasing the tickets I read the fine print on the email from the Embassy and l almost cancelled our flight. It said, "...no special or oversize sports equipment such as bicycles will be permitted on this flight..." We asked Cheryl if it would be ok to store our bikes at her place and she said absolutely. I have grown quite attached to my bike and I am currenty mourning my separation with it. Jacklin is handling leaving our bikes behind much better than I am.

Our next job was to get a ride to Quito the following day which was 2 hours away and we asked Cheryl if she could help us secure a ride. Later on Cheryl let us know that she would take us to Quito. We are so grateful to her for everything that she has done for us. We could have been stuck in a small hotel room for our stay in Nanegalito if not for her and now she has offered to drive us to Quito and store our bikes.

We left Nanegalito the next day and soon came upon a road block where they were spraying down the outside of each vehicle. About 45 minutes later we came upon another road block where the bomberos were taking the temperature of each person in the vehicles. Thankfully we were good to go.

Cheryl dropped us off at a hotel 1 KM from the airport and we tried our best to thank her. We then holed up in our room for the night. The next morning we walked the 1 KM to the airport terminal as there were no taxis or shuttles going.

As we entered the terminal we were greeted with an employee squirting hand sanitizer on everyone's hands and as we made our way through the various check ins we had our hands sanitized about 3 more times.

We boarded our plane and as the captain came on the intercom to welcome us all for the flight back to Canada everyone clapped. Almost everyone were wearing masks and the scent of hand sanitizer was very evident in the plane.

When we landed in Toronto everyone clapped again. We had a 7 hour layover in Toronto before we made our way to Calgary where we had another long wait for our flight to Victoria. In total our travel time was about 30 hours. I am able to sleep pretty much anywhere and Jacklin would become very envious of me when she looked over at me with my eyes closed and mouth open with a hint of drool under my bottom lip.

We arrived home to find Claire was extremely well cared for. Our house sitters who quickly became friends, Tony and Connie, were amazing and there was not a time we had any worries about our home or Claire while we were away.

Now we bide our time at home for the next 14 days in self isolation.

Our plan is to return to Ecuador when everything returns back to normal (whatever the new normal will look like) and begin where we left off at Cheryl's place and finish what we started.

If anyone finds themselves in Ecuador please visit Cheryl's guest house, you will be amazed as we were. Offexploring does not allow links to websites in the blogs but you can search 'abovethecloudsecuador' to find her site..

Thank you for reading our blogs and hope to see many of you when we are allowed out of our house in 2 weeks.