The Cloud Forest

We escape the city until Thursday. Maquipucuna Reserve is protected land in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest. In fact there are several types of forest here, and the lodge, which is beautiful and made almost entirely from bamboo, is not actually in the cloud forest itself. A 'cloud forest' is characterised by altitude. It is often literally in the clouds, being a dense and mysterious mist swaddled, bright verdant green tree covered stretch at the top of the mountain. Its height makes it cooler and wetter than its counterparts, the humid, tropical secondary forest, so named because it is less than 100 years old, and which makes me feel as though I am back in South East Asia, a sense of somehow "coming home' - and below that, the primary forest, the original. It is forest on top of forest on top of forest. Long, springy vine like ropes hang down from trees, rooting them, literally, into the ground. The vines feel strong enough to hold my weight. Huge palm leaves stretch across the path or grow from the side of trees or out of strong green plants.  The forest pulses with life, plant, animal and insects. It is beautiful - and there is so much to see.

At Maquipucuna lodge we basically eat, sleep and walk, humming birds whizzing past our ears in their rush to feed at the helpfully provided humming bird feeders near where we eat. They are so flighty and fickle that they barely stay at the feeders for a few seconds, living examples of a life lived fast. It makes them virtually impossible to photograph.

As soon as we arrive on the first day we go out for a walk. It is the season for Spectacled Bears. Spectacled Bears are so named for their distinctive markings around their eyes, though different bears have slightly different faces. Some have a black face, some black with white 'spectacles', some white with black spots, like stubble. It is generally very difficult to see them, living as they do in the dense canopy of the Cloud Forest, but once a year they come down into the tropical forests, in search of the Aguacatillo fruit, like a tiny version of an avocado.

For this, the bears will come down from the heights and climb the trees to eat the fruit. As the Aguacatillo tree fruiting season varies according to climate, Spectacled Bear season also varies and so when we book this trip I have expected not to be lucky enough to see them.

"It's spectacled bear season," says our guide, casually, at our first briefing, "so hopefully we can see some bears."

I am immensely excited at this, but still expect this to comprise a patch of black fur, or a fleeting glimpse of a movement in the corner of my eye...

Bears! Actual bears! In trees!

We see three or four bears, up high at the top of the Aguacatillo trees. Perhaps I had expected more of a koala sized bear, or a small panda, but these bears are large, four footed mammals, black and perched seemingly precariously right in the most spindly and unstable part of the tree, where the fruit is. They stand on their back legs, reaching up to grab branches, then breaking the whole branch off with their teeth before holding it in one paw to eat it. They are absolutely destroying the trees, especially the juveniles, who seem much less practised, and frequently send whole chunks of tree crashing down to the tangled green landscape below. There is something vaguely comical about them, perhaps the panting, head nodding motion which we can see and hear from below, perhaps the clumsy motion of their paws or the apparent ludicrousness of the sight of them, this big, heavy mass of  bear swinging about in the very tops of the trees.

It is only really when we see one climbing nimbly up the trunk if s tree nearby, that I realise quite how large they are. And quite how much this really is actually a bear.

"Are they wholly vegetarian?" I ask our guide, eyeing the large black shape which is on all fours, literally walking up the tree as though it were turned on its side, and not a vertical climb at all.

"95%" says our guide, training the binoculars once more on the bears. He, and the other 14 members of staff at the lodge, all of whom seem to do a bit of everything (our guide also waits on us at our meal, the bar man also guides us on our night walk, the lady I spoke to initially over email also designs the menus and makes juices), despite having worked here for twenty two years, and seen bears once a year for all of those, are still hugely excited about seeing the bears. In fact they are hugely excited about seeing anything at all, from a cricket to a toucan to a spectacled bear. I love that they never lose their passion. Whenever we see a bear, our guide calls back to the lodge on his satellite phone. Frequently this means everyone joins us. Lunch or dinner happens ostensibly at 1 or 7, but is actually simply served whenever everyone is back. Nothing takes precedence over nature, and absolutely nothing over the bears.

Still reeling from the fact that we have seen real live bears climbing trees, we return for lunch.

Then we go out again. This time we wander through the forest, our guide listening for sounds of birds or animals, holding his hand up for us to freeze and listen, and frequently making an uncannily accurate bird call to attract the bird, or to cause it, in answering, to reveal its whereabouts in the swaying trees. We hear the shifting gobble of a turkey, though she is top clever, having young, to allow herself to be seen amongst the undergrowth. We see a hole in a tree in which, our guide tells us, he believes there is a nest of baby toucans. We look at other holes, sloping and unmistakably nest, which have been made by woodpeckers. We train our binoculars on large, fan tailed pigeons, their tails two strands of brightly coloured feathers.

We return for dinner and then go put again on a night walk. We see grasshoppers with red eyes which glow, evilly, in the dark, stick insects indistinguishable from actual sticks, insects disguised as leaves or as trees, huge spiders the size of our hands, and smaller, fatter hairier spiders too poisonous to touch.

"Es peligroso?" ("Is it dangerous?") We ask every time.

"A little," says our guide casually as we stare at what looks like a mini tarantula on a leaf, "you would have about 15 minutes".

We move away from the spider quite quickly. Our guide laughs.

Then the spider disappears.

"Um. Where is it?" says M. Both of us instinctively shake our hoods out.

"He is OK," says our guide, "he is just on the other side of the leaf. He doesn't like the torch light."

He's not the only one. We shine our torches into a small hole in the bank to reveal a tiny, fluffy, baby bird (probably a toucan barbet) who blinks furiously and shuffles around to hide his eyes, thrusting his bottom out at us.

We see a huge, yellow, furry caterpillar inching along the ground. He plays dead when he sees us.

We walk past a trail of busy, diligent leaf cutter ants, carrying a procession of leaves all the way up from the top of a tree, across the path, and into their nest.

We duck spider webs and breathe in the changed atmosphere of the forest at night, populated by creatures who don't come out in the day, bears, (presumably), sleeping in the trees above us.

Then we fall asleep, in our bamboo cabin, small insects nestling companiably in the roof above us, to the sound of the rushing stream outside.

We have escaped the City. And this, instead, is my Ecuador.