Gabriel was a little late this morning.
In the early hours, I got a call from him. He had been taken in for questioning by officers from the Crimes Against Donkeys Unit.
I pulled myself out of bed and caught a taxi across town to explain that the incident yesterday had resulted from a tragic misunderstanding. It would really, I implored, be in everybody's best interests if they just hosed down the road and forgot about the whole sorry affair.
After all, the donkey wasn't complaining.
And on the basis that every road-kill cloud has an edible lining, they could put the contents of the evidence locker in the station fridge for the next fundraising barbeque.
Police business resolved, we headed out of town on the slow moving Occidental Highway to Mindo, an hour to the east of Quito.
Mindo is home to many of Ecuador's numerous hummingbird species.
As a rather ingenious survival strategy, they have taken to living at such a great height that the clouds conceal them. Just in case Ecuador's intrepid hummingbird hunters did decide to run the gauntlet of the head spinning altitudes, they also have to contend with the volcano that acts as the hummer's last line of defence.
Although, considering it erupts from time to time, it might seem a miscalulation on the tiny bird's part - a kind of 'if I'm going, I'm taking you down with me' strategy of mutually assured destruction.
Whatever the merits, it seems to work and the hummers thrive at altitudes usually reserved for passing aircraft.
Gabriel chatted happily about his deal with the Donkey Police as we wound up the bumpy track to the Bellavista Hummingbird Reserve. In return for signing a voluntary non-molestation behaviour contract, the Quito donkey population could breathe a sigh of relief.
And the Police Commissioner's annual bash in support of the city's Donkey Sanctuary had both the meat and someone to turn it on the grill.
It seemed a fair deal as Quito still has a dedicated bullring. Only recently has legislation been brought forward to discourage the rural populace from throwing llamas off church roofs.
The term 'cloud forest' - which the forest in the clouds has cleverly been named - conjures images of a lush tropical landscape something between Avatar and Predator. As the car climbed up the narrow winding road, it became clear that to venture off it would require a mechanised groundforce of Arnies to cut through the dense foliage.
The surreal experience of driving above the cloud line is usually reserved for slightly overblown car adverts, filmed against the backdrop of barren mountain top star-gazing observatories.
Gabriel, never known for selecting an appropriate gear, flitted between first and fifth, ignoring anything inbetween. As a result, first gear heralded the machine-gun clatter of rocks being sprayed into the undergrowth by the spinning tyres. Fifth gear induced a death rattle from the jeep's transmission as it tried to coax something out of Gabriel's determined - but ultimately futile - top gear, low speed hill climb.
With one layer of cloud below us, another appeared above us and soon the tree tops were disappearing in the shroud that also enveloped us.
Parking at the lodge headquarters of the reservation, we followed the path into the gloom and would have been entirely lost were it not for the screech of Americans coming from somewhere further up the trail.
The timid and publicity-shy bird population of the reservation, respond particularly well to people shouting alot. It was with a sigh that Gabriel steered us down a different path in the hope that the fog would muffle the American foolishness and the birds would settle down to roost once more.
And thankfully they did.
A pair of Toucan clattered their beaks overhead. Beautiful Jays - both their name and their description - flitted between the boughs. Clare stumbled across a rare but indiscriminately angry Oil Bird who launched from a branch by her shoulder before wheeling on the offensive.
Unpeturbed by having his eyes clawed out by the furious creature, Gabriel was beside himself, and flicked through his braille edition of 'Birds of Ecuador' to identify the attacker.
When we returned to the lodge, the hummers were out in force drinking from the feeders. Their iridescent feathers flashed in the sunlight and their wings beat a hundred times a second, sounding like someone ruffling the pages of a Tolstoy novel.
On the way back, between thundering waterfalls and thousands of delicate butterflies the size of dinner plates, we ate lunch in Mindo town and crawled back along the Occidental Highway as the rush hour started to build.
The Quito buses spouted thick, black deisel smoke into the narrow colonial streets as we arrived back at the hostel and we swapped the cloud laced jungle for the forest of buildings wreathed in smoke.
It wasn't a fair exchange.
In the early hours, I got a call from him. He had been taken in for questioning by officers from the Crimes Against Donkeys Unit.
I pulled myself out of bed and caught a taxi across town to explain that the incident yesterday had resulted from a tragic misunderstanding. It would really, I implored, be in everybody's best interests if they just hosed down the road and forgot about the whole sorry affair.
After all, the donkey wasn't complaining.
And on the basis that every road-kill cloud has an edible lining, they could put the contents of the evidence locker in the station fridge for the next fundraising barbeque.
Police business resolved, we headed out of town on the slow moving Occidental Highway to Mindo, an hour to the east of Quito.
Mindo is home to many of Ecuador's numerous hummingbird species.
As a rather ingenious survival strategy, they have taken to living at such a great height that the clouds conceal them. Just in case Ecuador's intrepid hummingbird hunters did decide to run the gauntlet of the head spinning altitudes, they also have to contend with the volcano that acts as the hummer's last line of defence.
Although, considering it erupts from time to time, it might seem a miscalulation on the tiny bird's part - a kind of 'if I'm going, I'm taking you down with me' strategy of mutually assured destruction.
Whatever the merits, it seems to work and the hummers thrive at altitudes usually reserved for passing aircraft.
Gabriel chatted happily about his deal with the Donkey Police as we wound up the bumpy track to the Bellavista Hummingbird Reserve. In return for signing a voluntary non-molestation behaviour contract, the Quito donkey population could breathe a sigh of relief.
And the Police Commissioner's annual bash in support of the city's Donkey Sanctuary had both the meat and someone to turn it on the grill.
It seemed a fair deal as Quito still has a dedicated bullring. Only recently has legislation been brought forward to discourage the rural populace from throwing llamas off church roofs.
The term 'cloud forest' - which the forest in the clouds has cleverly been named - conjures images of a lush tropical landscape something between Avatar and Predator. As the car climbed up the narrow winding road, it became clear that to venture off it would require a mechanised groundforce of Arnies to cut through the dense foliage.
The surreal experience of driving above the cloud line is usually reserved for slightly overblown car adverts, filmed against the backdrop of barren mountain top star-gazing observatories.
Gabriel, never known for selecting an appropriate gear, flitted between first and fifth, ignoring anything inbetween. As a result, first gear heralded the machine-gun clatter of rocks being sprayed into the undergrowth by the spinning tyres. Fifth gear induced a death rattle from the jeep's transmission as it tried to coax something out of Gabriel's determined - but ultimately futile - top gear, low speed hill climb.
With one layer of cloud below us, another appeared above us and soon the tree tops were disappearing in the shroud that also enveloped us.
Parking at the lodge headquarters of the reservation, we followed the path into the gloom and would have been entirely lost were it not for the screech of Americans coming from somewhere further up the trail.
The timid and publicity-shy bird population of the reservation, respond particularly well to people shouting alot. It was with a sigh that Gabriel steered us down a different path in the hope that the fog would muffle the American foolishness and the birds would settle down to roost once more.
And thankfully they did.
A pair of Toucan clattered their beaks overhead. Beautiful Jays - both their name and their description - flitted between the boughs. Clare stumbled across a rare but indiscriminately angry Oil Bird who launched from a branch by her shoulder before wheeling on the offensive.
Unpeturbed by having his eyes clawed out by the furious creature, Gabriel was beside himself, and flicked through his braille edition of 'Birds of Ecuador' to identify the attacker.
When we returned to the lodge, the hummers were out in force drinking from the feeders. Their iridescent feathers flashed in the sunlight and their wings beat a hundred times a second, sounding like someone ruffling the pages of a Tolstoy novel.
On the way back, between thundering waterfalls and thousands of delicate butterflies the size of dinner plates, we ate lunch in Mindo town and crawled back along the Occidental Highway as the rush hour started to build.
The Quito buses spouted thick, black deisel smoke into the narrow colonial streets as we arrived back at the hostel and we swapped the cloud laced jungle for the forest of buildings wreathed in smoke.
It wasn't a fair exchange.
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