El Chocoyero

We went to El Chocoyero today—a small mountain nature reserve featuring two tall skinny waterfalls (cascadas), one with a huge “apartment complex” of chocoyos (green parrots) nesting in holes in the surrounding cliff.

Bergmann led the group of us on the walk, and Manuel brought up the rear, holding an English-language birding book. When I said I wanted to learn more about birds, he held up a finger and whistled a bird call: a set of short notes followed by three rising notes. “Toleo,” he said, and cocked his head to listen. Soon, there’s a response. “Masculino. Esta llamando. Mas fuerte.” A little later, he pauses, finds a page. “Guardabarranco: o pajaro nacional. Buuu buuu.” I never got a clear fix on the guardabarranco: brightly colored, an amazing tail—go ahead, look it up. But as we walked, the toleos followed us. “Estan mas cercos ahora: estan seguindo.” I tried to make the call, feebly. But the male returned the call anyway. “Es magico,” I said to Manuel. “Si,” he answered. “Podemos conversar con los pajaros.” We can talk with the birds. There were other birds hiding in the woods, too, that he pointed out to me: colibri (hummingbirds) and perdi (who make a single, long, mid-pitched call; they sound far away but are often right beside the path).

Bergmann found us a nest with eggs still in it; evidently the monkeys come and steal eggs when they get a chance. We could hear monkeys in the woods, but we never quite saw them.

We saw rubber trees with huge scars from when they were cut to harvest the rubber: now they’re protected, so no one harvests rubber here anymore. But Bergmann’s father used to harvest rubber to make baseballs. We also saw the ceiba tree, sacred to the indigenous peoples of this area: a fertility symbol among other things.

But perhaps our favorite tree was the chilamonte blanca. This one was 160 years old (mas o menos). El anciano: the ancient one.

We also saw loads of bugs—cien-pies, Jeremy and his friend Jacob called them, but Bergmann said centipedes were poisonous and these were really called gusanos nacatamales (to be included in the typical Nicaraguan dish, nacatamales, evidently). Then there were these massive caterpillars, waiting to become one of the many kinds of butterflies we saw along the way. My favorite was the mariposa buho—the owl butterfly—absolutely enormous.

El Chocoyero: the cascada

Los chocoyos: the parrots

On the way, we drove through farms of tomatoes, corn, pineapple (I can’t get past my mental vision of a pineapple tree, instead of these cactus-y plants), and pitaya (dragonfruit). Zoe’s favorite part was riding in the back of the open truck both directions.

Pina (look closely)

Coming back, a couple of guys hitched a ride: they were volunteers at the nature reserve. To get there, one of them had to walk 40 minutes each way every day; the other, perhaps 30 minutes. They’d been volunteering for 12 years. They were working with the Peace Corps to learn how to do tourism more professionally: set up booths, make promotional materials, etc. The first step that occurred to most of us tourists was to make a better road: even with a truck and a van, the drive of just a few kilometros must have taken 30-40 minutes. We went through one huge puddle where the water came up to the axle of the truck: there was a lot of discussion about whether we'd make it back if there was another big downpour (which there was, after we got back).

As a treat, we stopped at a roadside stand for pineapple juice: pina y banano, pina y papaya. Yum.