Up to now, we had visited some mountainy areas in Ecuador and Colombia but none were REALLY high up.  Quito is at 2850 metres and the El Dorado Reserve in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is around 2600 metres.  On previous travels long ago I had been to Lhasa at 3700 metres and we have both been to Cuzco at 3399 metres.  I can recall spending one day in Lhasa pretty woozy then acclimating and being ok.  In Cuzco we were out of breath a bit but otherwise fine.

On this trip, we had flown into Medellin 1495 metres and traveled overland via Jardin to Manizales at 2160 metres and barely noticed anything.  I knew that many tourists use Manizales as a base to make day trips to the Nevado del Ruiz and some had complained of altitude sickness but they were going much further up than we were.  I was targeting a couple of parrots found in the Páramo  – the Rusty-faced Parrot and the Rufous-fronted Parakeet.  I had good data from eBird on where people had been seeing them and Albeiro from Rio Blanco Reserve had organized a car & driver for us and explained to the driver were we were going and why.

The driver picked us up around 5am so we could get to the birding area by dawn.  It was beautiful scenery throughout the whole trip.

It wasn’t far but it was uphill all the way and we were going very slow to listen for the birds.  It was extremely foggy the whole day which pretty much ruined my chance to get bird shots, especially if they were in flight.   After slowly driving along the area where others had reported Rusty-faced Parrots, we finally heard the calls and saw a pair fly overhead and off to the bush without stopping.  This was as good as we were going to get.

At this point, I was shocked to see how high we were – 3400 metres!  Shortly afterward we took a turn towards the Termales del Ruiz.

The fog was getting worse – bad news for birders.

I just about freaked out when I saw this sign!

From this point up to the Termales del Ruiz is the area where you are most likely to see Rufous-fronted Parakeets. So we drove slowly along listening anxiously but nothing could be heard.

At this point we stopped for about half an hour.  I could hear what seemed to be parrot calls in the trees but none of them came out where we could see them.

Spectacular view of Manizales!

This is the Hotel Termales del Ruiz where we stopped for a short visit.  There is a fee to go inside the property to see the hummingbird feeders and I didn’t have enough cash for everyone so I went in to grab some photos while Ina & the driver hung around outside.  I’ll put this birding walk on a separate post due to large number of photos.

Ina was starting to feel the effects of the altitude by this time so we had to go back down the mountain.  Surprisingly, all I got was a bit out of breath but nothing serious.  Ina got pretty woozy.

Not sure what this is, I was just happy to see a bird close enough to get a photo of!

The road is pretty bad so if you come here, make sure you have a 4×4 or at least high clearance.

At this point we were almost back to Manizales when we got a call from Albeiro letting us know the Golden-Plumed Parakeets were hanging around the lodge area so we high-tailed it back to Rio Blanco.