A Trip Down (or Up?) Memory Lane
Planning a future journey sparks memories of a long-ago trip.
(Listen to the radio version here.)
Russ had a milestone birthday in February—he turned 75. I’ve always given him nine months to test the waters before I jump in, so I’m waiting till November to mark that milestone. Russ also retired this year, but I can hardly do that—it’s only possible to retire if you have an actual job. I get to keep doing what I do ad infinitum, or at least until my brain or body gives out.
Anyway, we like to celebrate milestones, and having three big ones this year calls for a huge celebration, so this week we signed up for a trip next summer to the Galápagos Islands with “Alvaro’s Adventures.”
How did we choose that particular company? Mostly because I got to meet and spend a bit of time with Alvaro Jamarillo, the company owner and guide, in 2007, when I was invited on a fam tour1 of Guatemala. Alvaro and I were in the same small breakout group going up a volcano to see one of the rarest birds on the planet, the Horned Guan.
Alvaro, two other professional tour leaders, and I stayed at a lovely coffee plantation literally at the end of the road. Two local guides, one experienced and one a teenager just starting to learn English, woke us up at 2 a.m. so we could reach the highlands at dawn—the best time to view the guan munching its leafy breakfast in the treetops. We started out in a jeep that took us up and up the volcano along a bumpy trail much too narrow to accommodate even a small truck. Branches whipped our faces as we rattled along in the dark. After an hour, the trail ended and out we hopped, flashlights in hand, to hike a narrow path hacked by hand through the forest. It was 3:30 am when we started, too early for even a slight grayness on the eastern horizon, and we had a long way to go before we reached the area far above where the guan was supposed to be—they said it would be at least a three-hour hike.
The other three birders were gung-ho guys in their thirties, antsy to charge forward and get that lifer. None of them brought a camera or spotting scope—one even forgot his flashlight. I tend to be pretty laid back and philosophical even when I’m excited—I figured I was either going to see the guan or I wasn’t, and if I did, I wanted a photo, so I needed my spotting scope. I was twenty years older than the oldest of them, we were at a high elevation, and I’m a pathological moseyer even under the easiest of circumstances, but I didn’t want to slow them down, reducing their chances of getting the bird. So the more experienced guide took them ahead while the younger stayed with me, carrying my scope. Every now and then, in the pitch darkness, we tripped on stumps of saplings jutting out of the ground. Our boots kept sinking into the coarse, loose volcanic ash, making the footing even more treacherous. And with every step, my feet seemed to be getting heavier, which they actually were, since so much ash was seeping into my boots.
My Spanish was rusty, but my guide and I managed to carry on a conversation. With the endearing tactlessness of a kid, he asked how old I was, and when I said 55, he gasped with surprise, blurting out that I was older than his grandmother! He said I might even be the oldest woman ever to have made that trip. He was very impressed—for him, my age was definitely a feature, not a bug.
The others hiked at a rapid clip and found the guan around 7:30. Their guide alerted mine on his cell phone. We still had a long way to go—it took us about an hour to catch up. But those wonderful men kept the guan in sight the whole time to make sure I saw it too.
The bird was worth every moment of the hike, every grain of volcanic ash scraping against my feet inside my boots.
Horned Guans are as big and plump as turkeys, with iridescent black and white plumage and a brilliant red horn jutting out of their forehead as if they were unicorns. I gazed at it for half an hour but never saw the entire bird at once—wherever it moved in the canopy, leaves always managed to obscure parts of it. I snapped dozens of photos with my pocket-sized camera through my spotting scope. Most of the photos were out of focus and none were very good, but they are lovely mementos of this splendid bird.
My stained socks serve as a more visceral reminder of the long climb up and the longer, more treacherous trip back down through the gritty ash. I was exhausted when we finally made it back to the lodge after a five-hour descent and another hour in the jeep. The first thing others said when we arrived was that we’d want to throw out our socks. I just smiled and tucked mine safely in a bag for the journey home. I still have them.
Since he was one of the guides who stayed on the guan until I could catch up, I have warm feelings about Alvaro, and I also have a huge amount of respect for him. Born in Santiago, Chile, and raised in Toronto, Canada, he lived for decades in California but recentely relocated to Prince Edward County in Ontario. He’s an authority on pelagic birds and New World blackbirds, author of the American Birding Association’s A Field Guide to the Birds of California and the Princeton University Press’s Birds of Chile. He’s friendly and extremely generous with his knowledge, so of course I wanted to spend time with him. Where better than on a boat trip to the Galápagos Islands!
“Familiarization tours” are generally sponsored by governmental or tourism agencies or other entities trying to attract visitors to a country, particularly to foster ecotourism to provide local people with a financial incentive to protect wildlife. Fam tours invite writers, photographers, guides, media personalities, and other people who they hope will return home and inspire a lot of people to visit the place themselves. The Guatemala trip was my first fam tour; I’ve also been honored to be invited to fam tours in Peru (2016); Uganda (2016); Kissimmee, Florida (2023); and Guyana (2025).
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