I think I met something like another 15 of Albert's extended family members at the restaurant. I had to write notes to try and remember who everybody was. In addition Albert's wife and son, there were his Mum, Dad, Stepmum and youngest step-brother. One of his sisters was also there with all three of her kids. Also there were his wife's parents and her sister, her sister's boyfriend, her Aunt and her Aunt's son (who I had met briefly at the airport), and finally her Grandma. Later I would eagerly ink in the family tree I had been maintaining. I would name them, but this is a public site and I don't know if they would be comfortable with that so it's easier not to. But I do remember all of their names as I spent nearly a week with them, and they were the most delightful and welcoming family - well, two families - that you could ever meet. I should at this point mention that a saintly miracle (Saint A, Albert's wife's mum) had occured the previous day in that my suitcase of dirty washing had been emptied out whilst I had been birding and all my clothes had been washed. I was back in business!
Despite the late finish we were on the road pretty early the next morning as we had a long drive ahead of us. We didn't leave exactly on time but there were a lot of people to organise and to fit into vehicles. So shortly after dawn a load of us and our luggage piled into Don Gilberto's minivan. The doors didn't all open, and neither did the windows particularly, but despite the decrepitude of the vehicle Gilberto was a particularly cautious driver and ensured continuous divine protection by genuflecting with both hands whenever we came across a roadside shrine to the Virgin.
The route took us north of where I had been the previous day, north of Bogota and then east along what is called the Transversal del Sisga in the department of Boyaca. A lot of the time you are following the banks of the Embalse de Chivor which has some nice viewpoints. The road then descends from Santa Maria through La Esperaza and crosses the Rio Upia (which eventually joins the Orinoco much further east), at which point you are in the department of Casanare. Sabanalarga, where Albert's mum has a house, was our final destination. This is on the very western edge of the Llanos plain, primarily lowland habitat and a very different climate to Bogota. The latter is at 2,600m, whereas Sabanalarga is under 500m. It would be hot!
Despite the leisurely pace it was hard to bird from Don Gilberto's van but there were quite a few breaks along the way. At the first one, still in the larger Bogota area, we stopped briefly alongside an agricultural area on the banks of the Bogota River. Here I managed to see Bare-faced Ibis, American Kestrel, White-tailed Kite and both Glossy and Black Flowerpiercer. Further along the route as we crossed the Cordillera a late breakfast above the Embalse allowed for a bit longer looking through my bins. Crimson-mantled and Golden-Olive Woodpeckers, Bananaquits, Tropical Parulas, Kingbirds, Plain-crowned Spinetail, Common Tody-Flycatcher, and a Spangled Coquette amongst others.
We arrived early afternoon after something like a six hour journey. Most of us were booked into the local holiday camp, with a few of the gang staying at the finca. Albert's brother, a local teacher in Sabanalarga, lives next door to his Mum; they bought the land together, and so I was able to ink in some more of my rapidly-expanding family tree, including two of his children. Later on his wife's brother, wife and young daughter also arrived, and my pen had to come out again.
Whilst we all settled in I kept an eBird list going for the afternoon. Largely we all just chilled out at the family house - Albert had organised vast quantities of food and drink to be deliverd regularly in order to sustain 20+ people. The house is on the edge of town, mainly amidst agriculture, but whilst there were views of the river it wasn't possible to get all the way down to it. I contented myself by wandering down the lane and back, but most of the birds were seen in the garden, beer in hand. These included Golden-Olive and Lineated Woodpecker in the trees opposite, a Black-throated Mango nesting on a lamp post, lots of various Doves (Band-tailed Pigeon, Ruddy Ground Dove, Scaled Dove and Eared Dove), Yellow-crowned Parrots and Brown-throated Parakeets, tons of Flycatchers (Cattle Tyrant, Great Kiskadee, Boat-billed Flycatcher, Rusty-margined Flycatcher and Tropical Kingbird), Blue-grey, Palm and Burnished-buff Tanagers, Violaceous Jay and lots lots more. By the end of the day I'd recorded nearly 40 species without going anywhere and with virtually no effort expended bar a short walk into town for the daily fruit salad ritual, more on which later.
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