Ecological park Chilina {Arequipa}

After being in a big city for a bit, we were craving wild spaces. We can see the snow-capped volcanoes from the house, so we know there must be some fun places to explore, however accessing them is turning out to be difficult. People we ask aren't familiar with where to access the river for fishing and searching the map looks like all the land along the river is private property. Our Uber driver one day was a missionary who has spent time in Morocco, but moved back to Peru during the pandemic. He is a bit of an outdoors person, so we asked him to take us to explore Reserva Ecologica de Chilina. On the map it's a large reserve along the river, so hopefully Asher can fish there and I can do some birding. On the drive thru Cayma, we passed green, tiered fields. 

Then we drove thru a village called Independence, which our driver said was a very dangerous place until about 15 years ago. Now it's mostly abandoned, he said. Then we arrived to this spot where the dirt road were extremely steep. Thankfully, he turned around here and found a different road down. There were no road signs and some roads were closed, so he had to ask for directions multiple times, before we were directed up a different ridge and spotted the one and only park sign letting us know we were headed in the right direction. 

When we pulled up to the entrance, there was a chain blocking the road. A man let us know you could only enter by foot, bike or ATV. We asked how far it was to the river. 90 minutes, he said. Hmm, ok. By ATV, he says! Oh, and you have to reserve the ATVs in advance as they don't keep them on the volcano. Oh well. It looked like a really fun place to hike around, so we spent about an hour exploring.

Pretty quickly Asher spotted the first lizard. A good size one too! We ended up seeing quite a few of them.

I just love the cactus and rocks with the snow-capped volcanoes in the background! This is Vulcan Misti.

And this is Vulcan Chachani.

After all the city noises for the last month, it was nice to hear silence for a bit. And even better when the silence was broken by a bird calling. A lifer, Ash-breasted Sierra Finch!

I also saw an Oasis Hummingbird feeding on a nearby flower.

The Mirador is a short hike from the entrance and definitely a cool view out over the river and green patches of farmland below.

We came across ATVs, bikers and joggers out on the trail. 

I could have spent hours out here walking the trails and looking for creatures. I ended up see quite a few birds which other than the hummingbird, I thought were all the same species. When going thru my photos I realized I saw another lifer, this female Band-tailed Sierra Finch! Nice! Oh, and we saw two Black-chested Buzzard-Eagles being harassed by an American Kestrel!

Our driver, Cesar, said he knew of a way to access the river, so we headed back down into the valley.