My perilous pursuit of Colombia’s birdlife
It was just after seeing my first resplendent quetzal that I hatched my crazy plan to visit Colombia. I was in the Costa Rican cloud forest at the time and my guide – you need a guide because the birds are impossible to spot without someone who a) can identify the different calls and b) carries a $2,000 Swarovski Optik monocular – said, “Of course, if you really like this sort of thing the place to go is Colombia.” Costa Rica, delightful though it is, only has around 900 species of bird. Colombia, on the other hand, has nearly 2,000 (including 83 endemics: i.e., ones you can find nowhere else), more than any other country in the world. When I tried impressing on my wife what an incredible incentive this was, she wasn’t convinced. “But what if we die?” she said.
