Whose Clues?

Giving tours at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, we spent a lot of time telling students to look for clues of wildlife, rather than planning to spot a wild animal. This technique served The Mister and me well as we took a guided hike up the valley from Papallacta.
On the hike we saw tapir tracks, wee Andean deer tracks, and a coati skeleton. We flushed a giant guan, ran into some large carnivore scat (there are spectacled bears and a few cats in the forest), and came across a large dead owl.
We crossed primary forest and paramo, watched clouds hide the volcanoes, and delighted in orchids, bromeliads, lupines, fire trees and hypericums.

We did see one live wild mammal on the hike: a Brazilian Rabbit in the hotel courtyard.