Occasionally we see wonderful photos that are sharp and very, very clear. For example see this. Obviously the right light goes a long way towards this but also is it the processing or having a fast lens?
I look at my photos and often I see grainy crap and far too much stuff only fit for the the recycle bin. I use a Nikon D80 with Sigma 70-300mm and 170-500mm lenses plus Adobe Photoshop 4.0 for processing. It would be nice to get a crystal clear photo once in a while, but it doesn't happen.
Judging by your shots from Ecuador I don`t think you have too much to worry about.
It starts with really good quality glass. Without this, the image the sensor is recording is already below par. Then good camera support, by whatever means - I think most people would say for the big lenses a tripod is needed in most circumstances (and I used to be a dedicated handholder of my bigma, until I moved up to a 500 prime, which is ok for short spells of handholding, but is better tripod-mounted). Good exposure control is also important, both to get a reasonable shutter speed to avoid motion blur/camera shake and to get decent colour. Depth of field is also important compositionally. Only after that lot does post-processing make a difference.