Friday: We had to wake up SUPER early that morning- 530 AM. We took a canoe (actually the whole group was divided into 3 smaller groups that rode in 3 separate canoes with 3 different guides) to a clay lick. What is a clay lick? you may be asking. It is a "wall" of a certain type of clay that parrots, macaws, and other animals eat to neutralize the toxins of the plants they eat. There were tons of macaws there, so it was definitely worth it. On the way to/from the clay lick, we saw many other types of birds, some monkeys (!!! they were kind of far away in the trees, but you could still see them), and some dolphins swimming in the water. It was pretty awesome. We actually didn't see that many animals during the whole trip- they don't just saunter up to a group of 15 noisy people like it's no big deal. I knew we wouldn't see many, but it was still kind of a bummer that there were no anaconda or jaguar sightings ;) We went for a hike through the rain forest around mid-day: saw a tarantula (which was small by tarantula standards, but pretty darn big by spider standards), a big millipede, and a bunch of plants. We got our faces painted with the juice of a certain red berry. That evening we went piranha fishing. It was basically just a line with a hook on it- no fishing poles. Our bait was raw chicken. I got a lot of bites, as did everyone else, but the only person that caught anything was Ramon, one of our guides; he caught three catfish. I'm pretty sure he's got a fair amount of experience. After the fishing, once it was dark, we went caiman "hunting"- it wasn't really hunting though- I likened it to deer shining, just on the river with caimans instead. (For those of you that don't know, caimans are like black alligators). We were supposed to look for red eyes shining out at us from the shore. I never saw anything, even when our guide would supposedly spot one and we'd get close (I'm still not too sure I believe he actually saw anything...). We did see a little porcupine swimming for dear life in the water. Oh, it was just so cute! He climbed up a tree that was half in the water, and everyone took pictures of it (or most everyone, because I didn't...). He was probably scared out of his mind. The stars were gorgeous that night, and there was heat lightening. So even though we didn't see much for caimans, we got a pretty spectacular show in the sky.
Well, it turned out that the river was low and the Jungle Discovery got stuck on a sand bar. What luck! We needed a ton of rain in a short period of time if we wanted to be able to move as was planned.
Saturday: We got up fairly early (like 630) and ate breakfast. Our boat was still stuck, but it had rained quite hard the whole night, continuing into the morning. After breakfast, we were told that we would have 2 hours of free time (ideally to sleep) because it was still raining (and we were still stuck). So after the two hours (in which I slept and read my book), we went to a small village where the Cofan people live, and we went on another jungle trek. We had a native guide (from the village) in addition to our normal guide. When we returned, our boat had become un-stuck! Just think- it rained enough in 1 night/ half a day that we were able to get moving again. That afternoon we went to a different, larger Cofan village. The people there have a project with the protection/ conservation of turtles that live in the Amazon. They collect their eggs and raise the turtles until they are big enough to protect themselves. Without the help of these people, the turtle population was declining rapidly due to predation and other factors. So there was a big "turtle farm"- I think they had 3000 turtles in all. They also had a pet monkey! Got some pictures of that. We stayed there for a while, and on our return ride back to the Jungle Discovery, we got to enjoy the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a long time (which I also took pictures of).
Last installment tomorrow-- maybe I'll do another after that of just pictures or videos; we'll see. Happy Wednesday.
Picture one: Green macaws at the clay lick
Picture two: The tarantula
Picture three: Courtney and I, all painted up. (It was a serious picture ;) )
Picture four: This was part of the Cofan village we visited
Picture five: Sunset
1 comment:
Wow, you just had once in a life time experience! The village looks really cool.
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