Big day today, have arrived in the Amazon, stepped off the plane in Puerto Maldonado and my lungs felt I had put my mouth over a steaming kettle, the air was moist and hot! After an hour bus ride to a jetty for our boat we had a two hour boat ride up the Tambopata River to our home for the next 5 days - Tambopata EcoLodge. It was an interesting ride up the river, the edge of the river was being farmed with banana and papaya trees most of the way until just before our lodges jetty, the farms are only allowed to farm near the edge of the river and they are not long standing farms as the quality of the soil is so bad due to alot of nutrients being washed away during the rainy season. We are here in the dry season and river is very low, hopefully all the better for spotting wildlife! Our little shack that is home, is fully open to the jungle, the only thing between us and creepy crawlies is thin mesh walls and a mosquito net over our beds! It's stinking hot (around 38 degrees and 100% humidity) still and already 5 pm, not sure it gets much cooler at night!
The boats we were transported around on
The Tambopata river-secondary tributary of amazon river
We have now spent two days exploring the jungle, and have been lucky enough to have seen a variety of wildlife, but not too many mammals unfortunately. We have seen a huge number of birds - Craig Steed will be impressed with our knowledge when we return! - one of the best experiences was watching the red and green macaws gathering ready to feed on the clay lick. They need to feed on this every other day to help neutralise the stomach acids they get from eating the fruit in the jungle. They took around 2 hours to gather, having come and gone several times and being spooked by the falcon, -their enemy. They finally got onto the clay lick (4 of them) and something else spooked them and around 15 macaws took off out of the trees in formation, wonderful sight but that was the end of our viewing the clay lick for the day, we didn't have enough staying power for another 2 hours! We have also seen capybaras (the world's largest rodent) and caimans that are nocturnal. We have seen lots of other species of birds, but the best would have to be watching the monkeys in the trees. We have seen the red howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys and tiny wee tamarind monkeys, on a couple of occasions, they were neat to watch, jumping from branch to branch. We have also seen lots of the smaller wildlife, but they all have their part to play in Amazonian life- ants, many varieties, the best being the leaf cutter ants and Curtis was even able to tell our guide all about them as he had studied them at school, I think Ronald, our guide, was suitable impressed! spiders, our favourite being the tarantula, which actually was the least dangerous of all the spiders we saw!, tree frogs, bats, porcupine, abouti's, lizards, turtles, butterflies, moths, dragonflies and of course the annoying mosquito!
The red and green macaws at the clay lick
Blue and yellow macaw
Capybaras
Tarantula!
Turtle basking
Squirrel monkey
Tree frog
Porcupine
Baby Caiman
Butterflies after salt from the river mud
All these sightings wouldn't have been possible without our guide, we had a guy called Ronald, you would be hard pushed to meet anyone who was as passionate and excited about the flora and fauna of his environment, every sighting whether it was a killer ant or a caiman he was just as enthusiastic and treated them with the same respect. We were extremely lucky to be in a group with another couple from Devon, UK, who were a similar age and a younger guy Jon who was also enthusiastic about everything, it made it easier to sneak up quietly on the wildlife! By our fourth full day everyone had moved onto another adventure and we were just three - it was "awesome" in Curtis's words! Ronald loved that word and I think will use it from now on with his groups! His English was amazing so I didn't even need to think about Spanish for 6 days, which has made getting back into independent travel a little more challenging!
Ronald at the helm rowing around an oxbow lake looking for wildlife
Back at the ecolodge after a long day - 3 cheeky monkeys!
Puerto Maldonado juice bar with Ronald! Waiting for flight to Cusco.
The food at the lodge was fairly good, rice appeared with everything and they had 3 types of dinners, pork, beef and chicken along with veggies and either yuca chips or potatoe chips. Their best item on the menu and that appeared with lunch and dinner was this amazing hot sauce. They were very secretive about the ingredients but each day we managed to get another ingredient out of Ronald! We think we got it down to wild tomatoes, garlic, fish eye chillies, coriander,and lime juice, although we think there is something else that was a flavour we were unfamiliar with, which means we probably can't get it at home anyway! There was also heaps of fruit, all of which is grown on a nearby farm owned by the lodge and managed by a local farmer, the deal being he provides 50% of the fruit to the lodge and then he gets to sell the other half in Puerto Maldonado to earn a living. We had an interesting visit to the farm and got to taste some unusual fruit - dragon fruit and Curtis spotted a HUGE pineapple which he was allowed to harvest and take back to the lodge, but had to plant 4 new pineapple plants in return!! He enjoyed his bit of gardening in the jungle.
Ronald and Curtis
The prized pineapple!
The best food was a traditional dish which was baked chicken with rice, cilantro, olives, peppers and maybe some type of spices all wrapped in a banana leaf and baked. The first one we had was on the long day trip away from the lodge and then we got to enjoy it again the next day as well at the lodge.
Traditional Peruvian amazonian dish
We are in thenSacred Valley now on our way to Machu Picchu, will blog again soon.
Tamarind monkeys grooming each other!
Piranha!
Leaf cutter ants
The local transport
Dugouts at oxbow lake
Adios! Xx
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