Our trip to the rainforest was an organized tour which we looked forward too. We have done a lot of exploring on our own and always wonder if we see all the sites or miss anything. The company we went through was Rainforest Expeditions. They promote ecotourism and we were told that 50% of their profits go towards helping the local Amazon people that live near their 3 lodges. They employ the people from the local villages to work in the lodges too.
We stayed in the first lodge on the Tambopata River which feeds into the Amazon River in Brazil. We had to take a 50 minute bumpy bus ride to the port which apparently didn't wake up Tim.
Then we took a 50 minute boat ride up the river to our lodge and were fed our "box lunch" (yummy rice mixture wrapped in a banana leaf). The boats were more like canoes with motors and you had to be careful not to move too much.
Here is a picture of a boat looking for gold. Apparently there is a lot of gold sediment in the bottom of the river and people sift for the gold.
Once we got off the boat we had a 15 minute walk through the jungle to our lodge. It was like something out of Smith Family Robinson. The lodge was all open air, only had cold water, and didn't have electricity (everything was done by candle light).
All the rooms had hammocks and there weren't any windows and the walls were made out of something like bamboo, so you could easily hear your neighbors. All the beds had mosquito nets because at night the mosquitoes could get bad. The whole set-up of the place was very relaxing. All are meals were served by candle light and were made from local ingredients (lots of fruits and veggies).
Each day we had a guided tour through out the day (6-8 hours) with breaks. Our guide Fino was great. He worked as a Cowboy on a ranch in Brazil and recently moved to Peru to live with an indigenous tribe in the jungle, before working as a guide. He was an expert bird-watcher and would spot animals you could barely hear or see. We usually woke up around 4:30-5:00am every morning to start hiking and looking for animals when they were active at dawn. Every morning we were awoken by the red howler monkey which sounded more like a gorilla coming to attack, but as you can see he looks and is harmless.
We spotted a lot of beautiful birds: toucans, parrots, macaws, etc. Here are some pictures.
One morning we went to a lake and spotted giant river otters that were about 5 feet long and went fishing for piranha. We didn't catch any but one of the guides did. It's hard to catch them because they ate the chicken really quickly in small pieces.
One trail we hiked had a bunch of monkeys all in the trees. It seemed like they were following us.
Apparently the region we were in has the most species of butterflies in the world. See if you can see the transparent butterfly.
We encountered a rather large tarantula, which is typical for the area.
It was an amazing trip!
2 comments:
We watched a show last week on Howler Monkeys, that's so cool that you got to see them in real life.
No wonder you guys have been getting sick, all the bugs probably fly in your mouth when you sleep!
That's funny. I like how Jackie sneaks in a picture of me sleeping on the bus. I got up that morning at 4 am to go bird watching while Jackie decided to sleep in until 9.
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