minimunchkin: Jungle Life

Our three days in the Amazon were filled with excursions both during the day and at night. And each time as we head out, we would be filled with anticipation of the animals and plants we may see. The kids would ask Frank, our guide, all kinds of questions "will we see snakes?, will we see pumas?, will there be leeches?" While we didn't see any anacondas or wild cats, nevertheless each time we ventured out we would discover something new, whether it be a plant, an insect or a small animal.

Going animal spotting along the Madre de Dios (Mother of the rivers) on our river night watch.

Less than three minutes into the ride, we spotted this fully grown female Cayman.

Further down the river on the bank of another island, we saw this furry fellow. Gave me quite a shock when I first saw it as Frank slowly shone his torchlight around. Initially I thought it was a wild boar but at second glance it looked more like a giant guinea pig! The capybara, native to South America is the largest living rodent in the world. This one was the size of a large pig!

More caymans along the edge of the river as we made our way back to camp.

So much to remember. We were very lucky tonight to see all the animals that we went hunting for. Frank told us that it's not easy to spot capybaras, and tonight we saw three of them!

The river looks so different in the daylight. It feels so much safer and less frightening when we are able to see ahead and know which direction we are heading towards, looking in the river itself and being able to see any animals lurking around. This time we will be taking a short ride out to a nearby island, Monkey Island, to try and spot monkeys and maybe sloths. Fingers crossed!

Our ride throughout our three days here.

Fishermen mending their nets.

Monkey Island

The way in.

Deep forest full of bugs and mosquitoes

Beautifully weaved wasps nest.

And here he is, a cappuccino monkey. Just hanging and watching...

... this show below! Human monkeys doing their monkey dance to get their cousin to come closer 😆

A giant owl butterfly

Hundreds of poisonous "enoki" mushrooms.

Playing catch with a monkey!

Taking only memories with us. Sadly, no sloths today.

Hostages being marched off the island by the little Sargent!

What a way to leave... surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.

A helping hand from Frank to board our boat for the ride home.

Approaching the pier.

Walking the 10 minutes trail from pier to home.

One afternoon as we were eating lunch, the sky opened up and it started bucketing down. It rained for the whole afternoon then stopped for a couple of hours and started pouring down again and didn't stop for the entire night. This is the dry season so we weren't expecting rain at all but as our guide said to us, "welcome to the rainforest!"

Thunder, lightning and endless rain.

Stuck in our room with no electricity, this boy found himself a new hobby!

Well, there's no such thing as rain cancellation in the Amazon. And so it was on with the rain jackets and off we go piranha a-hunting!

We had all our fingers, and toes crossed. We really wanted grilled piranha for dinner tonight!

Everyone took turns with the fishing rod. First Daddy, then Mia, then Mama...

then Ryan.

And when the rod didn't work, we used the good old string tied around a piece of wood.

Still no luck. We were using all kinds of bait, beef, pork, bread with jam and even banana.

But still nothing.

Wait, Daddy's got something! It's a giant stick 😆

In the end, this was our only catch, a cat fish and it was so small we threw it back into the river.

Still it was a fun outing.

We've been searching, digging around the tree trunks and in the ground every night for them since we got here. Finally on our last night, we found not one, but two of them. Giant Tarantulas!

All this time we thought that tarantulas are poisonous but our guide explained that these spiders are actually harmless. Their sting hurts but they carry no poison in them.

Three nights in the jungle and it was time to go. It has definitely been a fun experience but we were all pretty happy to leave. No more having to cover up with long sleeve shirts and long pants and spray ourself with mosquito repellent each time we leave the room. No need to check our shoes before we put them on. It's time to move on to a more luxurious hotel, as Mia happily announced 😆. Life here is so different, you're surrounded by nature, much of which is still unspoilt by human interference. But this is changing fast and people like Frank, and the Inkaterra Asociacion are trying very hard to protect their forest and the animals and plants who live and grow here.