May 5th, Third Rain Forest tour
We’re doing both river and hiking this final morning. As we set out, we can see the morning mist rising out of the moist vegetation. One interesting point about this “tea colored” water is that the leaves that drop in the water leach out and make it acidic. Due to this, there are no mosquitoes. That’s been great! Brad said not to accept an offer to spend an evening on a whiteish water cruise. It will be less acidic, more basic in ph, and have a lot of mosquitoes.
We head up-river again, but much further than last evening. We see a black Coura Coura which is black with a yellow face, a neo-tropical river otter family with one of the parents taking a young in its mouth and dunking underwater to get away, several Capuchine monkeys and a Muscovy duck with white patches on top of its wings.
We pull the skiff up to the river bank and head out for our hike. Both Wayne and I say immediately that this is a very different type of jungle from the previous day. It has many more broad leafed trees and palms much lower down. Brad explains that the soil here is better. We see several Brazil nut trees which are enormous. They are between 200 and 500 years old with trunks five to eight feet in diameter. We learn several amazing facts about these trees: there is only one type of bee that can pollinate the tree and the husks that fall, which contain the Brazil nuts, can only be opened by one type of rodent. I would say that makes the life of the Brazil nut tree pretty precarious.
We saw more spiders and a scorpion as well as a new fig vine just getting to the ground to develop its root. It will take many years, but I can imagine this being similar to the fig tree we saw yesterday which had completely overtaken its host. Brad showed us a Bullet ant hole. They get their name because apparently their bite feels like you’ve been hit by a bullet. The right of passage to adulthood for indigenous males was to put their hands into a package with these ants inside.
As we walked we heard the amazingly melodious Musician Wren whose song makes all the other birds of the jungle stop to listen. It seemed as if they did. We sure did. Later we saw their nest. The wrens use skeletons of leaves, eating the meat of the leaf. It looks like tedious work. The hole is in the bottom and it is covered all around and on top, like a hat.
On the way back we saw a Spectacle Caiman, even bigger than the Dwarf; that does it, I’m definitely NOT swimming today. Two brightly colored macaws flew over us as we were returning; they are magnificent. Just before getting back to camp we saw several giant otters playing near the river bank.
We’re doing both river and hiking this final morning. As we set out, we can see the morning mist rising out of the moist vegetation. One interesting point about this “tea colored” water is that the leaves that drop in the water leach out and make it acidic. Due to this, there are no mosquitoes. That’s been great! Brad said not to accept an offer to spend an evening on a whiteish water cruise. It will be less acidic, more basic in ph, and have a lot of mosquitoes.
We head up-river again, but much further than last evening. We see a black Coura Coura which is black with a yellow face, a neo-tropical river otter family with one of the parents taking a young in its mouth and dunking underwater to get away, several Capuchine monkeys and a Muscovy duck with white patches on top of its wings.
We pull the skiff up to the river bank and head out for our hike. Both Wayne and I say immediately that this is a very different type of jungle from the previous day. It has many more broad leafed trees and palms much lower down. Brad explains that the soil here is better. We see several Brazil nut trees which are enormous. They are between 200 and 500 years old with trunks five to eight feet in diameter. We learn several amazing facts about these trees: there is only one type of bee that can pollinate the tree and the husks that fall, which contain the Brazil nuts, can only be opened by one type of rodent. I would say that makes the life of the Brazil nut tree pretty precarious.
We saw more spiders and a scorpion as well as a new fig vine just getting to the ground to develop its root. It will take many years, but I can imagine this being similar to the fig tree we saw yesterday which had completely overtaken its host. Brad showed us a Bullet ant hole. They get their name because apparently their bite feels like you’ve been hit by a bullet. The right of passage to adulthood for indigenous males was to put their hands into a package with these ants inside.
As we walked we heard the amazingly melodious Musician Wren whose song makes all the other birds of the jungle stop to listen. It seemed as if they did. We sure did. Later we saw their nest. The wrens use skeletons of leaves, eating the meat of the leaf. It looks like tedious work. The hole is in the bottom and it is covered all around and on top, like a hat.
On the way back we saw a Spectacle Caiman, even bigger than the Dwarf; that does it, I’m definitely NOT swimming today. Two brightly colored macaws flew over us as we were returning; they are magnificent. Just before getting back to camp we saw several giant otters playing near the river bank.
I could go on and on about every thing we saw and learned. The city of Alta Floresta was only settled in 1976 and only 30% of the original rain forest remains; that’s a lot of deforestation in about 34 years. The grass for the cattle which replaced the rain forest is imported Angolan grass, as the rain forest didn’t have grass. I forgot to mention the leaf cutter ants, the howling monkeys, the Yellow Vultures which circled in the thermals as we departed and many other species that we saw in the Amazon Jungle.
To Brad and Francisco, our guides, and to everyone at the Cristalino Jungle Lodge our many thanks for making this an amazing and unforgettable experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment