The sky was slowly lightning, the river smooth and calm as we set off up the river. Already there were parrots and macaws flying overhead, heading to the claylick.
The claylick is just a small one, with the observation area rather far away - frustrating for taking photos, but still beautiful to watch. The parrots, parakeets and macaws are very colourful, raucous and busy, flying to and fro, circling and landing again.
The captain and crewman played soccer on the far side of the river while they waited.
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| The early morning river |
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| Patterns in the riverbank mud |
After returning to the lodge for breakfast we set off again for another walk through the rainforest. This time it was an area of primary growth, unlike the secondary we had seen the night before. There was a lot to be seen, including beautiful butterflies, especially the enormous, elusive electric blue morphos.
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| Saddleback tamarin |
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The plants in the rainforest have
a lot of natural defences |
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| Large, well camouflaged lizard |
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| Beautiful bird |
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| Another well camouflaged lizard |
After three hot hours in the rainforest we returned to the lodge. Miguel, Ben and I all opted for a swim in the river. As we waded in it started to rain; amazing big, fat, heavy drops that made a beautiful pattern on the water. It was a lovely feeling, to be cool and refreshed, to swim against the strong current, then drift back down with it.
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| During lunch we were entertained by this red squirrel doing his Ice Age impression |
After lunch and a short siesta we set off again. By this time it was almost unbearably hot and humid but thankfully almost completely biting bug free - Pantiacolla was wonderful in this respect - there were only sandflies down by the river, none around the lodge, and no mosquitoes.
Miguel spotted a restive toucan and numerous oropendulas making a racket high up in the canopy. He looked for the source of their agitation and spotted the tail of a hawk. Peering through my binoculars while he set up his bird scope I casually told him that I could see it's head and it had a crest. At this point Miguel became very excited. The bird flew off before he could get a good look at it, but luckily it circled around and landed on a dead tree behind us.
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| It was an Ornate Hawk Eagle . . . |
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| . . . which are not common . . . |
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. . . and very beautiful and striking.
Miguel made Ben promise to email him a photo. |
We saw more birds and two more groups of tamarin monkeys, but nothing to match the eagle. Until, walking through the lodge grounds, there was a group of howler monkeys draped in the branches on the edge of the lawn.
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| Red howler monkeys only eat leaves . . . |
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| . . . so they are much less active than other types of monkeys . . . |
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| . . . though they make up for it with their noise in the mornings. |
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