Manu Day 8: Blanquillo

The rain, lightening and thunder started at 3am.  The bad news was that the rain would stop the parrots and macaws from visiting the claylick we were supposed to go to, which was very disappointing.  The good news is that we got a sleep-in and a delicious pancake breakfast.

We decided that we needed to go for a walk, even though it was still raining.  We headed out to Blanquillo lake, seeing fresh water crabs on the path and bats hanging out under the lake viewpoint.  The mammal claylick was only another 45min walk and though we knew we'd see nothing, being the wrong season and daytime, figured it would be good for us.  The setup there was great and by the time we headed back the rain had eased.

By afternoon the rain had stopped for the river crossing to Camungo Laguna.  It is an older oxbow lake, with a lot of vegetation encroaching into the water.  The lake was busy with hoatzins, flying back and forth, crashlanding in trees and looking like rather unlikely fruit.  There were plenty of other kinds of birds as well.

The lake was also home to a family of giant river otters . . .

. . . and three different kinds of piranhas.

Towering over the lake in the distance was a enormous kapok tree.  I was delighted, and a little apprehensive, to find out that this was the tree the platform was in.  The platform is 42m off the ground and the tree itself is over 50m.

The majestic kapok tree with the viewing tower in it

Ben and I were quick to start climbing the stair case and were the first to the top.  It was incredible, like being in the world's highest tree fort, looking across the Amazon rainforest.

Lots and lots of stairs to climb

Red and green macaws circled the tree and landed close by

A bird's eye view of the beautiful lake we had been on earlier

Michel told us to look up a branch - suddenly we could see that a broken off branch wasn't a branch at all!
It was a Greater Potoo, camouflaged to avoid being eaten by an eagle

Nearly the whole rowdy bunch

We stayed to watch the sunset and the sky change colour.  On the way back to the river in the dark the night monkeys paid us a visit, seemingly unconcerned with the torchlight on them.