6/12/2014

6/12/2014

 

Waking up at 5:30 am to a very foggy day, we decided to proceed with the skiff up river to a small creek which was flowing down toward the AtunaCocha lake we had visited previous day. The vegetation closed in on us while the misted lifted and we were serenaded by howler monkeys on both side of the creek. We saw more birds and several wooly monkeys. The highlight of this part of the trip were several iridescent blue butterflies. We met one on the way down and one on the trip back both flying erratically down the middle of the creek. Both times, we almost capsized the boat as all aboard scrambled to photograph them.

Back at the boat for a 9 am breakfast, the Clavero weighed aanchor and headed downstream, stopping only to offload cold beer and Coca Cola to the sister ship of the Clavero tied up at one of the guard stations. Our destination is the Rio Tigre, just down river from the confluence of the Samiria and the Maranon.      

After dinner, we plunged into the darkness in the skiff, scanning the banks with our flashlights for alligators or the trees for animals. We put in at a break in the vegetation and jumped ashore into the mud flashlights in hand. The trail, slightly above the flood level, was drier than the others we had been on. Neil, our naturalist examined trees and leaves while we waved our flashlights about without much science. We saw leaf cutter ants in abundance, spiders and bats. The highlights of the walk was a green tree snake about two feet long. It was very thin, much like the snake we had seen the night before. Kathy, one of our group heard a sort of thumping noise seemingly following her in the dark and asked Neil what it was. We backtracked a bit and found a group of black headed night monkeys in the trees above us. They scattered as we flooded their tree with light.

John wore the silly looking mosquito netting hat that David had brought him from the US and pronounced it a success.