Wednesday 7 October:

Itinerary: Amaru Mayu to Yanayacu Lodge. Optional early morning boat trip to a clay lick (collpa), where many species of parrots, including macaws, visit for mineral and salt supplements to their diet. Later we shall leave to travel further into the forest to another lodge. Here we will have a chance to see nocturnal animals including the huge Amazonian Tapir and the Douroucouli, the world’s only nocturnal monkey. Accommodation in Yanayacu rainforest lodge.

Although the early boat trip was classed as optional I think everyone fronted up for it.   A slight navigational error leaving the lodge - before dawn - meant that we got to the boat, and thus the clay lick, a little later than ideal despite the boatman wringing every possible bit of speed out of the boat.  We still managed to see a few parrots come in to supplement their diet.  .

We headed back to the lodge for breakfast and another fix of hummingbirds.  However the most exciting bit of birding was a great aggregation of various raptors on a hillside out of the lodge.  I think the group added about 6 species of raptors to the trip list out of this flock.  The sight certainly removed any comments about not seeing many birds of prey.

I then put in a couple of hours writing up notes and bird list while Frances went on a walk to see the Hoatzins and Caiman in the lagoon.  I added a new bird to the list when an Epaulet Oriole flew into one of the trees near the Lodge.  I have included here a couple of images of the flowers growing around the lodge - no wonder the hummers were attracted!

Then back to the boat for 5 hours travel downstream to another lodge.

For some reason or another - possible concern about not getting wet while travelling in the boat? - I had not organised myself very well so didn't have my camera ready at the start.  I still didn't have it when we came across our first monkeys - howlers.  Like the parrots of the morning they were eating clay to get the minerals needed into their diet.  We actually saw a couple of troops and the second lot were particularly entertaining as they clambered back up into the trees.  We also saw quite a lot of birds along the river as we passed by,with fairly frequent stops to check out the less common ones.

Just as I praised the bus driver for his skill in handling the twisty road in the mountains so great praise is due to the boatman as he manoeuvred the craft down the river.  Although the river (Alto Madre de Dios) looks wide, the frequent rippling betrays the fact that it is not that deep.  The boats are made of two types of wood (a visit to the boatyard at Boca Manu comes in about 3 days time) and the bottom tray is made of a particularly hard wood to withstand the fairly frequent bangs on the bottom when there is limited clearance over sandbars etc.  An assistant boatman is also posted on the prow (like a live figurehead) to spot particularly evil hazards and. where necessary use a long pole to punt the boat across.  He was off duty at the time I took the image to the left but it does show the spare motor mounted up front.

This provides a lead to talking about boat motors.  Our canoe - and I think all tourist boats - had a 60HP outboard on the back.  The locals boats has a 'long-tail' drive shaft device.  Apparently their motors were typically adaptations of 9HP motors from China originally intended to drive rice mills.  They seem to putter along OK, but against the current n particular would take a long time to get anywhere!

Janice commented that in a straight line it is only 40km from our start to our finishing point.  However the river has so many meanders that we will do 90km today.  This average of about 20kph seemed very fast to me until I watched a piece of driftwood go down the river with no mtor assistance: 20 kph suddenly seems very attainable.  My GPS reveals that we lost 120m in those 90km which must partly explain the speed of the current.

We arrive at the Lodge which has rather quaint thatched cabins.  After greeting us the owner started whistling loudly.  Was this some signal to the massed hordes to attack the foreigners?

 

Possibly, if one tapir can can be considered a horde.  It is a wild animal but the people and the Lodge and their guests have fed it so it is quite habituated to humans.  As I fed it I did think about about a comment by Ian's colleague Chris, that the only thing in Peru that had bitten him was a playful young tapir.  I suspect it was this one whose name was Panchito: he seemed to have two delights in life, food and having his stomach rubbed.  {reminds me of a certain small dog}  For those with limted eyesight I am the one wearing a light brown hat at the bottom step.

A highlight of the place is that they have some beer available.  It isn't cold beer but it is clearly beer and as thirsty as we were it was rated as highly potable.  I managed to fit down two bottles before dinner.

Just before dinner I went and took a photograph of an impending storm Our meal was enlivened by the frequent flashes of lightning from this, and when Ian returned tohis cabin at one stage he reported that the wind with the storm had blown a fair bit of the thatch over the floor and the bedding in his cabin.  As it had our cabin.

That was the beginning.  In the middle of the night the storm returned and this tme it rained.  Indeed this was not restricted to outside the cabin, but by shifting around on my bed I was able to avoid the drips. This did not last when I needed to visit the en-suite - drat that second bottle of beer.  Oh well I guess it justs adds efficiency to combine a shower with a pit stop!  Apparently one of our guides gave the owners a fair serve the next morning, telling them that if they wish to keep getting guests they must fix up the thatch.

Itinerary was delivered as usual.