Our deluxe transport.
The rainforest held mysterious relationships.
We saw three types of real, live Macaws (the really colorful parrots) flying high in the trees near piles of alkaline clay which they eat to neutralize their acidic diet.
We also saw capybara, the world´s largest rodent that is about the size of a dog and about as cute as a guinea pig (truly, cute).
The sounds filled every space with birds, insects, and rushing water. The Amazonian jungle is truly as magnificant as the movie Fern Gully or its ripoff movie Avatar would make one think it is. Some sounds are unreal and need to be recorded as sound effects for movies (one bird sounded like the whoosh and pop of a Pringles can being opened for example). Our lodge had electricity only for two hours a day. Lighting was provided by candles and kerosene lamps. There were no doors for the separate rooms in our unit, we had mosquito nets around the beds and only three walls; the missing wall looked directly out into the jungle. In one of the most beautiful experiences of our entire trip, we went out on a boat in the middle of the darkness of night to search with a spot light for the reflective light of caymen (alligator like creatures). Besides spotting some adorable yet mischievous looking babies, it was the sky that held my attention as I gazed amazedly at the lighting that abounded from everywhere in the sky. It felt like the world was ablaze. Truly magnificent.
This little cutie was only about 10 inches long (22 cm).
But alas, after we spotted an enormous and sinister spider (about the size of the human baby's head that I am sure that it wanted to eat) and saw beetles with bioluminescence (they glowed in the dark) it started to rain.
Given its namesake, I would have expected rain in a rainforest. But this was a lot of rain. After about 18 hours it stopped and the river was at least 20 ft higher! In the morning, while it was raining, we put on our rain gear and went hiking through the rain forest. We tried a natural anesthetic plant (it worked better than novacaine when we chewed it), we found a green leaf that was used as a red dye. We saw a leaf used for impotence that was illegal for export because a European company had a patent on it and we found a flower that was used in bath water because it contained salicylic acid (the active ingredient in aspirin). We bailed out a canoe and rowed to trees that were large enough to shelter us from the rain inside their trunks. We went above the canopy and saw monkeys running away from us. The rain forest is amazing!
Jungle sloshing.
Almost to punctuate the horror caused to the rainforest by farming, we visited a farm that was across the river from our lodge. Farming is particularly bad for the environment here because there are no nutrients in the soil. The trees suck everything from the soil leaving only a hard layer of clay (the ground really was hard). So, to replenish the nutrient, farmers often slash the crops went they have been picked of their fruits and then burn them to replenish the soil until the process renders the land completely useless in about five years. But, we were getting to taste some amazing mango, hot peppers and sugar cane until the forest attacked us. I am not kidding. The one in our group who was allergic to bees got stuck by a wasp. As we all waited for the stinger to be removed we all started to scream as a swarm of wasps attacked us. They were crawling all over us as we ran and they CHASED us across the farm. I sustained three very painful stings while others sustained 7 or 8. Apparently the wasps wanted us to know the ills of farming in the rainforest :)
Our last day revealed toucans, tree frogs, and bats to us and let us know firmly that there was much more to see in the jungle. We will definitely go back one day!
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