Today was a choose your own Adventure day for the nine of us. Tiffany, Tracy, Suaram, CreeperKitty, Toaster-Ham and Rose chose fishing in the morning. We got an early start with breakfast at 630 and boat departure at 7am. As we motored downriver toward our fishing hole we were lucky to see a sleepy porcupine in a tree and a beautiful black collared hawk.
We also saw blue and yellow macaws, two saki monkeys that disappeared fast and more pink dolphins.
It was good luck and we hoped it carried over to our fishing. We pulled off the main river in a small channel that has flooded only in the last few weeks. Our target? Piranhas who eat fruit from the trees now surrounded by water. Our poles were stripped sticks with a line, a weight, a hook and a healthy piece of beef. Our technique was to wait for the slightest tug and then jerk the line quickly and hard right out of the water. If you were lucky, the hook grabbed the fish on the way out of the water.
We were lucky – we caught 17 fish between the six of us in about an hour. Mostly red bellied piranha, some silver belly piranha, a small pike and a giant sardine.
After we returned to the Lodge, our guides took our catch to the kitchen and returned with a tasty lunch.
It’s was a lot of fun for everyone.
The afternoon was a quieter outing to a nearby village. Many of the people who work at the lodge and two of our guides live in the town of Chino, a five minute boat ride downriver. We walked around town, learned the history of the town (started during the rubber boom by an Asian trader), how people live (people are farmers or fishermen mostly, kids go to Kindergarten, Primary and Secondary school). When we finished wandering town, we visited a women’s cooperative that makes handcrafts with local material like dried palm grass.
Toaster-Ham was in charge of photography for our tour so you can his perspective of what was most interesting.
It was not the stilt houses or the handcrafts as you can see.
The best sighting of the day may have been our last – a three-toed sloth moving up a branch for camouflage. A lucky day for animals all around.
Meanwhile, on a separate choose-your-own-adventure, Dad was joined by Jessica and Budz on a long upriver trip to Terra Firma, aka Frog Valley. The primary mission to see Poison Dart Frogs was achieved but we also saw much, much more.
The trip upriver to the area called Terra Firma took about 2.5 hours and was relatively pleasant. This area is called this because it is the only elevated area which doesn’t experience seasonal flooding. It is also pretty secluded and remote so it’s a great area for exotic animals to evolve.
Budz has been charming guides and guests alike with his uncanny ability to drop facts and “did you knows” in perfectly appropriate places during our explorations. He is clearly a “natural” at being a Naturalist.
He told Jessica and Brian that he thought there would be a one in ten chance of seeing an anaconda in the wild from the river. Our guide was slightly more optimistic but also cautioned us to set reasonable expectations. Shortly after saying this he pointed up into a tree and said, “look, there’s a bird-eating tree snake”.
We probably would have been satisfied with seeing this single snake way up high in the tree on the side of the river but we were treated to up-close views of FOUR anaconda snakes discovered at different points along the river.
These snakes were catching a little bit of sunlight resting on vegetation which had grown along the river shores. None of us tourists could figure out how the guides could see these snakes from the boat motoring quicky upriver. One of our guides had said he had never seen four in one day. Budz proudly declared that this was the BEST day ever. And he was right. And we hadn’t yet arrived at Frog Valley!
The resort has helpfully provided us with tall rubber boots to wear while walking in the jungle. It was absolutely necessary today as we hiked from the river up to Terra Firma.
During our 90 minute hike, our guide pointed out three yellow Poison Dart Frogs and two red ones. These frogs are each about the size of an adult’s thumbnail and are beautiful!
Click this link for a 30 second video of a red dart frog hopping around. The following image is Budz and the guide looking into a “bat cave” made from a hollow log.
We shot lots of video and images of all the activities for the day. If you’d like to see more, just ask an Adventurer. We have poor bandwidth here but we have lots to share.
5 Adventures Together 