Days 9-11 Continuing to cruise and explore the Amazon River

***NOTE*** this is the last posting for our Amazon River trip.  Start reading at the beginning of the posts by clicking on the link above in the listing of previous travels entitled:  Amazon River Cruise and Rain Forest.

We are up early this day to get ready for a pre-breakfast excursion.

While we wait, we watch the dolphins.

They are out there but it's so hard to catch them in a photo as they don't break the surface very well.

Soon we head out on the skiffs to explore part of the Pacaya Samiria Reserve by boat.  We are some 60 miles from Iquitos.  Here the Peruvian government has established the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve, Peru's largest national park encompassing 5 million acres and accessible only by water.

Our goal is to search the trees to see the birds.  Edgard is very good at spotting and identifying the various species.

He gets all excited when he sees the birds, with exclamations of "What a show!  What a show!  Take a picture!" 

Photographing birds with my point and shoot camera or the phone is difficult.  So Edgard shows me from his bird book the birds that we are seeing in the trees.

Such as this...

 this...

and flying overhead...

For our birder friends, here's a list of the birds we saw (but couldn't get a good photo):  Crane hawk, Black vulture, Yellow-headed cara cara, Oriole blackbirds, Blue and yellow macaws, Dusky-headed perikeets, Tropical king bird, Red-capped cardinal, Great kiskadee, Ruddy pigeon, Russet-backed oropendola, Yellow-crowned parrot, Short-tailed parrots, Short-crested flycatcher; Lined seedeater; Brown-chested martin and a Roadside hawk.

Whew!  It was a great morning for bird watching.  I was able to get a decent photo of two Brown-chested martins; one of them with a feather in its beak ready to build a nest.

Oh, and birder friends:  we also saw Cocoi heron, Ringed kingfisher, Great egret, Great black hawk, a Black skimmer, and an Amazon kingfisher!    Certainly a bird watching paradise!!

After a bit, we stopped the skiffs and were served a picnic breakfast.

 Along with fruit, an egg, juice and coffee, there were a couple meat sandwiches wrapped up inside the leaf.

As we headed to a spot where we would do a little jungle hiking, we spotted 3 fishermen.

They agreed to visit with us and answer our questions about the fish they had caught.  Another "learning and discovery moment".

They were net fishing and all these cat fish were caught in only one hour.

They had just pulled over to a sandbar and were busy gutting the fish...

...and stacking them on a bed of ice.  They would be taking them to the market in Nauta town, about a 7-hour boat ride from here.

We gifted them a bag full of breakfast food items as a thank you for visiting with us.

They in turn gave us 3 nice bass, which will soon appear on our dinner buffet. 

We stopped at a ranger station in the reserve for a chance to use the "facilities".

 We are on the Nauhapa River, which color appears to be black; quite a contrast to the brown water our riverboat is cruising on.

 We all sign the ranger's national park registry book with our names and what country we are from.

 It was a bit of a challenge for some to cross the wooden planks to get back to the skiff, but the crew were very helpful.

Continuing on in the skiffs, we stop to take a short hike in the jungle to see a HUGE tree.

This is a lupuna tree, a member of the ficus family.  It is one of the giants of the rain forest.  It has a trunk that can be up to 33 feet across.

This lupuna is 150 years old and about 180 feet tall.

We tried a panarama photo and still couldn't get the whole tree in the photo.

We head back on the Nauhapa River to return to the river boat on the Maranon River.
We come to the point where the two rivers meet.  You can see the difference in the color of the waters.

Here the water along the shoreline is still looking "black".  The Maranon River water is dirty brown.

Why is it dirty brown?
Well, there are no rocks...just sediment in the river.  During the low water season you can see how the bank of the river has just washed away.

Our late afternoon activity was a canoe ride on the San Regis Creek.

The town of San Regis is where the school children that we met go to school when they enter 7th grade.  Most of them travel in a canoe like this from their village to San Regis every day to attend school.  We had the opportunity to see what that might be like.

 Each of us enter a canoe guided by one of the local villagers.

And off we headed on a creek that flows next to the river.

This is my fellow canoe partner.  She appeared to be a little grumpy.

Maybe it was because she had to bail out water from the canoe several times during our ride.

Here's Terry passing my canoe as we headed back to the riverboat.  

At times I felt we just weren't moving as fast as we had been.  I could hear only the sound of my paddle in the water and I suspected that my gal was not paddling all the time.  Terry confirmed that she often had her arms folded across her chest and quietly laughing as other canoes passed us.

 So in turn I let her paddle us on the final approach to the riverboat.

That evening....another gorgeous sunset.

Another day dawns in the Amazon.

And the riverboat heads out to where our next activity will be.

Again we try to photograph the dolphins.  They are just too quick on the surface for a photo.

This photo is from the internet.  We really did see the pink dolphins; just not quick enough to capture a good photo when they actually flipped.

After breakfast we are ready to head out to hike in the reserve area call "Casual".

 We arrive at the ranger station.

 And meet Marlon.

 He is a ranger who is licensed to go off the path in the jungle to look for wildlife.  And, yes, that is a machete in his hand and rubber knee-high boots on his feet.

We, too, all have rubber boots on.  That is to protect us from certain things that may want to bite us while we are hiking.

This is an ant hill.  We didn't see the ants as they are nocturnal.  They are also over an inch long!

We saw ficus trees...

 And this one that looks like it has hair.

And then Ranger Marlon calls us to come off the path to see what he has found.

A anaconda snake.

It was about 6 feet long and really wanted to get away from us, so getting a photo was hard.

Terry did take a video, which I hope plays.

Marlon ran off again; he seems to know where the critters like to hide.  He found another.

A red toe tarantula!

Next we came across another big ficus tree.

And this pretty red flower.

 Here's Edgard demonstrating why the flower is named "kissing flower".

Right close to the path we were walking on Edgard spotted a red-tailed boa up in a tree.  It kept moving around in the branches.  These are the best photos we could get.

 Here's the head poking out from behind the tree trunk about 1/3 of the way up the photo on the right.

We met up with Marlon again when he presented us with a yellow-spotted poisonous frog. Its poison has been used by the indigenous people for their blow gun darts.

Evidently since he was holding the poisonous frog by its leg, we were assured it was okay to get close for a photo.

What we did NOT see while in the jungle was a bushmaster snake.  And that's perfectly okay with me.  A bushmaster is very aggressive and will chase you!

By the time we ended our jungle walk, the locals had set up the "Jungle Walmart".

 There were some beautiful wood products.

 This little boy was in charge of babysitting his younger sibling.

In the afternoon we boarded the skiffs again and went to Puerto Prado.

 Another "Jungle Walmart" setting up...

 Edgard briefs us as to what we will be seeing on a short hike.

 The village children have made signs identifying the different trees.  This one is a cedar tree.

We walk a short distance to this pond.

The pond is covered with these huge water lilies.

 These are Victoria Regias--the largest aquatic plant in the world.

 There was a water Jacana bird walking on the lilies.

Edgard is calling for the monkeys that may be in the trees.

 And sure enough, Terry spots one looking down on us.

 It is a pygmy monkey...or marmoset.  It is probably the smallest monkey in the world.  And one that is sought after for the illegal wild life trafficking in Iquitos.  We hope this little guy stays safe!

That evening, Claudio the bartender, shared his recipe for making delicious Pisco Sours!

Thanks, Claudio!  Deliciousio!!

The next morning starts our last full day on the river.  Right after breakfast we rode the skiffs to the Market of Nauta town, where local people from the villages along the Amazon come to sell their crops.

 Finding a place to dock the skiff was difficult with all the boats around.  We did squeeze into one place.

It had rained during the night and things were a little muddy, but we all made it safely off the skiff and up the bank to the street.

We got out our "cheat sheets" of Express Spanish sentences that Jose' had given us and headed through the market to buy some food items to give to a family in need.

From this young lady we bought some cooking oil.

 Here we bought some fruit....soursop!

 From this man we bought rice and beans.

All of our purchases cost about the equivalent of $2-3USD.

 We headed to a nearby plaza where we would meet up with the rest of our group.

 Two in our group had each bought a live chicken!

 We then took a motor taxi ride

 and headed out of Nauta to what is called "shanty town".

 We waited while Jose' and Edgard set out to find 2 families who would be willing to visit with us about their life.

 Success!!  We split in to 2 groups.  The group we were in visited with Viviana, who very kindly welcomed us into her home.

 With Edgard translating, she told us she has 2 young boys and a husband; he was off working on a river ferry.  We were standing in her "living room". She is in her "kitchen".  The walls had some plastic tarp but there was no roof...it had blown away during the rain storm last night.

 She told us that her brother lives in Nauta town and had encouraged her to make a huge life-changing decision to uproot her family and come here.  They traveled on the river for 6 nights to reach here in hopes of being able to have a better life.  Once they have some money saved, they hope to be able to build a house here.

At the end of our visit we each presented her with the goods we had purchased in the market.

 She was surprised and very appreciative.  Along with the live chicken, we all probably gave her enough food to feed her family for a month.

 This is what she cooks on every day!

This was a wonderful experience for us;  I will never forget the look on Viviana's face when we gave her the food items.

Oh, how lucky we are to have the life we live!

Back in the motor taxis, we left shanty town and went to Sapi Sapi Lake to see the turtles and arapaima fish.

Jose' had bought bread for us to throw in the water to attract the turtles and the fish.

 The fish, called arapaima, is similar to a sturgeon.  Very large!

It was a competition between the turtles and the fish to see which would get the bites of bread.

We headed back to the river boat, which then headed upriver to the confluence point where several rivers merge.  It is here that it is now considered to be the river named the Amazon.

 It's not much for a photo as the river must be at least a mile wide here.

A river that flows into this actually begins way beyond Machu Picchu and high into the Andes Mountains in Peru.  We saw a video of a guy in search of the starting point of what will become the Amazon River.

I took this photo of the video when he was standing where the water comes out of the side of the mountain and starts its 4,000 mile journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

And all these tributaries merge to become the mighty Amazon River.

Late in the afternoon, we all boarded a skiff for a last ride on the Amazon.  

 Claudio had whipped up pisco sours and we all toasted to the wonderful experiences we had on the Amazon River.

And we watched one last beautiful amazing sunset.

 We reboarded the LaPerla one last time.

That evening we bid farewell to the crew of the LaPerla and thanked them for providing us a wonderful cruise.

 And to our Trip Leader, Jose'.  Barbara had written a poem thanking Jose' for giving us such a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime experience showing us the secrets of the Amazon River basin.

Early the next morning we left the ship to drive back to Iquitos and then fly to Lima for the international flight back to the USA.

I hope you enjoyed traveling with us through this blog to a place many people never experience.  If you do want to go on an adventure like this, check out Overseas Adventure Travel and if you want a discount on your first booking, mention the name Terry Angell.  You will have adventures you will never forget!

We always seem to have another adventure planned.  Stay tuned for our upcoming trip to Antarctica's White Wilderness during our winter, but their summer!  

(I still don't think it will be warm, though--LOL)