Ecuador, Peru - Galapagos, Machu Picchu and more...2014: Tuesday 23.9.14

Wake up call at 6am for 7.15 departure. Awake before 6, to a foggy morning on the river, with lots and lots of foam floating down the water today.

We have been heading back up river towards Coca since we left Jatuncocha on Friday.

A bit of angst in the ship last night about having to have our bags out tonight. So seems we can now put it out either tonight or prior to breakfast in the morning.

Foggy start to the day.

Lots of foam (nutrients) on the water - means a rising
river.

Well the plan and what eventuated were two very different things. We canoed to another community – Anangu. We walked about 10 minutes to a bird hide of sorts, built in front of a parrot clay lick – we waited for the parrots to come down for about 75minutes to no avail. Saw a few Parrots in the trees a long way off.

The jungle walk was good, there are always things to see. We saw another Amazon forest dragon on the way out, much browner than the previous one.

Then back to canoes for a quick ride to view another clay lick on the river bank. The clay licks are areas that birds will fly to from miles away and they get some particular minerals into their system by licking or eating the clay. Here we saw heaps and heaps of Dusky head parrots in the trees above the lick, they were hard to spot as they were so very well camouflaged. Again they didn’t come down to the clay lick

Then off again to walk 1km into another clay lick, at a place with another hide, we had to be very quiet – again nothing to see as birds were up high in the trees, some came down a little lower, but nothing down to the clay lick.

The Clay lick, where nothing happened.

Moss on a log.

Thorny tree.

Cruising along.

Strange seed pods that looked like the thing Grandma
used to put in her hair.

Epiphyte.

Wasp nest.

Saw a great Apapucha caterpillar and other jungly things. Back to the ship by about12.15, to be greeted with Tree tomato juice Banana and meat skewer.

Apapucha caterpillar.

45 minutes to chill till lunch time, then home to check, settle accounts.

At 2.45 we left for a visit to Limoncocha Lake where we saw:

Spotted sandpiper

Striated heron

Squirrel monkey

Purple Galinule

Amazon kingfisher

Wattled Jacana

Azure gallinule

Car alarm bird

Smooth billed ani

Ringed kingfisher

Yellow headed vulture

White eared jacana

Long tailed limpkin

Capped heron.

Limoncocha was a fantastic lake – the water was a yellowy-green colour hence it’s name – Lemon lake. Ringed by reeds and plants and shrubs and trees. Heaps of birds and dragon flies.

We saw Squirrel monkeys flying/jumping through the trees and palms, heaps of Wattle Jacana, dancing on the water. There was a brilliant sunset after which the bats came out and THEN…we cruised the lake by Freddy’s torchlight, spotting Black Caiman.

I didn’t really expect for us to see any, thought it might all be a bit of a ploy with slim chance of actual sighting.

To get to the lake today it was a 20 minute canoe ride, following by almost an hour waiting for our bus to come and get us. Last night our departure was announced as 3.45pm with at late 8pm arrival back at the ship. Evidently some of our group complained about this, given our early morning start to depart. So at lunch they announced we would leave at 2.45 to be home with more time to pack AND miss the key attraction and best chance to see Black Caiman. I could see that a LOT of people were not happy to jeopardise our best chance to see them after dusk. As it turned out, given the hour wait for the bus, this put us happily back on track for our original timing at the lake.

Once we arrived we had the obligatory (and slow) banos stop. There is usually a whole 30+ of us wanting the loo and two loos available, so we quickly take over the mens as well. Very occasionally there has been a disabled one, but not very often. We have spent a lot of time waiting at toilet stops. Once done, we walked out to the lake and boarded two topless canoes.

Poor Javier left us today, as we waited for the bus, he was taken further along the river to catch taxi or bus to Coca, where his mother has been hospitalised, with skin cancer it seems.

So with Freddy as our guide and a driver from Limoncocha we cruised around the edge of the lake very slowly to spot the birds and animals.

So back to the search for Black Caimans – initially we saw a very orange/red eye in the torchlight, a bit later followed by a very clearly visible head of a 2.5metre caiman. A little later we saw some more eyes, followed by another head, which we got about 2 metres away from, it was just floating with nose and eyes above water, as we approached we heard it exhale softly and sink silently into the lake. This was a juvenile evidently, you multiply the length of the head by something and that gives you the size of the caiman. This smaller guy, was not as black, again indicating a juvenile. This was fantastic and beyond my expectations.