Thursday 18.9.14 – Canoe ride and Kichwa family visit.

Breaky a choice of cereals, fruits, scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, fruit juice, tea, coffee, bread rolls and jam. I managed some muesli and a bacon roll. After breaky it was pretty much time to clean teeth and get ready to go ashore to visit a traditional home in this area.

We are advised to wear long sleeves and long pants, sunscreen, insect repellent and a hat. Life jacket is mandatory in the canoes. So dressed and loaded with water, camera and binoculars, we headed off down the river for 45 minutes or so.

Passing a Kichwa community, one of many along 
the river. This is their communal area, with 
usually a large meeting room, schools and some other 
buildings.

A cicada on one of the reading room couches.

All on the bow, life jackets on, gear packed, ready to 
board canoes.

View of the MV Anakonda from the side.That's our 
room, above the white things at the back, you can see 
our two black windows.

A tortoise, with a cluster of yellow butterflies on 
its head. The butterflies are feeding on the salt from 
tortoises tear ducts.

Front view o ship. Probably Mauritio up the top 
seeing us off.

A barge with gravel. The boat at the back generally
 pushes the barge and is not attached.

It was nice to get the wind in the canoe as it is already heating up at 9.00. We visited the home and land of a local Kichwa family, basically little thatched huts on stilts, providing ventilation, no power, no walls, no beds, pretty simple living. We met the matriarch – Leila?, and three sons, there are 9 children all up, only 2 sons still at home with her. The daughters are married and have moved away to live. They live a subsistence life on the banks of the river, fishing, hunting and gathering their food. They had chooks, cocoa trees, bananas and other stuff.

The thatched ceiling.

Leila making string from 
dried palm leaves. She 
does this by rolling a few 
strands together over her knee.

We tasted the seeds of the Cocoa plant, which they make chocolate out of, the flesh was quite sweet. We left the family home at midday – phew it was getting hot.

Captive tortoises, in a small 
area on the family 'farm.' 
They are grown for eating.

Freddy showing us the tortoise.

Not a great shot, but there he is up close.

These are bird nests, it is the nest
of one of the Weaver birds or
Oropendula. Lovely black birds
with yellow on their tails.

Hibiscus flower.

A nut/fruit thing, Freddy used to 
paint one of the sons and one of our 
group.

Painting with the inside of that seed/flower. 
Very red.

Butterfly.

Freddy with ripe cacoa, which we ate the seeds, 
tasted sweet. Then we had a spitting competition with the 
seeds.

Hellaconia, they are everywhere.

Family dogs.

The main house/sitting/sleeping room.

Butterflies.

Leila walking out into their dugout canoe, to wash 
her dish.

Here's us inside the family room.

Then back to meet the boat that had continued sailing towards us, with banana cake and guava/passionfruit juice as we stepped off the canoes, it was nice to get the gum boots off, as it was pretty hot and sweaty out there once the sun broke through the clouds.

Lunch at one, (ceviche, curry beef and rice, caramel banana) followed by a couple of hours siesta/rest time (time to catch up on journal and type up in readiness for internet connection?) before next expedition at 4.00pm.

At 4.00, we did like Gilligan and into the canoes, for a 3 hour tour…to spot birds along the Tiputini River, a much smaller tributary. Some we saw were:

• Yellow rumped Cacique – who are a weaver bird and build the pendulous nests.
• Several toucans including a white throated one, really they are a long way off, but have very distinctive shape, when flying and in the trees, OK through binocs, but camera just not big enough.
• Woodpecker – adult and juvenile - ????????????
• Turkey – of some sort, up in the tree, smaller than domestic turkey.
• Oropendula – another type of weaver bird, with longer pendula nests and yellow in the tail and body.
• Macaws
• Chachalacas – which had a call a little similar to Kookaburra
• Kingfishers

It was a lovely river to cruise up and we had a brilliant time, a bit of lighting as we returned to the big boat in the dark. Along the way we saw fireflies in the jungle beside the river, they are cool. There were lots of stars in a clear black sky.

Came home to the boat, with our juice of the day being tree tomato which is a bit like orange, and potato chips.

The Amazon is very different from Antarctica in as much as things are very far away and in the trees and vines of the jungle, so the zoom lens is not really big enough, several people have big 300mm and 400mm lenses plus extenders…hard work holding them, but some great photos. So despite not seeing them up close, the binocs help and it is great to see these guys in their natural habitat.

We went off the bar for a drink before dinner. Dinner at 8.00 with Veronica and Ross (mushroom empanada, Chicken roulade and figs with cheese – a tad sweet for me) Then it was off to our briefing for tomorrow.

The days are busy and despite a siesta time in the middle of the day, it is so good to get into bed at the end of the day and sleep soundly, something we just couldn’t do in Quito. Most of us on the boat are saying the same thing, and it seems everyone was having trouble in Quito, but we were all trying to ignore it.

The dining room.