Amazon Basin, Bolivia: 25th Feb 10

We started today with a 5 hour trek through the jungle. On the way Alejandro pointed out all of the interesting plants and told us what they’re used for. He also ‘spoke’ to the birds! Making noises spookily the same as theirs so they came and took a closer look at us – thinking he was trying to mate with them!

At one point we had to cross a river – wading through in our bare feet – luckily there were no leeches, although the rocks were very slippy – no mishaps though! The reason for crossing the river was to get to the home of some monkeys – but they weren’t there, Matt reckons they’d popped out to do some shopping!

About 4 hours into the trek it started to rain - this is a rain forest after all! Walking in the rain in a rain forest is a surprisingly pleasant experience – the canopy holds most of the water, so you don’t get drenched, but the rain strips the humidity out of the air so makes it altogether more pleasant!


We got back to the lodge as a full on torrential downpour started and had a few hours relaxing in our hammocks. In the afternoon we were due to do a canoe trip around the lake, but the rain put off our plans for an hour or so.


As the rain began to stop those elusive monkeys arrived – there were dozens of them, small ‘brown monkeys’ and even smaller ‘cappuccino’ monkeys. They swung through the trees around the lodge, looking cute and raiding the trees of their fruit – nice that we didn’t see them this morning so they came to see us!


Once we’d seen enough of the monkeys we headed off in the canoe around the lake – where we saw several large Watsin birds – they look like large pheasants, but have strange blue faces and are apparently quite rare – they make the strangest sounds for birds, a bit like a low growl!




In the evening we went for another canoe trip – this time in the dark, with the goal of hunting out some cayman. We used our flashlights to search the bushes, and the cayman’s eyes would jump out bright red, catching the lights – we saw dozens of babies, so knew that the large (10 foot!) mother wouldn’t be too far away!

After hunting for another 15 minutes or so we finally saw her huge red eyes catch our lights and quietly rowed towards her – she didn’t seem bothered by our presence at all! She just wallowed in the water whilst we sat a few feet away taking our photos!