We rose early, at 430am. We were headed to the salt lick! This is a spot where (I think) the rock cliff is salty and the birds come in the morning to lick it, so it is a good place to take tourists so they can get their fill of colorful birds. We had been told that if it is raining we won't go because the birds don't come out, so I was disappointed to hear raindrops on the roof. But Chris was kind of hoping to go back to bed. Luckily it was just a quick rainfall and we did head out to the salt lick. We drove to the river and took a boat to the salt lick.
There were lots of green parrots licking it, it was pretty cool!
We also saw a sloth up in the tree.
We hung out there and took some pics for a while.
Since it would be downstream to head back to where we were going to take a hike, he killed the motor on the boat and we had breakfast as we floated along. Coffee or tea, pancakaes (very thick and sliced into quarters, we just ate them with our hands, no syrup), chicken salad-ish sandwiches which were so yummy I wanted to eat 2. We then went down the river and to Tambopata Reserve, which is different from a national forest which they explained.
They have different protections which I can't remember but there are people who live in the Reserve. We walked 5km in to Lake Sandoval, and it was super muddy!
Luckily they'd loaned us big galoshes which we were very grateful for.
You can guess that by the time we got to the lake, we were hot, tired, sweaty, and just uncomfortable in general, but still excited to see more. We saw a really interesting looking spider as we got started. (Chris's hand to show size)
Also a few large webs with lots of social spiders that I guess work together on the web.
We saw some cutter ants along the way which were really cool.
Lots of neat foliage.
Even some butterflies. (I wasn't going to take pictures of the butterflies, I was like - I have more than enough pictures of butterflies, but since everyone else was doing it and we were stopped, I went ahead and took some.)
At the lake, we got in a boat and the guides paddled us around the lake.
We made one stop at a lookout tower, where we saw some small bats on the ceiling! No real perspective in this shot but they were probably slightly larger than my hand.
We also saw lots of birds and turtles, but no giant otter, monkey, anaconda, or caiman, which also live in and around the lake.
The sun was so bright, we were dreaming of clouds as there were no trees for shade as we paddled around the lake. I got sunburned on my arms and a little on my neck. I was also getting drowsy on the boat, I was a little afraid I would doze off and fall off the edge of the boat! (Chris told me he was feeling the same way!)
We arrived at the dock and were asked if we were ready for lunch - YES. They had this awesome little package for us of rice and chicken and a hard boiled egg wrapped in large leaves (Chris says they're banana leaves).
Then some yummy fresh juice. I forgot to mention that every meal is accompanied by juice which is so good and obviously freshly squeezed. We rested after lunch, both Chris and I agreed we would rather have kept moving but the break was ok too.
Then we hiked about one hour back to the boat.
The boat took us to the main dock, while we waited there, 2 employees went to get the bus to pick us up. Not sure why they didn't just take us all to go get the bus but we had to wait an hour there which was no fun. We did get to buy some ice cold seltzer water from a little shop which was a delicious and refreshing treat! And it was interesting to watch locals - the poor flea-ridden dogs, people crossing the river, whole families on motorcycles, and my personal favorite - this lady got off the boat crossing the river and she had a monkey on her head! It must have been her pet or something but it was very entertaining and i'm sorry i didn't get a photo of it.
Finally the bus took us back to the lodge where the first order of business was getting to the pool. It was raining a bit on the ~8 minute walk, but it cleared up as we were getting in. The water slide was great, so much fun and so refreshing. We took lots of photos and made good use of our little waterproof camera! (Sorry - I am having difficulty displaying the photos in their rotated form. They look right on my computer!)
They gave us some delicious fruits, I can't remember the name of them but I have to try to find them here.
Then back to the room for a shower, it felt so good to be nice and clean. Chris tried to relax in the hammock a bit before dinner but to his great disappointment there were too many bugs. Dinner was delicious again - creamy corn soup,
cabbage with lime, rice with bamboo chicken. The chicken was baked inside the bamboo.
Dessert another fruit mousse. We headed for bed, and fought off the cucarachas - there were 2 in our room, one of them was insistent on trying to get into bed.
Luckily we had the mosquito net.
Went to sleep at 9 and slept like a pair of rocks.
I think that was a Blue-Footed Booby in that picture of the funky bird on the log in the river. I only remember the name cause it has "booby" in it.
ReplyDelete