Our Last Day In The Jungle

Today we are going to see the birds at breakfast (theirs).  Of course, that means we have to get up before they do ... 4:30 again.

  Many of the birds in this area must ingest a certain amount of clay into their system on a regular basis.  So we  watched them from a blind near their clay lick this morning.  That was only a short boat ride from camp and then a steep climb up the muddy river bank to the blind.  The birds all congregate in trees near the clay lick before any of them start.  It is just like hunting deer from a blind.  Everyone must sit on a hard bench in the early morning dew and be quiet.  The number of birds varies by day. most of the birds we saw were parrots, parakeets and one macaw.

 

When the clay feast is over, all the birds split at once and it is time for us to leave the blind.

After breakfast for us humans,  we jumped back into the boat and went right across the Tambopata to see a typical local farm.  This one is a little bigger than average, 35 hectares. There are two people farming this land ... all by hand. 

 The farm was much different than we are used to ... no fence rows or neatly arranged fields. Crops are planted seemingly random along trails.  This farm, or finca, really has one main claim to fame, a kapok tree that is the largest tree in the entire Amazon Basin.

While there, our guide, introduced us to all of the unique crops being grown ... including
passion fruit, which he taught us how to eat.

After the farm, we took the night hike that we had rebelled against the previous night.  Only this time we took it a 4:00 in the afternoon.  It was only a couple of miles and we really didn't see anything particularly new, Just a new trail.  We did test our ability to identify what we had learned previously, though.

When we once again returned from the jungle, it was time to turn in our Wellies, drop our backpacks and head for the main lodge for dinner.  Since the individual bungalows were without electricity, we took advantage of this opportunity to use the limited electrical availability in the lodge to charge, phones, camera batteries and, in this case, my electric toothbrush.  We plugged everything in and settled down for another of what were all pretty good meals, considering.

We had enjoyed dinner and were having a nice after-dinner conversation when suddenly, there was an outcry from one of our group as she pointed to a curl of blue smoke coming from the corner where everyone plugged in their chargers ... I will be shopping for a new toothbrush when I return to Texas.

P.S. I am going to compile an online album of some of the photos from the jungle that I wasn't able to include with my earlier posting.  I will include a link to it with the next post.

Hasta luego