We felt a cool breeze on our faces as we made our way to breakfast. A lovely blue sky with a couple of white clouds were revealed to our eyes. It was going to be a great day. We had spent the night at the edge of the Ucayali River, close to Llanalpa forest. This forest is considered a varzea, which means that it spends several month of the year under water due to the floods. Its trails can only be visited when the water is drained. Today we had the great opportunity to hike through its trails.
All geared up, including rubber boots, we loaded the skiffs and went to explore the trails. We learned a lot about the strategies of the trees to survive so many months with their roots under water. The wild life didn’t wait much to appear. The songs of black headed donacobios and black fronted nunbirds filled the air. We started to search for them and the sounds of the shooters of the cameras began to be heard. Black tailed trogons, streaked flycatchers, horned screamers, and began to join the rest of the birds too.
We had the joy to spot several species of the amazon primates in the trail. Squirrel monkeys, saddle back tamarins and the noisy owl night monkeys. This last ones, were found inside a hole of a tree. They peeked their heads out of the hole, curious to see the weird creatures that were approaching to their hiding place with cameras. What a treat!
Back on Delfin II, were started to move towards Dorado River, our afternoon destination. Along the way, we could see the evidences of last high water season. Many locals were taking advantage of all the nutrients that were left by the floods. They had planted rice, corn, watermelon and rice. Now they were just waiting for the sun to ripe the crops. Lots extensions of this products could be seen along the river side. The soil has lots of nutrients, good reason to take advantage of it and plant crops.
Close to sunset we disembarked and went on the skiff to explore Dorado River. A group of village people were concentrated in fishing activities while some ladies were washing their clothes as their kids swam next to them. The fishermen shared with us their catch. Our eyes were wide open as they brought to us the red bellied piranhas. That was part of their diet, they explain to us as they showed us the mighty teeth of this fish.
We continue exploring until sunset. Our naturalist brought out the spot lights. It was time to look for the caimans. We scan the area with the lights and red eyes began to appear everywhere. From the surface of the water to the river banks. We approached gently to those red eyes and they began to reveal the owners of those red eyes, the spectacle caimans and black caimans. Small, medium and large sizes were spotted.
The night life in this river was great. The shiny moon light escorted us back to Delfin II. Our activities had come to an end with a great finale!
