Bungle in the Jungle

Wednesday October 27.

Woken up by Ruli at 4:00 and after breakfast off for the first of our four activities for the day.

1) Back into the canoes for a short ride downstream and then a half hour hike through the jungle to an oxbow lake. There we boarded a catamaran canoe for a leisurely paddle around the lake. We saw and watched numerous species of birds. Saw a giant river otter eating a fish in the water, and fished for piranhas. I caught a small one!

2) From the lodge we hiked through the forest to a blind where we sat and observed red and green macaws interact socially and lick the red clay cliffs where they apparently get nutrients from the clay that they don't get from their fruit diet.

3) After lunch we took the boat to a local shaman's medicinal farm. Gail would love this place! He took us on a guided walk through his farm/rainforest and showed us a number of plants that the natives have been using for years as medicines for just about everything you can think of from, bad skin to cancer, from love potions to erectile dysfunction. He spent a great deal of time explaining how you prepared the medicines, and I couldn't help think that sometimes you'd get better before the brew was prepared. He had us chew a plant leaf for a few minutes that made our tongues go numb and then squeeze and mush another leaf until we had a red ochre paste in our hands that we used for face painting. Unfortunately, Gail, I didn't take notes! All the while the mosquitos were dining on us in droves.

The highlight for me, was at one of the stops I noticed a large number of ants marching through the forest, all in line, carrying eggs... Army Ants!! Very cool. I've always found them fascinating.

4) A jungle night hike! Walking along very narrow paths with trees and vines all around us. The animals of the jungle making lots of noise and totally dark, except for our head lamps. A couple of times we turned them all off and imagined what was out there! Spooky. We found a small bird sleeping in a hollowed our part of a tree, several interesting insects, two tarantulas, another large spider and a vine snake. Really cool experience.

Then to bed early for another early morn.