It rained
hard all night long but Moises thought we should still be able to see some
birds this morning. We towed two
small fiberglass canoes upstream to a beautiful lake and he was right. It was cool and cloudy and the birds
were very active. We saw about 20
new species before breakfast. We
hadn’t used the canoes at all and we left them at the lake for later.
There were
only eight of us left at the lodge for breakfast and Jonathan (Australia), Uta
(Germany) and the Mozambique/Portugal couple were leaving at lunch. The other two guys were going camping
overnight. No one was arriving
today so we would have the entire lodge to ourselves.
We went back
to the lake for the canoes and paddled through the forest. The area was more open than yesterday
and was dominated by a number of sprawling strangler figs. We were looking primarily for
antbirds. They are shy little guys
but we managed to not only see but to photograph several species. It wasn’t easy in the low light and
Connie’s paddler thought it was hysterical when I said ‘godamit’ or ‘shit’ when
I couldn’t focus on a bird. He
laughed every time he thought about it.
Moises said
we would be out for only a short time so we left our packs and rain jackets in
the motorboat. Not
smart! We were gone much longer
and it rained. Hard! We were in some pretty thick forest by
then and Moises decided to bushwack through the bushes rather than retrace our
steps. I zipped the camera into
the leg of my rainpants and helped pull the boat from bush to bush, ever
mindful of his backswing with the machete. When I teased him asking “Conoce donde estamos?” he turned
with a smile and said “Survivor Amazon.”
We were soaked when we reached the motorboat but it was a warm
rain. And we weren’t camping!
At three we
headed upriver in a light rain, which soon gave way to blue sky to the most
peaceful lake. It’s one of four
lakes that connect to the Amazon, 40 km away. There wasn’t a ripple on the surface except for our wake and
a breaching dolphin. We saw
several new birds and a mother sloth and her baby.
