Crossing the river

11th July 2011

This is our last day in the jungle. Per, Anita and Andreas (I hope I got our Danish friends’ names right) went home this morning so today we were just a group of two. We took a boat across the wide Napo River to the Yasuni National Park as our guide Dan had been told that a trail had recently been cut from the riverbank into the park; this is a different habitat and a few different species are likely. Also, with the National Park being a million hectares to Sacha’s two thousand, bigger mammals are more likely.

The trail was a bit different to the trails in Sacha, which are all well-trodden and pretty much flat. We knew it would be more fun when Columbia undid his rucksack and pulled out a machete. In the end there wasn’t too much chopping needed, but there were lots of very muddy slopes and everyone slithered over at least once.

We saw a species of monkey not found at Sacha, the Monk Saki with a huge fluffy tail. That brings our monkey total to seven on this jungle tour. We also got a very (very) brief glimpse of a Paca, essentially an Agouti but a bit bigger, and on the way back to the lodge we glimpsed an Acouchi, which is… well, it’s essentially an Agouti but a bit smaller. So we’ve done well for random rodents. Maureen saw two Coati Mundis but I was dawdling behind and missed them. And Columbia almost trod on a Bushmaster, quite a rare jungle viper and also quite deadly.

So before we leave the jungle, here’s a random list of impressions from our stay:

• It’s humid, unbelievably humid. I washed a T-shirt on the first day, and it has been hanging to dry ever since. I am reliably informed it will actually never dry here
• It has been cloudy with occasional rain the whole time, although the jungle itself is a huge umbrella
• I love staying in places where the wildlife is all around. Just around the lodge there have been: tamarins, agouti, anaconda, bats, frogs, lizards and various birds
• There are ants everywhere. A study showed that one kapok tree had more species of ants living in it than the whole British Isles (50 vs 46)
• It takes a lot of effort to keep tourists nice and comfortable in the Amazon – by my calculation the staff:tourist ratio was pretty much 2:1

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