Amazon Swim

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Our last day for the trails. Most of us were happy. Our last trail we walked to a large tower grad students from Boston had built to observe monkeys. At the top we could see above the trees. We also had a telescope and our new guide Romeiro who knew lots about the animals. We saw so many monkeys moving around. Howlers, spider monkeys, titi monkeys. We saw lots of birds. Macaws, tanagers, parrots. Unfortunately we didn’t get any good pictures of them. Also while we were up in the tower we saw a tree fall down. Well at first we heard it. You may not think a tree falling down is very interesting but it was amazing to watch. It sounded like thunder and then we saw the tree slowly tip and then disappear below. On our trail we came across a lemon ant tree. It is a tree that has a relationship with ants. These ants protect the tree and for some reason instead of producing formic acid they produce citric acid. Romeiro broke one of the branches off and inside were all these ants. He sprinkled a few on each of our hands and we got to taste them and let me tell you they tasted exactly like lemons, it was good we wanted more.
Later in the day our whole group took a boat trip down the river. We stopped at a tributary to the Tiputini and saw a sloth in the trees. It hadn’t moved since a week before when David first saw it. Where we stopped was the boundary of the black water and the white water. The black water is rich in organic matter in the white water is rich in sediments which makes it look cloudy. Here we fished for piranhas. We used wire, a hook and raw meat. A few people caught piranhas. They were about the size of my hand.
After we were finished finishing we went swimming. We all put on life jackets and then jumped in. The current was a lot strong than I had anticipated. If you tried to swim against it you didn’t move or flowed further down. It was really cool just sitting in the river letting it take you along. Got to see lots of cool wildlife. When we got to the stairs to the station I had couldn’t swim fast enough against the current and missed the stairs. I kept moving past the station along with Andrew. The boat was still behind us. Afraid of going to far down the river Adam, who had already gotten to the stairs and out, jumped back in and swam to at least help us get to the side and hold onto something. He grabbed onto a vine and both of us got onto it. I felt like Indiana Jones. The current was so strong that it was pulling off his bathing suit and had to let go and grab it. Luckily the boat came and we got on it. It was definitely a more exciting swim than we had expected.

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Photos

First Piranha
Dawn caught the first Piranha