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Today was spent paddling through the flooded forest. We set off down the Mamori by motorised canoe for about three quarters of an hour, passing a school of grey dolphin on the way, to start to paddle into the Igapos. At times we were paddling though the canopy of these giant trees, which are embraced by creepers. Marcelo had a machete, to break through in places and Viv wore her mosquito head net. John decided it was too hot to wear his. Actually there were not too many mosquitos in the Igapos, but lots of crawly things falling from trees, like little spiders and different bugs. It was another world, full of sound one minute and completely silent apart from the gentle sound of our slow paddling the next. Every now and again a loud splash startled us, as Iguana would dive into the water beside our canoe, from high up in the canopy. We saw a few Squirrel Monkeys, leaping about and jumping too fast to photograph, but seeing them was the important thing. The binoculars were glued to the eye more than the camera. Throughout the morning’s canoe we saw thousands of herons and other fisher birds, vultures and
eagles, some pretty toucans and parrots, loads of unusual insects, huge neon blue butterflies and three large sloths eating their lunch high in the tallest trees. Their only predator is the caiman alligator. When the sloth makes his way down to the water to drink, the large caiman can attack him, as big as he is.
After our own lunch, “Which was guess what?” “Yes, fish and rice again!” we headed to a different area. On the way we were most fortunate to glimpse some pink dolphins. The Amazonian pink dolphins are really bright pink, and large. In some areas the tourist can pay to swim with the pink dolphins. We were going to do this last week, but then we looked it up on “You Tube” and were not impressed at all. The dolphins were encouraged to come to an area where they are fed, so that people can surround them and touch them. Why??? This is most unnatural and completely different to swimming with creatures who come voluntarily, through their own inquisitiveness, to swim beside people, like the sea lions did in the Galapagos. So today we just enjoyed seeing the dolphins doing their own
thing. Anyway, one cannot swim where we are, it is too dangerous. Marcelo knows a man who was badly bitten by an anaconda, whilst he was trying to grab a young caiman from the water. He lost most of his forearm!
We entered the Igapos again, to go fishing. We are not talking fancy fishing reels and things here, more Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer style i.e. a bamboo rod with a line tied on and a hook on the end. It was really good fun and we caught some Piranha. There are over one hundred species of Piranha in the Amazon and the ones we caught are not the biggest, but they are very colourful and one of the most aggressive. They are called Cashew Piranha, not sure why, and one has to take extreme care getting them off the hook because the teeth are nasty! We heard Howler Monkeys roaring around us but couldn’t see them. They sound like lions! At the end of the afternoon we headed back to the lodge and as we glided up the river the sunset was ahead of us since we were heading due west. With the reflection in
the water, it was one of the most dramatic sunsets we have ever seen and we have seen a fair number in many different countries. We saw a huge Caiman, about three metres long and grey dolphins gently and silently rising out of the water now and again as the sun went down. Life really doesn´t get much better than this!
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