Category: 2025

It was becoming a conditioned reflex. 6am alarm, crawl out of bed, contact lenses, clothes, camera, Diane, hat, sit in boat. Sometime later my brain would catch up and, with a jolt, I would be awake on a small boat in the headwaters of the Amazon. The early morning cacophony was often amazing. The sounds of birds and animals calling, invisibly, from deep in the forest. Occasionally, there were strange noises that I had no idea at all what sort of a creature it might have come from. The drone of the boat engine was an almost comfortably familiar background.

We were traveling up the Pacaya River deep inside the Pacaya Natural Reserve. There are several areas of reserves at the top of the Amazon basin. Their purpose is to protect the natural flora and fauna. Access is restricted, as is hunting and fishing. An education program has been established to help the locals understand why this is necessary. For generations they have hunted in this or that area. Now, at the behest of anonymous officials, they are no longer allowed. You can imagine, this is going to take a lot of explaining. Here we have a group of people that have lived in harmony with their environment for thousands of years. They have done nothing to cause the world’s great problems of climate change and pollution. Nonetheless, those who have caused the problem now require the locals to change their lifestyle. It is not quite this simple, but you get the idea. It is a problem repeated in many places worldwide.

Snapping out of my reverie, I spotted some terns on a sloping log. They were evenly spaced and mostly looking the same way. A very pleasing arrangement. It appealed to my sense of how things should be. There were also a few vultures and cormorants but they were just randomly hanging around looking untidy. Although nominally following the river, we cut across two large lakes. These were not obviously lakes because they were covered with a thick layer of vegetation. A great mass of leaves and flowers. The skiff slipped through this quite easily and we could follow various open water channels. On a lone tree I spotted an owl. It watched us, without comment, as we passed.

There were many egrets here. We had seen a few on previous days but the lakeside was obviously their place. Hundreds of them. Some flying but most perched in trees and bushes. Also, we saw turtles. Mostly yellow headed turtles. Young ones sunning themselves on logs by the side of the river. If we got too close they would quietly slip off their log and vanish into the water.

The linked lakes here gave rise to quite a different environment to the small channels. Much more open. We saw some brown monkeys that defied identification and a black one that was probably a Saki monkey.

Heading back to the ship, I managed to photograph a dolphin. It was a grey river dolphin. Not as exotic as a pink dolphin but a dolphin nonetheless. A fine addition to my large collection of pictures of ripples on the river where a dolphin has just dived.

After lunch we moved back downriver so as to take the skiffs up the Zapote River (I think). Here there were many types of birds. Egrets were still in abundance along with kingfishers, wood peckers, parrots and toucans. Diane and the rest of the boat tried their hand at fishing. I wanted nothing to do with it. Fortunately, she did not catch anything. Something, probably piranhas, nibbled all the meat off her hook. Twice. Sometimes it is best to keep your hands out of the water while fishing.

Another 6am and we were up a creek without a name. Well, I am sure it has a name but it is not marked on my map so I have no idea. The creek was small, meandering and choked with weeds. We spotted a nose looking at us from a hole in a tree trunk. Probably a Nutria (coypu) a type of Amazonian rat. He watched us carefully as we drifted past but showed no sign of coming out. There was a brightly coloured tanager bird and then, at the base of the tree, some proboscis bats. This time we got close enough to see detail. Although only a couple of centimetres long, they are cute and furry. And they do have big noses. All bats are covered in fur, except for Batman. He wears a bat suit, to look bat like, but it has no fur.

We passed some kingfishers and a heron then someone spotted a monkey. Turned out to be a tamarin monkey although it looked to me like a stuffed cat hanging in the tree. There were some colourful aracari birds and sleeping sloth. The sloth was just a big ball of fur in the top of a tree. It never moved in all the time we watched it. At the end of the navigable part of the creek we saw some black-headed night monkeys. They were huddled together in a large tree hole. Each monkey was about the size of a squirrel. They peered out at us nervously. Amongst monkeys, these are the only truly nocturnal species. They are also particularly susceptible to malaria. Apparently, the presence of night monkeys is a good indicator that there is no malaria around. Still plenty of mosquitoes though and we had both applied a good layer of chemical warfare before we came out.

On the way back to the ship, we passed a fisherman who showed off the armoured catfish he had caught. These are not good eating. The locals occasionally make a soup. We saw some soup the following day and everyone thought it looked horribly unappetising. Quite possibly he threw it back into the river after we had passed.

After the first shower of the day and breakfast we went out for a hike. This was in a cultivated area with many fruit trees, yucca and banana trees. Bananas are not really trees. They are in fact, herbs, and the fruit are berries. There were also grapefruit trees. Not so remarkable but I had never seen one before. The real reason we were here was a troop of Pygmy Marmosets. Tiniest of all monkeys and a native of the rainforests of the upper Amazon basin. They are remarkably cute but also very shy. They feed on the gum from trees. With sharp little teeth, they bite a hole in the bark. The gum pools in the hole from where they lap it up. After half an hour of trying to photograph the little blighters, I had a collection of pictures of part of a marmoset. The rest of the photograph being the tree, branch or leaves that it was hiding behind. We were not allowed to shake them out of the tree and pin them to the ground to get a good photograph – so this was going to have to do.

Early afternoon the ship moved quite a way upriver and in the evening, we went out in the skiffs to hunt caimans. The plural of caiman is not caimen. We drove out past a small settlement and were greeted by a small girl. She was showing off the piranha fish she had caught. These are not so dangerous as the films project. Unless you are bleeding, they are unlikely to attack. Even so, it is a special sort of young girl that handles one like a toy.

Into the small channel and the first things we saw were several types of monkeys. Again, photography was difficult. For a start there is not much light. It was early evening but even during the day, the thick canopy is remarkably effective at blocking the sun. The birds and animals tend to stay in the distance. Using a long lens, in low light from a small boat is not a good recipe for success. A while ago, I invested in a Canon 500mm f4 lens. This is a bit of a beast and heavy. An hour spent hoisting it around can get to feel like an upper body workout. Fortunately, it handles the conditions quite well. Even so, I often found that the light so low that I had to turn the camera sensitivity right up. This makes the images very grainy. Our guides were very good at identifying all creatures we saw but I could not remember all the names. I have resorted to Google so quite possibly some of the names of birds and animals are wrong.

Dark fell and our guide produced a powerful spotlight. Apparently, the way to hunt caimans is by looking for the light reflecting from their eyes. Like cat’s eyes, they appear to shine in the dark. Round a corner in a particularly weed clogged channel we came across several. Bright eyes on a small face lurking motionless in the water. We all looked at each other for a few minutes and the headed back to the ship for dinner.

The sun rose to find us bobbing around on the main river on our pre-breakfast skiff ride. Early in the morning is as cool as it gets and the mosquitoes are not too bad. Evening is the mosquito happy hour when you really need to cover up. Except in some places, deep in the forest which appear to be thick with mosquitoes any time of the day. Our morning ritual, before breakfast, now included mosquito repellent and sunscreen. Out on the river, the trick is to keep moving. Stay in one place too long and the little biters will arrive. Keep moving, every few minutes and everything is fine.

We met a raft drifting down the river. Three guys on a home-made construction of logs tied together. They were on their way to Iquitos. Tied at the front of the raft was a large net full of catfish that they had caught. A small motor on the back was to stop them drifting into a bank. After several days drifting down the river with their catch, they would be able to sell the fish and sell the wood they built the raft from. Then they would take their net and other possessions, head back upriver on the ferry, and start again. For now, they were sitting on the raft watching the world drift by.

After breakfast, we were back in the skiffs and heading up a small creek. First thing we saw was an iguana. This was a green iguana, amazonian cousin to all the iguanas we saw in the Galapagos. Further on we spotted some tree houses. Apparently, these are available for rent. This looked wholesome fun. A room high in the treetops. For me, however, on balance, I’ll stick with the air-conditioned cabin. Next, we saw some brown titi monkeys. This is not what our guide called them. Unfortunately, I cannot recall what he said so I used Google. This is what Google calls them.

There was a group of Kiskadee nests hanging from a tree and a sloth doing some sort of slow, strange early morning sloth exercises. Our guide shouted to stop the boat and back up. There was an anteater. This surprised me on two counts. First, I never expected an anteater to be up a tree. Secondly, I could not see it. Eventually, I took several photos in the indicated direction and then zoomed into them on the camera screen. Sure enough, there was an anteater, up a tree, in a dark corner. It looked to be asleep. How our guide spotted it is beyond me. Amazing. On the way back we saw a classic green parakeet and some more proboscis bats. These look like so many little scabs on a tree trunk until you get really close to them.

In the afternoon, we went to visit a village. First, we went to a pond with giant lily pads on it. Victoria Amazonica can grow leaves up 3 m in diameter. This impressed me and also brought back a memory. I had seen this sort of lily before. After pondering where I might have encountered a bit of Amazonian jungle previously, I recalled looking at giant lilies with my mother. This was many years ago at Chatsworth House, a historic stately home in the Peak District. The lilies date back to Victorian times when people cared little about invasive species but were very keen on impressing their nobility friends with the exotic plants they could grow.

In the village came the inevitable presentation of craft goods which we looked at politely. We also looked at a partially built canoe, sugar cane press made from a tree trunk and some macaws. Very brightly coloured birds which, we were assured, were not pets but simply chose to hang out round the village. We also found an annatto tree. Locals use the bright red colour from the seeds of this tree to paint themselves so that they will look fierce. As well as a strong colour, the seeds also have a slightly nutty taste. This is why they are used, in the UK, as the colouring agent in Red Leicester cheese.

Up at dawn again for another short boat trip before breakfast. This time we visited the Pahuachiro Creek. The water here is very dark, a result of tannins from the vegetation along the bank. It is the start of the rainy season. This close to the equator it is hot and humid all the time. There are only really two seasons: wet and dry. At the peak of the wet season much of the forest is flooded. We could clearly see the high-water mark on the trees. A good two or three metres above the current level. This makes the jungle almost impenetrable. With a small canoe you can travel a short distance from the river course but it is slow and difficult.

The water in the main river is a chocolate brown colour because of all the silt it is carrying. Where the black water from the creek meets the main river the two types of water do not mix immediately but swirl around each other in intricate patterns. This is the place for the river dolphins. They hunt fish that have been confused in the merging currents. The dolphins use their echo location to hide in the murky, silt laden water and then dart out to catch the hapless fish. The Amazon River Dolphins are pink and have a bulbous head that is part of their echo location system. Slightly smaller are the Tucuxi  dolphins which are grey and look a little like Bottlenose Dolphins. We saw both types but they are very hard to photograph. You need some sort of precognition to guess where they are going to pop up next.

After breakfast, we went for a walk. Every time we walked in the jungle, we were warned not to casually touch things, not to lean on the trees and to be careful where we placed our hands and feet. This is seriously important advice. Shortly after setting off, we were shown a judgement tree. This is a tree that has become infested by fire ants. The trunk is riddled with holes and few ants can be seen running around. However, if you bang the tree then loads of ants come out. Traditionally, bad people would be stripped and tied to the tree. The village shaman would then hit the tree with a big stick. This “judgement” could be fatal. Shortly after pondering this lethal tree I came across a fuzzy blob on another tree trunk. This turned out to be a mass of caterpillars. What I didn’t realise at the time is that these can be equally fatal. The caterpillars of the Lonomia obliqua moth possess a uniquely potent anticoagulant venom. Wikipedia says “A typical envenomation incident involves a person unknowingly leaning against, placing their hand on, or rubbing their arm against a group of these caterpillars that are gathered on the trunk of a tree. The effects of a dose from multiple caterpillars can be dramatic and severe, including massive internal hemorrhaging, kidney failure, and hemolysis. The resulting medical syndrome is sometimes called lonomiasis. Death may result, either rapidly or after many days following envenomation”.

At the end of the walk, we spotted a sloth. In typically sloth fashion it was hanging from a tree looked like an abandoned bag of wet fur. Photographing sloths requires patience. They do not move very much and it sometimes hard to determine where the sloth ends and the tree begins. Eventually this one did move and not only did I managed to get a picture of its face but I could also spot that it was carrying a baby.

After lunch, while we were all snoozing, the boat moved further up the river. Here was a small village where we had been invited to see the release of some turtles. The yellow-spotted river turtle is one of the largest turtles and has been on the endangered list for a while. It has been hunted for food and was also exceedingly popular as a pet in the USA. Fortunately, now some work is being done to protect the turtles. The villagers collect turtle eggs and then protect them while they hatch. Once the baby turtles’ shells have hardened, they can be released into the wild with a much better chance of survival. We arrived at the riverbank by the village to find buckets full of baby turtles, all ready to be set free. Diane loved this. She carefully carried a bucket to a marked area by the water and tipped them out. The turtles knew exactly what to do and headed straight down the slope for the water. It was great to watch.

From Arequipa we flew back to Lima, yet again, for the New Year celebrations. The party was typically Peruvian and involved a massive and completely unorganised firework display on the clifftops of Miraflores. It was rather magnificent and chaotic. The park area was packed with people and colourful ordnance exploded all around us. Great fun. Two days later we flew to Iquitos to join an Amazon River trip. From the plane we could see the vast tracts of jungle with the river winding its way through it.

The Amazon basin is huge. Seven million square kilometres. The Amazon River is the largest in the world by discharge volume. It is also the longest, depending on how you measure these things. Near the head of the river, in north-east Peru, is the city of Iquitos, population 50,000. This is the world’s largest city that cannot be reached by road or rail. Average temperature 32°C with 80% humidity. Hot and sweaty. Not really my favourite environment but we wanted to experience a rainforest, or at least, I did, so we just had to put up with it. One of the selling points of the river boat we were joining was air-conditioned cabins. At least would have a cool refuge.

From Iquitos we were driven, on the only road, to the small town of Nauta, population 2,000. Nauta is located on the north bank of the Marañón River, a few miles from its confluence of the Río Ucayali. On maps, the point where the rivers join is the highest place that is named the Amazon River.

The river boat, called the Delfin II, operates several long, narrow, steel hulled boats that they call skiffs. Each of these has two rows of seats for a dozen people and two outboard engines on the back. The boats have to be quite tough because there is a lot of wood and other debris floating in the river. We were collected and taken to the Delfin which was holding station just offshore. Here we were introduced to our cabin. The accommodation was rather nice. A large picture window, good sized bed, nice bathroom and the all-important air-conditioning. It seemed like a significant part of the design of the river boat was to support the generators and heat exchangers necessary to run all the cooling systems. I was struck by the same contradiction that we experienced in Thailand. The general approach to dealing with global warming is to try and use less energy. But the way to deal with living in hot places is to use more energy so that you can keep cool. We had an excellent dinner and then went straight to bed with the warning that we were going to be up before sunrise the next day.

The best time to explore the jungle is early in the morning. I had to reluctantly admit this. Neither of us are really morning people but the advantages are clear. It is a bit cooler but perhaps more importantly this is when most of the birds and animals are active. By lunchtime the rainforest is relatively quiet. Earlier it is buzzing with creatures all going about their business. So, up early, before breakfast and off in the skiffs. We saw many birds including Red-capped cardinal, Kiskadees and some hawks. We also saw a pair of Hoatzin birds. These are unusual amongst birds in that they only eat plants. To consume the vegetation, they have unique digestive system, which contains specialized bacteria in the front part of the gut. This ferments the food, mostly leaves, a process that produces a lot of ripe methane. Locally they are known as “stinkbirds” and are generally avoided by hunters. Apparently, they not only smell bad but also taste bad. Clever birds. Another clever aspect is that the chicks have claws on their wings. This allows them to climb around the tree where they nest. If attacked by predators such as great black hawks, the chicks will jump into the water and hide under the nest while the parents distract the attackers. Later, they can use their claws to clamber back into the nest.

After breakfast, we went for a walk. Walking in the rainforest is not entirely straightforward. We were equipped with Wellington boots, waterproofs and bottles of water. We also applied mosquito repellent and suns screen. It was hot and sweaty. Within a few minutes my shirt was soaked and after an hour my hands were going wrinkly as if I had been in a swimming pool. The forest was dense and reached high above us. So much so that there was not much light. Taking photographs was difficult. No just because of the low light but also because of condensation forming on the lens. We had a local guide who tended to wander off into the forest and then reappear with interesting things. First up was a red backed poison frog. These secrete poison through their skin to deter predators. The frogs are only small but the poison is nasty. Not necessarily fatal to humans but it will kill smaller mammals. Our man was careful to just hold the frog by its leg. Next up was a tarantula spider. Not sure exactly what type but it was enormous, for a spider. Maybe 12 cm long. Then we were shown a Boa constrictor which hissed at me and finally an Anaconda. This looks a little strange in the picture because it had just eaten something. After a couple of hours of walking we were more than happy to get back to our lovely cool cabin for a shower before lunch and an afternoon siesta.

Early evening, we were out again in the skiffs. This is the happy hour for mosquitoes, so we applied extra repellent. Even so, they munched on Diane quite a lot and she came up with many lumps and bumps. We saw Black-capped donacobius, several hawks and a few White-eared jacamar. There were bats on trees. These were a little hard to see. Proboscis bats are only small and blend into the tree bark. From any distance they look like leaves but get closer and you spot the details. Finally, there were monkeys. Squirrel monkeys. A big troop of them. Tricky to photograph because they are small, tend to stay far away and also like to stay hidden behind the leaves and branches. Terrific to watch as they leap around in the canopy. As dusk fell, we headed back to the Delfin II for another excellent dinner and another early night.