On day three while heading up the Manu River, our driver suddenly accelerated the boat in time for us to see a jaguar swimming across the river! He gave us one long look back before disappearing into the thick underbrush.
Seeing this endangered species up close was an amazing once in a lifetime experience!
Easy food for jaguars, capybaras hide in the grass between the jungle and river and are the world's largest rodents, resembling 3 foot tall guinea pigs...
They avoid becoming jaguar food by diving into the river, where they're then likely to become a caiman's next meal...
Later on, trekking at night through the muddy jungle, we came across a snail with a shell the size of a softball...
Cocha Salvador is an Amazon lake where a family of giant river otters lives and hunts. Found only in the Amazon jungle, they are extremely endangered with less than 200 left on earth.
Above, a giant river otter eats a piranha and below, the entire family approaches. The largest otters are about 4 feet long and make loud calls to each other to communicate!
So as not to disturb them, the only way to see the otters is on a large floating platform paddled by hand.
A toucan perches high above keeping a watchful on our passing boat...
And another cool bird (forgot what) stands along the shoreline...
These colorful birds were all around Cocha Salvador making loud whooshing noises whenever they left their perch!
Thankfully we didn't encounter too many spider webs, but this three inch across spider was floating on the water near our lodge...
Besides the animals living deep in the jungle, there are also tribes of uncontacted peoples living completely naked; hunting and scavenging much as humans may have done thousands of years ago. While not much is known about these people, including how many of them are out there, they are infrequently seen by locals and tourists sitting along the banks of remote rivers. It is almost incomprehensible to me that people still live in this way and scary to think that we may have been unknowingly watched by alert eyes from deep within the forest. The Peruvian government allows this people to continue to live untouched by modernity and forbids contact with them from the outside world. Accidental encounters must be avoided at all cost, for both their safety and ours.
We visited a government closed camp that had been visited by one such tribe and spotted their fresh footprints in the mud. Fascinatingly, their toes appear to be spread far apart unlike a normal human footprint, perhaps from eons of isolated evolution. While believed to be friendly, I'd be lying if I said the idea of running into such a tribe wasn't a terrifying thought lurking in the back of my head.
In all, we saw many more amazing animals, including inch long ants with powerful bites, giant colorful macaws, a tayra (large weasel like creature), six inch tarantulas and much more but my point and shoot camera doesn't begin to do any of these incredible animals justice... We also saw trees with trunks 20 feet in circumference, huge mahoganies, and too many flowers to describe. Brit and I are both so thankful for the rare opportunity to witness such unspoiled nature and hope the area continues to be preserved for generations to come.
Like^
ReplyDelete