Macaw cliff and pig hunt

Up at 7:30am and ate a huge brekkie of fruit, cheesy potatoes, a hollow cheesy empanada and cake.

The small river to get to camp had swollen from the rain so we had to wade across in wellies to get to the boat.

From the boat we saw herons, egrets, storks, king vultures and a small capybara (world's largest rodent, can get up to 50kg).

We were dropped off and made our way along a path via various cool trees (walking, fig stranglers, thorny, banana), termite nests, and birds (toucan, mockingbird, woodpeckers) to the bottom of a cliff where red and blue macaws nested. We then walked up a rooty path to the top of the cliff and saw the macaws in the trees and flying over the jungle below - beautiful views. We spotted jaguar footprints and fresh poo on the trail on the way back - they like the paths bit are very rarely seen.

We headed back to the lodge for lunch. The river had swelled even more and was too deep for our wellies. Nacho, the boat driver, rescued us on a little raft one by one.

After a rest, we walked along a trail from camp and saw various plants and birds. Alejandro sniffed out / heard some peccaries (pigs) so we went on a hunt off the path breaking twigs to mark our way - even so, how he got us back I've no idea. We got very close and had to creep really quietly - we could hear the snuffles - and ended up all balanced on a fallen tree trunk over a swamp. Only Alejandro had wellies on so we could go no further. He called to them but they wouldn't come to us. Instead he heard some monkeys and called to them and they came swinging! He blames us for moving at a critical time and giving the game away that we weren't monkeys, but there is only so long we could crouch on a rotten log. The monkeys realised they'd been tricked and swung away again.

Darkness was falling so we headed back to the trail and rushed home, arriving in camp just as night fell. During this, Anna demonstrated numerous times how well-suited to jungle life she is: Don't touch that tree - she slips off a log and pierces her hand on the thorny tree; Don't step on that log - she steps on rotten log and it collapses landing her foot in the swamp; Don't stand on branches and make any noise - she steps on huge branch and snaps it loudly (to be fair, we both did this). The final straw was when she walked into a spider web and did a comedy leap in the air and fell over backwards, tried to get up then fell over again. We were all in hysterics for ages.

After dinner and another cold splash shower we got an early night but I didn't sleep well again. Our hut was far from the others and in complete darkness and it spooked me out.

From our time in the jungle we only got a couple of mozzy bites between us surprisingly :)Читать далее