Pink river dolphins

I awoke at 6am to a wonderfully noisy dawn chorus from the birds. I promptly fell back asleep for an hour but Anna got up to go searching for wildlife. She walked around the deck of our cabana and found 2 turtles! Very excited, she started taking photos...until she realised they were wooden figures! Hehe!

Breakfast was a help yourself buffet of pancakes with cane sugar honey, mini donuts made of potato and cheese, pineapple and choc cake (queque) - amazing cooks on this tour.

We hopped on a boat and saw more birds, turtles, caiman and dolphins before stopping off to walk down a dirt road with some dodgy wooden bridges to look for anacondas. Sadly the water level was too high to spot any but we did see a caiman, 3 capybara and a dead stingray, presumably dropped by a bird.

Back at the boat, we met the French couple who were piranha fishing. They sent their only catch downstream in a bucket for us to see it's super sharp teeth and then we released him.

We then headed back to where we'd first got on the boat yesterday which seems to be the main feeding area for the dolphins (pink river dolphins - botos). Alejandro assured us it was safe despite the piranhas, caiman and stingrays! (On the way back we passed a sizeable caiman 100m from where we were swimming).

Anna jumped straight in and I tried to take photos but had little success with our phone camera. They don't surface to breathe too often (compared to bottlenose) and are unpredictable in their direction so hard to capture. Once I got in the dolphins came closer and started circling us, swimming underneath, bumping into, and biting Anna's feet gently - I floated on my back to avoid this. One was particularly friendly / curious and hovered right under me pushing up and came alongside and nudged me until I stroked him / her. He then fin slapped the water to splash me. It then went to Anna and swam through her arms giving her a dolphin hug!

As amazing an experience as it was I found the sudden jolts and nudges a bit unnerving as you couldn't see anything through the water and they were getting boisterous so I got out. Anna loved it and stayed in - she hasn't read the stories of dolphin rape that I have!

Once I got out they started lifting their heads out the water to properly look at Anna and then seemed to get bored and pay her less attention.

The dolphins by the shore were continually feeding, using the shallow banks to drive the fish up. Suddenly there was a huge feeding frenzy and dolphins came from far and wide to join in, leaping out the water to get there quicker. Fish were flying out the water and dolphins and birds were everywhere - I'd guess at least 30.

Alejandro told Anna to swim into the middle of the craziness - I advised against this. We all stood videoing the awesome spectacle for 10 minutes. Once it had settled down a bit Anna tried splashing to get their attention but they were bored of her and lunch was beckoning them.

After lots more watching we had to go back (saw another capybara) and were told off for being late and had a hurried lunch and packed.

We took the boat and car back with the French couple who had a flight to catch. We stopped to see another caiman, a 2-3m anaconda and a family of 4 muddy capybara. I slept most of the way back.

Once back, we checked back into the Tucanes hostel and lay in the hammocks.

We had dinner at La Jalapeño (90B), a Mexican...well sort of...it was Mexican food but not really the right spices. Still nice though and run by a very lovely, very pregnant woman who spoke no English which was good practice for us.

After dropping off our muddy clothes at the launderette we enjoyed our blissful hot showers and felt clean again :)Read more