As we travel along the tributaries of the Amazon River, we have with us an amazing crew making sure we are comfortable and well fed. We are also are being educated by an amazing group of naturalists, folks that at the beginning of their lives called small villages along the river their home. This morning as we started on a skiff ride to look for macaws, one of the local residents along the river waved to us and started to point up into the trees. As we navigated closer to the riverbank we could see a sloth in the treetop. How gracious and generous of this individual to see a boat of tourists going upstream and to share with us the sloth in his backyard. Speaking of his backyard, he is living along this stretch of the river only until a rising river level drives him towards higher ground. He is not on terra firma; he is along a part of the river that we be flooded forest during high water. This is known as varzea. Currently he is tending to a small plot of rice, manioc or corn planted in the nutrient rich soils left by last seasons flooding. When the river rises, jumps its banks, creeps and then floods the forest, all number of other creatures go in with the varzea, including pink river dolphins, fish, and the people. It will stay this way for six months of the year.
This afternoon we traveled up the Rio Dorado and met a few folks in fishing boats that were on their way home, laden with the fruits from their day of labor. Once again the friendly and generous spirit of the local people came through as our guides called out to them and asked to see their catch. We pulled alongside and one bench in the dugout canoe had a pile of orange bellied piranhas while the boat itself had been partially filled with water and turned into a temporary live well filled with armored catfish swimming about. As we continued upstream we found a cream-colored woodpecker in a cecropia tree and a flash of emerald green led us to three bluish-fronted jacamars sitting about in the late afternoon shade.
Navigating further up river we found a small group of hoatzins in a small thicket of trees, getting ready to roost for the night. We stayed out on the river past dark and found literally dozens of caiman along the bank, nestled in the waterweeds and floating in the water. We closed our adventures for the day with an escort of fish eating bats flying in front of us as we returned to the mothership, Delfin II.
