We have gathered here on the Marañon River to start our explorations of the Amazon Basin. Some of us may have had friends or family that wondered why in the world we would want to spend a vacation in a hot, humid, and buggy place. Still fewer of us may have had friends that said “take me with you!” Why come here? Diversity. An incredible concentration of living, breathing, crawling, flying, swimming creatures calling a, relatively speaking on global terms, small place home.
Today, between our morning outing before breakfast and our evening outing, we spent a total of about three-and-a-half hours in skiffs along waterways. We found 51 different species of birds, and many of them numerous times over. Added to that were the sightings from our walk at Casual, which included a pink-footed tarantula, poison dark frogs, caiman lizard, boat constrictor, wood lizard, squirrel monkeys, and a couple of anacondas. Additionally from the skiffs were sighted saddleback tamarins along the forest edge, and we can’t forget about the pink and the gray river dolphins. Yes, pink dolphins. It is quite stunning to be looking at the milk-chocolate brown waters and suddenly have a bubblegum-pink dolphin pop out. While navigating to Casual, we came across several dolphins including a baby. It seemed so small in comparison to the adults, which can run about eight feet. In the afternoon we came upon still more, and these animals were fishing, and the fish wanted nothing to do with it. As we sat and watched, schools of fish would randomly come flying out of the water in small batches; it was easy to figure out where the dolphins were.
While some of our acquaintances may not be able to figure out why we are here, that’s okay. We know why and for the next week our focus is to be where we are while we are there, the Amazon Basin, a magnificent pool of diversity and life.
