Few times in the year we experience a change of weather like the one that we had today. We left in our skiffs at 6:30 a.m. and could notice the change right away, the wind was cold, the mist was covering the river’s waters. The scenery was beautiful. We entered Belluda Caño and we found hundreds of snowy and great egrets in the bushes along our way. They kept on flying making of it an amazing Amazonian picture! We arrived to a place where a family of nocturnal owl monkeys has been observed for several outings…there they were, observing us with their huge nocturnal eyes! We found three adults and one young one; they posed for our pictures coming out of a tree very curious about us!
We came back to the ship to have breakfast and get ready for a very unusual outing. We disembark on a mud beach and many of us decided to experience a mud bath! We enjoyed it like little children! Laughing while we had mud fights! We lay down on the mud and finally jumped in the river, which by the way was warmer than the air temperature! What a fun way to enjoy this place!
We came back on board and then had of some free time: A very interesting talk on primates, a class in origami towel folding, lunch, and an exotic fruit exhibit; by then we had arrived to our next destination: El Dorado.
We disembark first in order to have a photography activity from our skiffs, our goal… to photograph dolphins! Hard we tried and tried to get these elusive mammals in our frame! But suddenly we found a new species for our lenses! And a very uncommon sighting! A Kinkajou on a tree! This mammal is a raccoon-like animal that is nocturnal! But there it was in the middle of the day climbing a tree to eat the nectar of the flowers! It was so active! And more emotion came when two yellow-headed caracara came to attack it! All our skiffs were watching this activity and screaming every time the birds came close! At the end the cute animal was fine and we were happy too! It was time for our skiff ride, which today was different as we came back late with the darkness. It was so we could explore the river at nighttime; we found piranhas and stingrays, sloths and birds, and finally we observed some caimans hiding along the shore.
A full day with amazing memories! To close it out we enjoyed music from our very talented crewmembers. With smiles on our faces we are ready to dream on dolphins and monkeys, mud fights, music, and more Amazonian moments…good night!
