A long time ago, at this place called Belluda, lived a woman who according to some local men, was very beautiful and she had a very peculiar feature - she was very “hairy”, Velluda in Spanish. This magnificent place that is home of a wide variety of wildlife is known as Belluda, with b instead of v. True or not, it is part of the legend of this area. Early in the morning the animals and most birds are more active, we came out at 6:00 am to skiff ride along the river banks of the Ucayali River; I love this place because you always see macaws, parrots, hawks, kites, vultures, tanagers etc. Macaws are beautiful birds, so colorful and noisy that is very easy to know they are approaching flying to us. Then we moved into a narrow and shallow creek to see more wildlife such as cocoi Herons, toucans, ringed king fishers and others common birds. After having a nutritious breakfast, we motored for few hours to get El Dorado River.
This place is very famous for two types of caimans, many birds and nocturnal explorations. But before this we went to a nearby beach to cool off in the river and a “natural jungle spa” At this time of the year the level of the main rivers comes lower and this action makes the river banks into beautiful beaches where migratory birds as plovers, wood storks, terns and other come to feed on little crustaceans and crabs. We went to the beach for swimming and a jungle mud therapy; we had a lot of fun there. Later we came to explore El Dorado River; right at the beginning we saw a juvenile anaconda snake that was found for one of the local fisherman that shows his exciting of his discovery and wanted to share it with us. Farther in, we saw many parakeets, parrots and neo-tropical cormorants. Squirrel and capuchin monkeys as well. Before sunset we were surprised by our galley team from the Dolphin II, who came in a very small boat to the place we were, bringing some cocktails and snacks,
After few minutes of enjoying our refreshments and eating a bit, we started our night exploration. Once the sun is gone and becomes dark, the jungle becomes very mysterious, quiet, and thousands of sounds are part of the show; many nocturnal animals wake up while the diurnals go to bed. Our guide stands on the bow of the skiff and holds in his hand a reflector. We saw many types of bats, hawks and caimans that floats in the water quietly, suddenly, our guide spotted a common potoo, that is its name but it is not common to see, in fact, it is seen once in a blue moon. We were lucky to have so close to us; at the end, we saw two types of nocturnal herons.
