Today on our upper Amazon exploration, the day began with an exciting morning. After breakfast, we had a dry landing on the riverside, to explore the deep rainforest
At the beginning of our hike, we saw several pink-toed tarantulas sitting on the death trees. Further into the trail, our local guide, named Eucledio, was able to find one of the largest venomous snakes in the world—a bushmaster snake was located right next to our trail. We would certainly never have spotted this venomous reptile with the naked eye, since it camouflages perfectly with the dry foliage. We soon found another snake near a small water creek, this time it was a much bigger reptile—the green anaconda. This snake was shedding its skin, peacefully moving around under the water, until it decided to come out and climb a nearby bush. This gave us a great opportunity to photograph this reptile in much better light, as it posed for our cameras and relaxed underneath the canopy of the ancient trees. As we continued on our exploration, a poison dart frog jumped out of the bushes into the middle of the trail—a few excellent macro pictures were taken, allowing us to take a close look at the striking strawberry colors.
During the afternoon, we had a skiff ride along the Yanayacu River, where we spotted a large variety of birds, some of which are rarely spotted at this time of the year, such as the rufous kingfisher. A large flock of large-billed terns were spotted dive-bombing for fish, not far from our skiffs.
What an amazing experience, nothing can compare to the peaceful and wild rainforest and river ecosystems of the upper Peruvian Amazon.
