We started the morning with an early wake up knock. As the sun was rising, all jungle wildlife was awakening too. We boarded our skiffs to go out and look for it. Along the Ucayali River there are many “aguajes,” tall palm trees which produce a fruit that is the main food source for parrots and macaws. As we arrived, macaws were soaring and landing in front of our very eyes, for as long as we stayed there!

Native people hunted macaws for their bright colorful feathers in the old days. They were used as a social status sign and were part of the decoration of the Caciques’ clothing. Caciques were the leaders of a group or tribe of Amazon people. Nowadays Peruvian law protects this species, and locals are aware of their intrinsic value, alive, so they also protect them, together with their trees. As we went along the river, we spotted a species of monkey: the squirrel monkey. We also spotted two species of birds of prey: the great black hawk and the yellow headed caracara next to each other.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon onboard our comfortable skiffs to look for more sightings in “El Dorado.” The Amazon region is so vast that we never know what we are going to see out there. We spotted a hoatzin, which was nesting in an open area and was relatively easy to see it. This bird species is a pre-historical looking river bird. When juvenile hoatzins are harassed by birds of prey, they jump out their nests to the water and later climb back up to their nests using a set of claws, which they have at the front of each wing. Later, in three or four weeks, they lose these claws because they don’t need them anymore. As we continued with our afternoon adventure we spotted four species of monkeys in a single afternoon and minutes apart from each other. Squirrel monkeys have been seen in almost every outing this week. Howler monkeys produce a scary sound as territorial behavior, and that was the reason we spotted them. Saddleback tamarin monkeys are very elusive, but we saw them anyway. Finally, monk saki monkeys were just looking for a good place to get into our pictures! In the way back, we looked for caimans, the largest retiles of the Amazon. We found two species: the spectacle and the black caimans, which can reach up to twenty feet long. As nocturnal animals were taking over the river, we returned to our ship, amid a sky is full of stars…