Rio Marañon: San Isidro & Rio Yanayacu
Our first day on the river, and we woke early to take full advantage. Before breakfast, the skiffs headed out to explore the banks and a tributary of the Marañon, and what treasure we found: a sloth, saddleback tamarin monkeys, even a pair of toucans, those icons of Amazonia. More than this, however, we had a chance to begin to calibrate our eye to the patterns and movements of this place. What is the difference between a branch bobbing under a bird’s weight and a reed being pulled by river current? How is a monkey’s chirp different from a bird’s? What image should be in mind when searching for sloths? These are the questions we are beginning to answer for ourselves.
After breakfast we headed out again, this time in rubber boots. We were ready to walk in varzea, or seasonally flooded forest. The interior of the Amazonian rain forest is very different from the river itself. It doesn’t flow. It isn’t open. It’s still and shady and an impossibly intricate entanglement of every kind of vegetation. One of the most impressive sights is that of the strangler fig reaching treehood—this plant begins high in the canopy as a harmless epiphyte. It sprouts in the crook of a tree and reaches toward the light. Meanwhile, its roots are reaching downward, and downward, at some point reaching the forest floor. Those roots wrap around the tree from which they descend, and anchor themselves. They grow thicker. They fuse. They completely ensheath the tree that originally supported them, at last strangling it.
We stood beneath strangler figs, marveling. High in the canopy, a northern Amazonian squirrel rustled. Leafcutter ants marched with their bright green burdens. Forest birds called through the shadows. We sweated and swatted and gawked. It was a good way to begin.
Back aboard the Delfin II, we cooled off and then gathered for a safety drill and a map orientation by Juan Luis, one of our guides. With that foundation, we set off in the afternoon to explore the Yanayacu River, one of the many blackwater streams coming out of the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve. To see the thousand shades of green that make up Amazonian riverside vegetation reflected in the obsidian of a blackwater river is a visual memory to be treasured.
The afternoon was hot, but it cooled soon enough. After signing in to the ranger station (some of us leaving with a few treasures purchased from local craftspeople), we dallied a bit with the pink and gray river dolphins that were working the fish at the entrance to the Yanayacu. It was almost possible, with a generous scope of the imagination, to anticipate where the dolphins would surface by watching the activity of large-billed terns. Almost.
Wonderful sightings of the afternoon included three-toed sloths, a yellow-crowned brush-tailed tree rat peering out of its hollow roost, and a crane hawk glaring out from beneath its intense, red brow. Sunset brought a beauty to the day’s end, and we watched kids in the local communities we passed play volleyball and leap into the river, enjoying the coolness of the evening. It seems we have arrived at this wonderful, different, unique place.
