Rio Marañon: Nauta Caño & San Francisco
The sunrise this morning set us off on the right track: calm, colorful, glowing, dynamic without being frenetic. We set off with high hopes, and we were not disappointed. Kayakers enjoyed moving along the winding path of Nauta Caño, and skiffers sallied forth as well. The highlight of the morning was perhaps a young sloth that had come down from the canopy to eyelevel. With quiet patience and a calm approach, it allowed us a very close look. We edged in, then edged out, and left it undisturbed.
After breakfast, Nauta Caño beckoned once again. The skiffs took us deeper into the creeks, where we found caiman lizards, iguanas, and a group of monk saki monkeys. The monk sakis usually travel in small groups family with one breeding female. Often skittish, we sat beneath the tree where they were eating fruit and in time they grew accustomed to us. What a treat! To sit beneath a tree of monkeys as they go about their business, scratching and eating and growling was an amazing experience. Time is the secret, of course. Time and stillness. Just when you start to feel restless, if you wait a bit more, often the most amazing experiences with wild animals ensue.
During the heat of the day we repositioned Delfin II downstream and tied up to a tree near the community of San Francisco. Here, we had a chance to try on a different kind of forest: the terra firme. Hot, still, and humid, like the varzea, but different plants, different topography. We actually walked up and down some small hills. Among other things, we learned that if we were stranded in deep forest, we could cut the roots of the terra firme type of cecropia and find water to sustain us.
On the way back from the walk, our attention was drawn by an orchid in bloom: no pink blossoms for this amazing flower, it was quite dark, maroon and yellow. The mouths of each flower cascading down were fringed with tender frills. We oohed and ahhhed, and then we realized that in the tree above the orchid there was a snake! It was a type of whip snake, a nonvenomous black-and-yellow thing that looked like it might be in the process of shedding its skin. Once again, we learned how sometimes the best sightings are had by stopping rather than moving ahead too quickly.
The late evening gave us an opportunity to walk again in the rain forest at San Francisco, this time with flashlights. A night walk in the jungle reveals the second shift in this place. We found spiders and moths and fingernail-sized frogs. The star of the night was a leaf-mimic katydid, with wings that looked for all the world like an aspen leaf and antennae twice the length of its body. A strong gust of wind cut our walk a bit short, and the lightning that had been flashing downstream had approached. While rain would not deter us, high winds under the forest canopy can be a bit dicey, so we decided discretion was the better part of valor and reluctantly left the nocturnal world of the forest.
