Rio Ucayali: Lake Bagazan, Flor de Castaña & Supay
What a day. It was big. It was fabulous. It was what we’d come here in hopes of experiencing, even without having a sense of the details. The start, to be granted, was a bit rocky. The crew worked in the dark of night, banging this and that, to fix something. Our morning kayak/skiff expedition was cancelled. It was raining fairly hard. But we made the best of it. By breakfast time, we were underway, and soon thereafter, we set out.
Our morning expedition took us across Lake Bagazan, a large open body of water that, many years ago, was actually the main course of the Ucayali River. We turned off of the lake and into a winding channel that gave us great views of… well, a lot. Orchids, hooded blackbirds, a cayman lizard, a laughing falcon. e paused for everything that caught our eye, until the boardwalk and bridge of Flor de Castaña caught our eye. Then, we stopped.
The community of Flor de Castaña is one of the many ribereños villages that edge the Ucayali and Marañon Rivers. People here live off the land, farming and fishing, occasionally trading their goods downriver for staples like sugar, salt, and matches. In the village today, we got to see a family in the process of laying in stores: a woman was paddling a big metal pan of manioc over a fire to make farina. By drying this Amazonian staple, her family would have food during times of scarcity.
It’s quite possible that many of us considered trying to take home one of the kids from Flor de Castaña. They were so sweet and curious, and we tested our sketchy Spanish with them, finding out ages, numbers of siblings, and the like. Back at Delfin II, our guide Juan Luis shared his knowledge of river life, allowing us to ask the questions that had arisen in our visit.
The afternoon took us to Supay Lake, an open white water lake at the end of a fascinating, winding river. Some of us dove right in… literally. One of the skiffs offered a chance to swim while the others concentrated on finding wildlife along the shores. There really wasn’t a wrong way to go. Pygmy marmosets, dusky titi, and squirrel monkeys were all spotted by this skiff and that, as well as birds galore. We returned aglow, certain that we’d had the best day that the Amazon could offer.
