Pacaya River
The ride up the Ucayali River last night was an adventure in itself. A typical Amazonian downpour started soon after dinnertime, which includes buffeting winds that come in advance of a rain front. Lightning provided the visuals, and thunder occasionally, but muted for those of us inside our cozy cabins with the curtains pulled back from our picture windows.
However, daylight found us where we wanted to be, thanks to our experienced captain and helmsmen. The Pacaya River is one of the three main drainage systems for the entire Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve. It is by way of this river that we had plans to make our way into the heart of the reserve.
The morning excursion by skiff started at the fresh hour of 6:00 a.m. as usual, but this time we needn’t rush back for breakfast, because breakfast came with us! I won’t spoil the surprise for those who will be joining us on future trips, but suffice it to say that everything was marvelous.
One of the goals for the morning was to find the famous hoatzin, and find them we did…in numbers! These birds are not hunted by the people of the area because of their unappetizing flesh, in both taste and smell apparently (I haven’t tried it myself). They feed exclusively on leaves, are for this reason are not terribly energetic animals…more sound than action. We found them on a tree overhanging the Pacaya, squawking away in their rough manner, raising their crests and looking out at us from their blue-ringed eyes.
Scarlett macaws flew overhead, squirrel monkeys foraged busily, and the horned screamers—goose relatives—stood sentinel on the top of trees, in branches that looked ridiculously fragile for a bird of their size.
We got back in good time for a post-skiff siesta, a lecture on the geology of the Amazon basin, and a cooking demonstration on how to make “juanes,” a traditional workingman’s bag lunch. In this case the “bags” are leaves found in the Amazonian rain forest!
During lunch we had front-row seats for the arrival of a “man’s rain” (see Tuesday’s Daily Expedition Report) from the dining room of the Delfin II. This dining room has spectacular picture windows that wrap around three of the four walls. The black rain clouds marched towards us throughout the meal, and by dessert the leading winds had arrived and pushed the ship around (against the current of the Ucayali). Across the river a sand bank disappeared under sand-storms, and soon enough we had the hard rain falling all around. So hard we couldn’t see the other side of the river for a good ten minutes!
But by 3:00 p.m. we had almost clear skies and boarded our skiffs for our next exploration of this amazing river. We had separated ourselves into those who wanted to swim in the blackwater lagoon of Yanayacu, in the interior, and those that didn’t, so they could dawdle a bit more up the river. Everyone was successful at finding howler monkeys, which was one of our goals, and pink dolphins showed up out of nowhere the moment swimmers got into the water. Couldn’t have been better. However, here in the Amazon, expect the unexpected! Towards the end of our swim, the non-swimmers-skiff drove by with two strangers standing in the bow who turned out to be National Reserve wardens. What they brought with them was the surprise. Hatchling turtles! Podocnemis unifilis, or yellow-spotted river turtle. Over 500 of them!
Amazonian river turtles in general are highly sought after by the inhabitants as a source of food. The formation of the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve has as one of its main objectives the preservation and conservation of all species of turtles found here. In so vast an area as the reserve, it is impossible to patrol effectively against poachers, plus the turtles have been an important source of protein for thousands of years to the humans who live here. But human over-population creates strains on the ecosystem, and at least here, in the reserve, they have come up with an ingenious solution which makes (almost) everyone happy: every community within the reserve and buffer zones around the edges, is responsible for collecting 3,000 river turtle eggs during the egg-laying season. These eggs are re-buried in a sandbox in front of the school. After the initial 3,000 eggs have been collected, the people are allowed to collect as many eggs for consumption and sale as they want.
Once the hatchlings emerge after 70 days, they are released into the reserve, preferably deep inside along one or another river or lagoon.
It happened that our afternoon visit today coincided with the morning hatching of hundreds of yellow-spotted river turtles…and the wardens were allowing us to partake in their release into Yanayacu lagoon! This is something I have known about for several years, but I had never been here at the right moment in time. Until today. How absolutely magnificent it was to see several hundred hatchling turtles swim strongly into the dark waters of the lagoon. Only 5-10% are expected to reach adulthood, but it is certainly an improvement over their survival rate of a few years ago.
Flying high on this special moment, we came home to the Delfin II still marveling at the lucky star that had the turtles hatch on this very day.
