Yanallpa, Ucayali & El Dorado River
If I had to choose my favorite primate of the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve, I would pick, so far, the pygmy marmoset. And for birds, the Blue-and-Yellow Macaw. And this morning we had them both! We rose early, like every day, and off we went on board the skiffs to look for wonders along the Ucayali River; we had an appointment with the Macaws! Then we landed at Yanallpa, and among its high cedars the smallest monkeys of the New World awaited for us. Here in the forest, it is hard to promise, it is hard to predict, and we have to keep our expectations indirectly proportional to the opulence of the richest ecosystem on Earth. But we were lucky!
After breakfast there were three options.
The Ucayali water level is rising, and we wanted to take advantage, maybe for the last time this year, of the sandy beaches along the riverbank. So three of our guests joined Juan Luis for a mud therapy, and then a brief swim in the waters that, around the corner, officially become the Amazon River.
Others went for a hike, to explore the understory of a forest with mysterious countless interaction between species.
A third group went for a long skiff ride; they wanted more macaws, and were rewarded also with Toucans and Aracaris.
There aren’t rocks in the Amazon, a rock is like a miracle, and so precious they are that for some ancient inhabitants of this forest, they were used as a sort of currency. However, a lecture about geology is a must to understand the “hows” and the “whys” of a land drained by a river that once ran to the Pacific, that once was an inland sea, then a lake, the largest we have ever had on planet Earth. I loved sharing with our guests how the Amazon came to be through geological time.
In the afternoon El Dorado River welcomed the skiffs and was generous with wildlife, its highlight: caimans after sunset.
