We had an optional wake up call at 0530 to take full advantage of the day and the best time to look for wildlife. The light rain stopped shortly after we embarked the skiffs to explore Marayali Caño. Marayali gets its name from a combination of the two names of the rivers that it connects—the Marañón and Ucayali. Here we dedicated the early morning to identifying the different bird species that we could either see or listen to. Huge flocks of parakeets dotted the sky, and their calls could be heard from long distances.
We had a very nice cultural experience visiting a village called San Francisco. We had a community meeting to listen to some representatives of "Minga Perú", an organization that helped education and sustainable development in the community.
Today after visiting the village of San Francisco, we sailed from the Marañón into the Ucayali River. Delfin II sailed through the Amazon River's official start, and we celebrated with pisco sours, the national drink of Perú.
Clavero Lake was our afternoon's destination, and after a fascinating talk about jaguars by Carlos Navarro, we went for our first swimming experience. We jumped from the skiffs into the tannic water of Clavero Lake. We floated on the warm water, and some of us enjoyed a Peruvian beer at the same time!
Later on, we embarked our skiffs one more time to explore the tributaries of the Ucayali River that feed Clavero Lake. Pigmy marmosets, saddle-back tamarins, hoatzins and squirrel monkeys were some of the highlights of a very pleasant afternoon exploring the Upper Amazon.
