Birds and monkeys

First full day in the Amazon. Up early and did some birdwatching before everyone was up and ready to get going. One of the guides was up with us and was great for telling us what the different birds were.
We as well saw some local fisherman going by in their dugout canoes.

We started off with breakfast this morning then off on our first skiff ride. There are 2 skiffs, which are very comfortable to spend a couple of hours in. We spend approximately 2 hours going along the Maranon River along little riverways that lead off the main river when it is rainy season. When it is dry season some the places we travelled by skiff are actually farms. This was a fantastic start to our trip, and everything we hoped for. We saw so many different colorful birds, hawks, parrots, parakeets, Jesus Christ bird (it walks on water and the real name was really hard), hummingbirds, amazon kingfisher, flycatchers, egret, vultures, so many. The sounds from the jungle are fantastic, the guides are so good at finding these birds, from the distance they all just look like black birds to me, but wow when they get up close and you get a chance to see them!

We also saw 2 different sloths, one was actually moving a little and climbed up and down about 5 feet. We also saw in iguana just hanging out relaxing way up in a tree and a cayman lizard, which pretty much looked like a pretty iguana to me. We saw some grey river dolphins, they also have pink ones but we haven't seen them yet.

But my favourite off all was the spider monkeys. We saw some monkeys in the morning trip but they are very shy and kept jumping back deeper in the jungle when we got close in the skiffs. But, this afternoon we came across some juveniles that were as curious about us as we were about them. They had the most adorable masked faces and they were really checking us out, so fun to watch them watching us. We did the 2 skiff rides today, both on smaller river off the Maranon river, the last one returning in a beautiful sunset.

We sail down the Amazon for part of the day and viewed some beautiful scenery along the way.

Dolphin

Tonight we were very lucky and got a beautiful sunset

The smells and sounds here are really amazing, I just wish it wasn't so hot so we could turn off our air conditioning and listen to the night sounds. There was a local band that came on board tonight and played some local music, a nice touch. We were also given more of an introduction of what to expect this week, the part about how to put on gators correctly to prevent snake bites got me, I did not read about that in any brochure! You can bet they got my attention and they will be on me correctly!

It is now 9PM and dinner is over and just updating this and off to bed. 5:30 am wake up call to go for a skiff ride to see the early birds, back for breakfast and then we are off on our first jungle hike through a National Reserve. We are told that we don't need to wear our gators tomorrow so I will sleep well tonight. I hope I have dreams of spider monkeys looking down at me from the trees!!! Until tomorrow....