Buen Peru Village July 8, 2017
I woke to a superb sunrise again by the river, and again to the sounds of the roosters. Mornings were a good opportunity for time lapse video and I recorded some nice sounds of the forest. I wandered the area for hours on my own capturing moments with no consideration for time or schedule. I started to forget what day it was and with no internet, I was no longer a hostage to social media or email. It was a nice feeling and one we should all discover at some stage in our busy lives. If only I could share it with my family.
It was time to leave the village for a remote camp deeper into the jungle, called Colpa II. The people have been so friendly here, but we may return to stock up with supplies. It was going to be a 5 hour boat ride upstream but after 30 minutes we started turning back to the Village. Dennis forgot the chickens which the kids gave us for our journey. After returning to pick up our dinner, we carried them alive in the back of the boat for the entire trip where our feathered friends were ‘taken care of’ at camp.
Again , the river didn’t disappoint. If there was ever 5 hours of enjoyable travel, this was it. Everywhere one looked, there was wildlife and huge rain forest trees; pink dolphins; thousands of butterflies flying above the water and on the boat; birds like Kingfishers, big birds like eagle, vulture, macaw and the famous toucan. The macaw often fly over in pairs and you can first hear them feeding in the trees before they take off overhead. We even saw a family of Capybara which is a large herbivorous animal and the largest rodent in the world, partly related to a guinea pig. The drone footage shows this river is so little yet such an important habitat for the wildlife. It is also the source of life for the native people.
Yellow Blue Macaw
Capybara
Once we arrived, it was time to set up camp and our guides Amarndo, Sergio and Hernan showed us how to make a shelter from the trees. Just using their machetes, they cleared an area for 4 tents from dense jungle in 15minutes - incredible. We used the larger trees for poles & crossbar, tied them together with vine and the smaller trees for side pegs and the stringy rope like bark tied the tarp to the pegs. Genius. And finally we cut down palm leaves for the base, to keep the tents off the damp rain forest mulch. The natives normally use palm leaves for the roof, but we were fortunate enough to have a tarp.
Sergio later showed Kane how to make a fishing rod from the trees and by partly burning it and cleaning the bark, it gives it a nice bend with perfect strength.
We hiked later in the afternoon for 2 hours to visit a clay mineral deposit where Tapir go to feed. Along the way Hernan heard some monkeys close by. It was incredible to have the opportunity to film a Red Faced Monkey, in the wild, and I managed to capture video of one male high in the trees, from a safe distance as to not scare them off, but still see them through my lens. We didn’t manage to spot Tapir that night, I think we scared them off with noise and being a large group of people wearing strong smelling DEET! But on the night walk back to camp, we found several frogs, interesting toads, a coral snake and a local possum like creature, just using our head torches. The natives can hear the animals clearly, they have such a strong connection to the jungle, much like our Aborigines and the outback.
Weird Toad
It was our first night sleeping under the canopy of the jungle and that was what I had been looking forward to the most. Listening to the chorus of insects, birds, monkey and other mammals, in stereo is unforgettable. It didn’t disappoint and to top it off, I filmed the full moon rising through the palm trees in a sky full of stars. You could write a song about it.......not a bad day really!
