Rio Dorado and Atun Poza
There are not many places in the world where you can set out on a skiff ride and see 55 species of birds in just a few hours. This morning, however, we did just that. With the luxury of an extra half hour of sleep, we set out bright-eyed at the civilized hour of 6:30 to explore the Rio Dorado and found our gold in many forms: sloths perched in a cecropia, bare of interfering leaves; beautiful views of plum-throated cotingas that were such a bright and brilliant blue they seemed to glow from within; trees missing their own leaves but crowned instead with bromeliads on every branch.
The Rio Dorado is a black-water river, and it flows slowly. Now, at high water season, it has risen up around the forest. We took our skiffs into thickets and groves of trees and, there, followed the chuffing calls of that most iconic of all Amazon birds, the hoatzin. Our patience and attention was rewarded. While at first obscured by leaves, in time, these crazy-crested leaf-eating archaeopteryx-like birds flew into view. “Flew” might sound more graceful than the actual motion of this bird, because some of its flight muscles have been displaced by the large crop that allows hoatzins to digest the leaves that make up their unusual diet. The birds flapped and thudded onto branches, peered around, and generally rustled about.
In the same area, we were able to get good views of another strange bird, the great potoo, which hunkers down during the day, staying very still and avoiding predation not by tucking into a tree cavity but by blending in so well with its perch that it looks, for all the world, like a stump. Perhaps not exciting to watch a stump… but to know that stump is a bird changes everything.
We made our way deeper into Rio Dorado, enjoying the sounds of horned screamers and macaws, and when one pair of blue-and-yellow macaws passed above us, the guides got quite excited – one of them was tailless! That itself might not thrill, but another tail-less macaw was seen two weeks ago in a different tributary of the Ucayali, and when we got back and compared photos, it seems almost certain it was the exact same bird. What is the likelihood? We all wondered that in this rich and populous forest the same bird might be encountered twice as it passed overhead, and, beyond that, captured on film.
Before re-boarding the Delfin II and enjoying a well-deserved breakfast, we took the skiffs into some still water where the giant Victoria water lily was in full flower. The white/pink blooms of this impressive plant do not last long, and we felt lucky to see one in gorgeous condition. Soon, monkeys distracted us from the huge lily pads—brown capuchins, to be exact. We forge our way into the underbrush for a look, and then our minds, slowly but surely, turned to cappuccino. Coffee. Breakfast. And we returned to the ship.
We traveled further up the Ucayali over the midday hours, comparing sighting notes and learning from Adonai how to make the delicious leaf-wrapped juanes that we then ate for lunch. In the afternoon, we tied up near Atun Poza and set out in skiffs to investigate.
Atun Poza can be summed up in one word: wow. This small offshoot of the Canal de Puinahua, which is a sidebar to the Ucayali, is an exciting stop. Before this, we had not really been to an Amazonian lake. To understand what this means, erase all ideas of “lake.” Really, this is an open spot covered in shifting pieces of floating vegetation, and studded with shrubs and tree snags loaded with bromeliads and orchids. The list of what we saw is too long to begin, but highlights were the hoatzins chuffing from tree to tree and an ever-growing assemblage of snail kites. Three, seven in a tree, 12 nearby, then 28 circling in the distance. We even got to see one of these amazing birds soar overhead with a large snail in its sharply-hooked bill.
One of the great surprises of travel is to be caught by something completely unanticipated. This afternoon at Atun Poza, we stopped to watch a gang of squirrel monkeys (amazing, amazing), and that allowed us views of a hummingbird on its tiny, lichen-studded nest. Of course, we knew that the tropics were a hotbed of hummingbirds, but to see one of these on its nest while squirrel monkeys foraged nearby? Completely unexpected.
After a shower and dinner, we set off once more to see Atun Poza at night. The rain that threatened all day was making itself known in a gentle shower, but that didn’t deter us. We set off into the Amazonian night, ready to see what it might offer. Frogs, caimans, and even a small tree boa on a flooded branch were picked up by the guides with their spotlights. At last, the full day caught up with us, and we returned to the Delfin II, ready to tuck in, recharge, and rise again for tomorrow.
