Pacaya and El Dorado Rivers
Last night we navigated along steadily upriver against the current until shortly after midnight and reached our most distant tie-up on spot on the Ucayali River. Captain Remigio tells me that we have thus far travelled 166 miles and have navigated for 25 hours and 15 minutes to reach the mouth of the Pacaya River near the village of Bretaña! Our optional “knock-knock” came early, at 0530, and the first skiff headed up the Pacaya with naturalist Juan Luis in search of whatever sort of rain forest inhabitants we could find…and we found a lot! Immediately we saw both gray and pink dolphins, two sloths, and four large green iguanas draped along tree branches.
As we motored under pleasantly cool and cloudy skies, we passed a total of at least six troops of squirrel monkeys. One group was mixed with brown capuchin monkeys but we only heard them and never saw them; when disturbed they are too smart to move around. We identified three species of macaws that flew across the river and got many very close looks at the loud horned screamers. Juan Luis showed us the large and lovely Victoria regia Amazon water lily. We turned our outboard off and could hear two troops of howler monkeys having an “audio battle” in the distance. But my personal highlight this morning was a great view of a darling little ferruginous pygmy owl—a species very rarely seen.
We met up with our second skiff of Amazon explorers for a fun breakfast of fruit, and yuca and sweet potato bread sandwiches, which were served to us by our white-gloved guides and our bartender Christian as we floated under Kapok trees. While we ate we were serenaded by the rowdy cries of parrots and screamers. This second boat of travelers had seen much wildlife also on their river ride; monk sakis and very close squirrel monkeys were the most exciting.
After breakfast we continued up the river and taking one of our famous short-cuts again proved to be interesting. We had to battle through a swampy area clogged with water plants and skiff driver Primo towed our boat, which was Captained by young Miguel. A good sized tarantula (Reny identified it as a female pink-toed tarantula) jumped on Primo’s skiff and he fearlessly captured it so we could get photographs. We then released the big hairy spider back into the rain forest where she belongs.
When we reached the lake we went for a welcome swim; by now the sun was out and we were glad to jump into the cool blackwater. We soon headed downstream and back to the boat. Just before lunch naturalist Juan Luis gave us an interesting talk titled: “Growing up in the Amazon rain forest.” We navigated during lunch and siesta, updated our wildlife list with naturalist Reny and were out again in the skiffs by 1600. Some of us went kayaking and then joined the rest of us on skiff rides, and we are still finding new species! A giant potoo was spotted; some saw their first colorful blue and yellow macaws, and we motored back to the boat with a complete rainbow adorning the darkening sky.
