Tambopata River near the Explorers' Inn
After two days further up the river at the big clay licks more easily reachable from Collpas Tambopata Inn, we settled back into our rooms at the Explorer's Inn.
During the next two days we took two trips out to Lago Cocochoca, one of the big attractions in the Tambopata National Reserve. The lake is part of an abandoned oxbow of the Tambopata river, so it's close enough to hike to from the lodge. It's a small body of water, but quiet and full of interesting wildlife.
On our first excursion, we traveled around the lake in a large dougout canoe, paddled with a "normal" canoe paddle by a boatman in the stern. Ram sat in the bow of the canoe; it was just wide enough for him to set up his tripod.
There were more of us on our second trip, and on that occasion we used a catamaran made by putting a deck across two canoes and propelled by a large sculling oar manned by the boatman. The sculling oar had an extra lever on the top which allowed the boatman to both push and tilt the oar.
One of the big attractions at Lake Cocochoca are the Giant Otters (Pteronura brasilliensis). It is the largest otter in the world, growing up to 1.8m (6 ft) in length. It is found only in the Amazon, the Orinoco, and the La Plata river systems. That said, those three river systems cover the vast majority of the eastern slope of South America — and that represents the majority of the whole continent.
We saw the otters on both occasions. They were playful and somewhat shy, but we did finally get some nice views of them.
One of the stranger and more colorful birds around the lake is the Hoatzin. Hoatzins nest over water; the young can swim, and may drop into the lake when threatened. The nestlings have a claw on their wings to help climb back out of the water into their nest; the claw is missing in the adult.
On both trips we quietly worked our way around the lake, and were rewarded with a number of cool birds.
On the hike to and from the lake we saw some cool butterflies and a number of cool bugs, as well as some other birds. One of the bugs had huge antennae, something like 10 cm or more.
We spent some time one afternoon at a local farm. We didn't see a whole lot of birds, but we did find a few.
Because it was the dry season, the Tambopata river is very low; I'm guessing it was about 10m (33ft) below the level of the surrounding land, which is flat as far as the eye can see. One of the first things I noticed when I climbed up the bank from the river was watermarks on the trees, about 1.5m up the trunks. It stopped me short — if that is a high water mark... I turned around and looked out across a huge expanse of absolutely flat land. We were thousands of kilometers from the sea, and there was nothing to stop the water from flowing out other than friction. What a downpour of water it must take to back up enough to flood these lands!
They were in the middle of harvesting maize when we were there. We came into a clearing where a number of workers were standing around with some large piles of cut cornstalks and a small pile of shucked corn. Nearby I noticed a couple of chainsaws sitting on the ground. Now that's a serious corn-cutter!
There were trees whose roots started above the ground and went down tipi like. They're called a walking palm, for obvious reasons. The function of the roots is not well understood and is still being debated.
One evening we went out on the river looking for Spectacled Caimans. I was thinking big ones, but all we saw were babies; it was a disappointment.
We also took a walk looking for critters; we didn't see much but did find a Ladder-Tailed Nightjar.
There are some smaller clay licks near the Explorer's Inn, and we spent mornings there. We saw quite a few different species at these licks. On our way up to the licks we came across some Capybaras, with Giant cowbirds picking something off them.
The licks had more smaller parrots and only occasionally one of the large macaws that we saw at the lick up by Collpas Lodge; but there were quite a few of the smaller chestnut-fronted macaws.
While birds often flew onto a lick in small numbers, if they were ever disturbed they left en masse. It was a spectacular cloud of color when they did.
There was a small flake of clay standing off to the side of one of the licks; it was about to be crowded out by vegetation. The small parrots and parakeets seemed to be comfortable there, but the larger macaws did not.
We had some good conversations with our guide, Victor, in the evenings at dinner. At some point I asked him what the largest snake he had ever seen was. And he said...
He worked at one of the big mines before becoming a guide. When he was working at the mine, one day they noticed there were a lot of small animal tracks going into this hole in the ground... but there weren't any coming out. They investigated the hole and discovered the entire opening was the mouth of a snake. There was a snake inside, with its mouth open at the entrance. They fetched the foreman and showed him; he got a rifle and shot it. I'm not sure what happens when you shoot a small bullet down the throat of a big snake that is in a hole. If it isn't a straight hole, wouldn't the bullet just come out the side of the snake? Couldn't it do that without hitting any vital organs? Anyway... the snake died at some point, and when they dug it up / pulled it out of the hole it was ... huge. Victor said it was an Anaconda 14 meters long — that's 46 feet. Yikes! However, that's longer than the world record, so I suspect something isn't right in Victor's telling of the story... or it didn't get reported.
Somewhere in there Victor told us about his bus accident; maybe that's how he ended up not working at the mine anymore. He was going home for the holidays on a long bus ride. Some of the roads in Peru are pretty dangerous, with no guard rails and steep drop-offs. The bus had been going for a long time, and the driver was tired. He stopped the bus and told the people there was a very dangerous stretch of road ahead, and he was afraid he would fall asleep. He wanted to stop and rest for a while. Victor agreed with him, but most of the people on the bus didn't want him to stop, so he continued. It was night, and dark, and he drove off the road. The bus rolled down into a river, and all but three people died. Victor had broken a lot of bones and was bleeding badly, but was alive. He managed to crawl out of the bus and river and up to the road where he managed to flag down a motorist who took him in to a hospital. It was pretty scary just hearing him tell it.
At the lodge and in the vicinity of the licks, we saw a good number of other birds besides parrots and macaws.
We found quite a few of what we thought were butterflies, which in fact are birdwing moths. This particular one was the Green-banded Urania.
One of the coolest butterflies we found had "antennae" on it's rear-end that it could wiggle. What a great decoy! It might get away with only a small bite out of a wing instead of a lost head! In trying to identify it, I discovered there are a zillion different species of similar butterflies, most in the family Lycaenidae.
Then there was this really crazy looking thing. It looked like a scrunched up origami thing.
We found a neat little bat hanging from the ceiling of a shelter for a sign. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to even start looking for what kind of bat it was. There are some 1200+ species world-wide; this article narrows the 122 species known in Peru as of 1978 down by region, showing 93 in the Amazonian lowlands below 650 m. That doesn't help much... Anyway, it was a neat little guy and we didn't want to disturb it, so we wandered on.
In between excursions, we wandered around some of the trails by the lodge. We saw some fairly common and some unexpected stuff.
I forgot to check if the flowers below were epiphytes or the tree itself. They kind of look like they are part of the actual tree. If so, that would be particularly cool.
Much to our surprise, there was a Three-toed Sloth hanging around the lodge one morning. Even more surprising, it moved, fairly rapidly. The only picture I got of it was a blob hidden in some foliage, so it doesn't look like much. We also saw a Two-toes Sloth.
After a week of hot, muggy birding and other critter-ing, we headed back to Puerto Maldonado.
On the way down the river we saw a few more birds, but they were high up and far away.
When wandering around town, we saw a pretty crazy fish monster for sale in a curio shop.
Victor took us to a local restaurant to get a bite to eat before we headed to the airport. There was a crude map of the region near the restaurant, along with a map of South America showing the Amazon basin. It was roped off for construction and someone got mad at me when I tried to go over there to take a picture of it.
Inside the resaturant there was a display of labelled local produce. For our meal, we sampled a number of things; some were good, some ok, and some not so good... but the display was nice.
Then it was off to the airport and the long flights home.
