My Journal

My attempt at a pink river dolphin, which are rather gray on top.

A blue and yellow macaw flying.

I have my students keep a science journal during the year, and often I talk about observation and have them carefully sketch or draw something they are observing. I often hear from them about how bad they are at drawing, but I make them do it anyway. I decided to draw myself while on the trip, because I also secretly believe I'm bad at drawing. So here are my results. I was observing some drawings of wildlife and copied them in my journal.

Ninth Day: Last Day in the Amazon

July 5

Sunset on our last night on the boat. My hair got very frizzy!

We docked after lunchtime back at Nauta, and we are all off to the airport. It was an amazing trip. So many animals that I had never seen before! I am also glad I was part of the research study to make sure that this part of the Amazon rainforest is healthy for all the animals and plants that live there. Maybe someday I can return.

Note: Most of the animal pictures in this blog are from the web, but are as accurate as possible. It is hard to get good animal photos in the wild!

Eighth Day: Back Down River and the Pueblo of Bolivar

July 4:

We had a last chance to look for macaws early in the morning, on the small boat at 5:30 a.m., and then headed back down river to our journey's end. We saw about 160 macaws flying over, glad to know the rainforest here is very healthy. Here we are in our boat ready to head out, binoculars ready!

The pueblo of Bolivar with its houses on stilts so they don't flood when the river does.

All the people sleep in hammocks to keep dry and keep off the insects. That tv might be attached to a satellite dish, which is the only way to get any stations.

Their one room schoolhouse has very few supplies and a few posters on the wall.

The school has a few tables and some chairs, that's about it.

Mis amigos in Bolivar.

In the afternoon we docked for a while at the small pueblo of Bolivar, with about 25 families of Cocama Indians living on the edge of the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve. These native people have the right to go into the reserve to hunt and fish certain animals that are not endangered, peccaries (wild pigs),  tapir, the red bracket deer, and various kinds of fish. They live in very simple huts with thatched roofs made of palm leaves. We brought some school supplies and small gifts for the children which made them very excited.

Seventh Night: Finding Caiman by the Gleam in their Eyes

July 3 - Evening

Caiman is probably terrified, but we let him go after a short time.

Tonight we are on a boat with a very bright spotlight to find caiman along the banks of the river, especially where there are vines hanging down into the water providing good hiding places. We find the caiman because their eyes shine red in the light, then we move closer to take data on their size and where they are located.

We take a small caiman on board with us, the biologist tapes up its nose, then we can touch them and take a picture. We also take data of course, measurements and weigh them, this caiman was pretty small, the largest we saw was 2.5 meters long. Caiman are another way to tell if the river is healthy. Lots of caiman means there is lots of fish to eat. Piranha, yum!

Victoria, a journalist from Scotland, gets ready to measure the caiman.

Seventh Day: Fishing for Piranha

July 3

Redbelly Piranha, we caught a lot of these fish.

Today is our last full day here, and I decide to go fishing in the morning, then hunting for caiman at night. We set up a long fishing net like the native people do, then try line fishing with just a stick, line and hook with bait. We try chicken first, then fish...and most everyone catches something (except me), usually piranha! You have to wear closed toe shoes to go fishing because sometimes the fish come off the line before getting put in the fish bucket and those little teeth are very sharp!

Watch out for those teeth! Carnivores, definitely.

Everywhere you look there are tons of little fish!

Juan Senior catches a large catfish for our dinner with a spear.

Sixth Night: Catching Bats!

July 2 - Evening
After a day of dolphins it was a hot, buggy evening with bats, but worth it! After dinner on the Ayapua, I put on my rubber boots again, doused myself with bug spray, and hiked through the rainforest at night to check mist nets where two scientists were catching bats. The biologist in charge, Gabriel, didn't speak much English, but I managed to speak enough Espanol to find out a few things from him. Most of the bats we caught were omnivores, they ate both insects and fruit, whatever they can find. In New England, our local bats are carnivores, they only eat insects..

We caught one tiny bat that eats only small fruit, an herbivore, it was mostly a bright yellow color...looked something like these bats living under a tree leaf (we are looking up at them hanging upside down). They have big ears to locate their prey by echolocation, using their voice to bounce off the insects so they can catch and eat them.

Some of our group ready for night exploring!

Roberto who knows most animals here by their call before even seeing them.

The full moon rises over the trees.

Of course we were taking data on these bats. Gabriel weighed them inside a little cloth bag to calm them down, then measured their wings, aged them by looking at their wing joints, sexed them, figured out their species, then let them flutter off. He is doing a study on the kinds of bats he finds in 5 different habitats in the Amazon. This means he is working every night in the buggy, steamy rainforest for 10 weeks catching bat after bat after bat, sometimes until 2:00 a.m! He had been working for 4 weeks so far and had caught over 430 bats! He clips a little bit of the hair on their back before letting them go so he will know if he has already caught a particular bat or not.

Sixth Day: River Dolphins!

July 2

Gray River Dolphins coming up for air.

Pink River Dolphins are heavier than Grays with a smaller fin on their back.

This morning we counted river dolphins! The Amazon rainforest is home to two kinds of freshwater dolphins, both pink and gray. The pink dolphin is kind of gray on top too so you have to be careful when you are trying to identify which one you are seeing. This river and the surrounding area has the most river dolphins in the world.

We are heading up river 5 kilometers, then drifting quietly downstream to see how many we see. As usual, we are ready with our clipboard and data sheet. Dolphins eat a lot of fish, so they are another indicator species, a sign that the river is healthy. We see about 16 dolphins, who seem to be feeding. Ever so often, a flipper or a nose comes out of the water. They are mostly pink dolphins, who rarely jump out of the water. The gray dolphins are more active and have a larger dorsal fin sticking out of their back.

We see the dolphins all the time as we are relaxing on the boat between animal counts, I think they are my favorite animal in the Amazon.

Fifth Day: Into the Rainforest

July 1

Huge trees have large supports at the roots to keep them upright called buttresses

It is often shady on the ground in a rainforest, tall trees grab all the sunlight.

Up early to do a "terrestrial transect", which means putting on rubber boots and slogging along a trail through the mucky mud to see if we can find any land animals. I'm down to breakfast at 6:30 a.m. and off with Tony, the biologist who knows all about mammals here, Juan, a native, who is good at spotting the animals, and Chris, another volunteer. We have a clipboard with our data sheet and when we find animals we record the time we saw them, how far from the trail they were, what they were doing, and how many there are. We hike 3 kilometers in all.

A family of ring-tailed coati, cousins to raccoon

I am well prepared with a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, rubber boots, a walking stick so I don't slip, lots of bug spray, and lots of water. It is hot and sticky, but that is to be expected as we are almost on the equator. We see several kinds of monkeys and hear some howler monkeys in the distance making strange noises. We hear a noise in some trees and go investigate. One by one, a whole huge family of 20 coatis make their way from high in the canopy to the ground, crashing onto branches and grunting and snorting at each other. I am lucky to see them, not many people do.

Note: the wildlife pictures on this blog were not taken by me since it is hard to photograph wildlife well.

Black-faced spider monkey up high in a tre

In the afternoon I am on a small boat counting macaws as they fly from the fruit trees they have been feeding on all day, back to the trees where they sleep for the night, their roost trees. We have our clip board again, and stop seven times along the river every 500 meters, to count the number of birds that fly overhead in 15 minutes. Along the way we see lots of pink and gray river dolphins, I will be counting them tomorrow.

Macaws are important "indicator species", which means they show how healthy the rainforest is. We know this area is healthy because we counted a lot of macaws every day. If there is not enough fruit on trees for them, they would just fly somewhere else.

Blue and yellow macaws fly overhead, one afternoon we counted 350 macaws in total!

Fourth Day: Flooded Forest

6/30

Sunset our first night on board the Ayapuya, still on the Maranon River.

Flooded forest on the Samaria, with a high flood mark from earlier in the year.

In the late afternoon, we are finally at our spot on the Samaria River, in the middle of the flooded forest.  Every year from December to April there is a lot of rain in the Andes Mountains, which runs down from the peaks into many rivers into the Amazon Rainforest. There is so much rain that the water rises over the riverbanks and floods the land round, creating the flooded forest habitat. This is one of the best places in the world to study animals, and our research starts tomorrow!









 It is a great feeling to be out of touch without cellphones, email or internet for several days. We are in one of the wildest areas in the world, and the amount of wildlife is amazing. We will be counting several species each day, including macaws, caimans, river dolphins, and monkeys.

Third Day: Up River

June 29

This morning we drove up the only road out of Iquitos to Nauta, up the Amazon river, about an hour and a half by bus where the road ends. Nauta is just above where two rivers join to become the mighty Amazon. There we boarded an historic steamboat, the Ayapua, and continued traveling upriver. Over one hundred years ago, this area was known for its wild rubber trees, which were tapped for their sticky sap, the sap heated and made into large balls of rubber, then shipped downriver to the US and Europe where it was much in demand for tires on that new invention, the automobile. Some people became very rich, and built beautiful boats like this one to collect and carry the rubber out of the rainforest. 

Just before we board the Ayapuya in Nauta and begin our expedition.

The Maranon River which joins the Ucayali River and forms the Amazon.

A young local boy plays with old video tape as our group (with backpacks) wait to get on board.

A small ball of natural rubber

The dining room on the Ayapuya

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I have a small cabin onboard where I sleep, and we all eat together in the dining room, or listen to Richard, the scientist who is in charge of our expedition, talk about the animals found here and the research we will be helping with. We are making slow progress upstream against the river current, and won't reach our destination, deep in the heart of the rainforest, until the end of the day tomorrow.