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.

Third Day: Ready to go

A rainbow over the Amazon, outside our hotel in Iquitos.

In front of the Casa Moray in Iquitos, ready to go up the Amazon!

Second Day: Iquitos

June 28

This morning I flew over the Andes Mountains and landed in the rainforest. From the plane I could see how dry and brown the western slopes of the Andes are. Then we flew over tall peaks, some with snow on them (it's winter right now south of the equator) and all of a sudden I could see green below us, and a small brown ribbon, a river, that got bigger and bigger as it flowed down from the mountains. Many of the rivers are brown with sediment eroded and washed downstream.

The Amazon River travels over 4,000 miles and carries the most water of any river in the world. Over 1,100 smaller rivers feed into the Amazon, and when it reaches the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil, it discharges 4,500,000,000 gallons of water every day into the sea. You can see the muddy Amazon water up to sixty miles out to sea from the air. 

Here are some images of the Amazon River watershed taken by satellite. (from Earth Snapshot)

The mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. Muddy water from the river spreads out into the ocean.

Rivers of brown water flowing across the rainforests of Peru to the Amazon River.

First Day: Lima, Peru

June 27

I am spending the day in Peru's capital city of Lima, near the Pacific coast, and traveling tomorrow to Iquitos where I meet the rest of the group. Even though they are in the same country, they are very different places. Lima is a huge sprawling city where it hardly ever rains, home to over 8 million people (the size of New York City), while Iquitos (half the size of Lawrence) is in the middle of the rainforest, the largest city in the world you cannot drive to by car. The only access to the world outside is by plane or boat.

I am practicing my espanol, especially "no gracias" to the many people trying to sell tourist maps or change foreign money on the street, my blond hair makes it hard to blend in with the locals.

Packing

I am leaving today, and have almost finished packing. Here are some items I am bringing:

 In the top left picture you can see my passport and immunization card.  I had immunizations (shots) to protect me from yellow fever and other diseases. I am bringing a journal and colored pencils so I can record my observations both with words and pictures. I also have a wildlife guide to the Amazon so I can figure out the names of the animals I am seeing.

In the top right picture you can see my first aid kit, my sunblock, insect repellant, and the biodegradable soap I have so I won't pollute the river when I take a shower. I also have a swiss army knife, and a mosquito net for my head in the small green pouch in case the bugs get really bad. In the rainforest, mosquitoes can carry several diseases, so I need to protect myself from being bitten.

In the bottom picture are my rubber boots to wear when walking on land in the rainforest to protect from snake bites. I am also bringing a pair of binoculars to see animals from far away, and a sunhat. The green machine you see is a bat detector which I will use at night to find bats. It turns their echolocation calls into a call our human ears can hear. I also have a flashlight with a red light to count caimans (a cousin to alligators) by seeing their eyes shining from the bank at night.