Wildlife Wilderness

What a day! The amazon proved to be everything a wildlife lover would hope it would be. The problem with the rainforest is that while it is full of life the denseness of it means that an animal could be very close to you but you may never see it due to the thick foliage. Luckily for us this was not the case.

We started with an early morning which led into a walk, a boat ride, and another walk all of which led us to a lake. We took a barge very slowly around this beautiful lake in the hopes of spotting some animals. We succeeded. First we came across a rather rare breed of caiman, which is a relative of the alligator. After him came the birds. There were many wonderful and tropical breeds of birds the names of which I'm sure I can't remember but take my word for it, they were exceptional. We then crossed the lake and tried our hand at piranha fishing. Josh was the only one who had any luck, of which he had a lot since he ended up reeling in three of them. It was great to see them in the flesh and they are as vicious and as impressive as they seem. We then went back across the lake in the hopes of spotting some rare giant otters. Amazingly it wasn't long until we did indeed spot them! This rarity was made more special when our guide, who had been working in the amazon for years, told us he had only seen them around ten times. We then headed back to the camp. On the way our guide found a tarantula's home, and with the aid of a small stick managed to get the owner to come out and say hello. It was something not for the arachnophobic but in my opinion was very impressive.

Our next voyage into the wild led us to a clay lick which is a wall of clay that many birds, namely macaws, visit and lick in order to relieve themselves of toxin build ups that come from the food they eat. We hid behind a camouflaged hut and were able to get a great view of all the macaws, stunned by their size and beauty.

The day ended with one final foray into the wildness this time at night. This was to spot frogs, snakes and spiders. Our guide did a great job of leading us all as the amazon at night is a intimidating and confusing place. We all got some excellent shots like the one you see above and given the rest of the things we saw today I'm sure you can understand the level of difficulty I had in choosing today's blip. A problem I'm happy to have.

- Damian