Jungle Jungle Everywhere

11 days in the South American amazon has gone by so fast. This place is incredible and a complete contrast to anywhere I’ve ever been. Ants the size of frogs, fungus that inhibits then grotesquely kills its host and incredibly powerful thunderstorms.

Im staying at explorers Inn on which is on Tampobata river where it meets La Torre stream. I’m working as a Resident Naturalist (RN) which entails: working with the researchers on their projects, being knowledgeable of the jungle and its flora and fauna, socialising and answering tourists questions  making them feel comfortable during their stay, surveys and monitoring of various animals in the Tambopata nation reserve including caiman and giant otters, setting up individual research projects and general work that needs doing around the lodge and on the trails (that means machete time J)

The days are pretty long here but you get fed pretty well, breakfast is at 6.30 which includes juice toast egg and fruit,  lunch at 1.30 starter salad/veg, main meat and rice dessert some sort of fruit and dinner is at 8 starter soup, main rice/pasta with meat and dessert something sweet. With the heat, humidity and the amount of walking during the day it’s amazing how hungry you get.

Owl moth 

In this short amount of time that I’ve been at Explorers Inn I have managed to see some incredible animals. On the boat ride from Puerto Maldonardo airport to the lodge there were capybara chilling out on a sandy part along Tampobata  river, which is a realy good sign, then in the evening I joined some tourist on a caiman search where we managed to spotted a handful of white caiman along the river.

     

cat prints 

There is a local pink toed tarantula that lives in the RN’s bungalow behind some books on the bookshelf there’s also another pink toed tarantula that can be seen every evening on one of the tourist bungalows which is quite cute for an arachnid. Also on a morning walk on Jo Hannah and myself during one of the first couple of days being at the lodge we spotted a pure blond Tamandua which is like a small anteater it was so adorable just happily bumbling away on the forest floor blissfully unaware of human presents, we’ve also spotted red broket deer, red tree squirrels a snake lots of odd looking spiders and insect including a very poisonous golden orb spider.   During many walks along the trails iv spotted squirrel monkeys and capuchin monkeys together jumping around in the trees. Capuchin monkeys are just as curious of you as you are of them, their appearance is oddly human.  Went on a night walk with some tourist and a jhordy one of the guides and he spotted a bicolourd porcupine chilling in a tree above our heads amazing find as it’s a rare mammal sighting.

curious Capuchin monkey

Unfortunaly for me the mosquitoes seem to be taking a liking to my face so far iv had 8 bites just on my face alone and woke up one morning with a swollen eye it was only about for a couple days thankfully. and iv already managed to catch two large ticks lucky a guide christian knows how to deal with them and just whipped it out. egh gross little blood suckers.

hard day at work

Taken a trip to Puerto Maldonado for a couple of days to get to know the area and to get some supplies, it’s a chilled town but really comes to life at night, it’s a Sunday evening and the main square has just come to life. Also you don’t particularly get cars here every one drives motorbikes. If you want a taxi you jump on the back of a motorbike or if theres a few of you jump on a tuktuk type things which is essentially just a three wheeled motorbike. Really  awesome.