Category Archives: Travel

Rainforest Adventures: Fin and Scale

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One of our special outings in the rainforest was a trip to wade through a Henna tree swamp in search of the elusive Anaconda. Armed with our tall rubber boots, cameras, and hats, we landed the canoe on a muddy clay beach and our guide ran ahead to see if the Anaconda was at home. Our group of 5 strolled slowly, taking in the forest, alert for animal sightings. Several of us were hunkered down talking in hushed voices while observing big Leaf Cutter Ants making mince out of a tree when suddenly another guide came ripping down the trail shouting at his group to hurry up as the Anaconda was waiting. “Hurry! Run!”, he shouted as he whizzed past us.   We shouted to him as he passed, referring  to our current ant observations.  ” Who cares about ants? You can see ants any day! The anaconda is there!”,  he yodeled as he and his group, a flurry of bootless and scantily clad youth, ran heedlessly to the swamp, cameras dangling alarmingly from their necks.

Leaf Cutter Ants marching down their pheromone highway. See them? They are carrying bright green little pieces of leaf.

We emerged at a middle-aged pace from the forest onto the edge of the swamp and  found  20 or so raucous young adults wading through the muddy water with no boots, not even any shoes. That’s right: they were walking barefooted or sandaled through the watery muck. They  grabbed branches willy nilly as they climbed through, giving no thought to what they grabbed. Seriously, haven’t they ever heard of instant death-by-things-underwater; invisible-until-they-grab-you? Didn’t they know there are bugs that can kill you in the rainforest?  Have they never heard of leeches, even? Did they think there was only ONE big snake in that swamp? Have they not grown up watching Animal Planet? Apparently not. Goaded on by their guide, they swung like simians through the trees, leaping from water to branch and then landing with splashes all around within fang’s reach of the giant reptile. Grateful that they had now scared any other living being completely away from our area, I followed more sedately.

Can you find the Anaconda? Another group of people  is approaching the snake from the opposite side of the swamp.

See the snake?

I was having a ‘Get off my lawn, youngster!’ moment as I lamented that we were there to view wildlife, not party, and that surely said life would be more willing to show themselves if we observed the time honored tradition of being a little less wild ourselves in the forest as we communed with nature. Wrong. The anaconda turned out to be less elusive and shy than reputed and the two guides were standing by the beast, who was stretched out in the water in the middle of the Henna trees doing its best imitation of a tree branch. Fortune must protect the young and the ignorant because although many of these people put their cameras actually right up into its face,  the 10 foot snake didn’t bat an eye or even try to eat them. Stupid snake. It could have had the biggest meal of its life, but no. Yours truly climbed onto a limb slightly above the creature to photograph its head, making sure there was always someone younger and more nubile and tender between my humble self and the reptile. Had the snake been hungry, it could afford to be choosey. 

I suspected foul play against the monster. Had it been drugged? Clubbed and stunned?  Seems like any smart animal would have made itself scarce by this time. It was as still as death, but our guide said it was just scared and using its cryptic coloration, the snake equivalent of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, to stay ‘hidden’ (Which it was not. Hidden, that is. We could totally see it.). It did, at first, look like a branch lying in the water. It was so very still that Mike watched  for awhile after people began to disperse, until the snake finally moved and he could tell it lived. I kind of wanted to touch it so I could say I had touched a real anaconda in the wild, but I thought of my mother and gave that idea up.

It was a reptile day as that evening we took the canoe out for a little Caiman Lizard spotting. When I was a small girl I was enchanted with reptiles. That was back in the 1960’s when Caiman Lizards were sold as pets under the guise of ‘baby aligators’. The ’60’s were a dark time for animal rights activists, if there had been such a thing back then. The word ‘baby’ was lost on me in terms of the implication that such animals actually do not stay small. I wanted one. My dad said I could have one. I probably harassed him into promising me one if I would just give him a moment’s peace. Alas, it was a promise he didn’t keep. But I refuse to be bitter about that. Viewing an 8 foot Caiman Lizard from the false safety of our canoe, I realize it’s just as well he didn’t. I recall telling him I could keep the animal in the bathtub. Right. Some days I feel sorry for my parents.

Using a flashlight to reflect off his glowing eyes. This lizard was maybe 6 feet long? 5 feet? 8? Who really knows. It was plenty large.

Here are a couple more reptiles we saw. I’m going to say the baby Parrot Snake we got to play with was a highlight of the trip. So delicate and sweet. I carried him around for awhile, just letting him cling on to my wrist with his tiny tail. He was such a pretty wee thing.

Amazon Thorny Tailed Iguana

Black skinned parrot snake. He was like living jewelry. So delicate and lovely.

Okay, so some people might see that we’ve improved the site a bit. It was looking kind of dated and we wanted to improve people’s ability to navigate between posts, look for posts on certain subjects, etc. We are still uncertain if the email subscribe works as that’s been fairly stubborn. Do us a favor and test it out, if you are not already email subscribed. And let us know what you think about the site usability. After over 5 years of posts, there’s a lot of content here and we hate for it all to get buried. More tweaking and additions to come, and your thoughts and comments are welcome.

I forgot to add the ‘fin’ part of this post. These are the Pink River Dolphins. We shared the river with them for awhile.

Rainforest Adventures: Tree Creatures

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It’s the post everyone has been waiting for, especially the people not so jazzed about rainforest insects. Yes: Monkeys! We saw several species of monkeys, starting at the Planeta Azul hostel where we spent the night before the tour began. We saw Black Mantled Tamarins, Pygmy Marmosets, Yellow Handed Titi Monkeys, Spider Monkeys, Squirrel Monkeys, Monk Saki Monkeys, and Brown Woolly Monkeys. We heard a troop of Howler Monkeys in the distance, but we didn’t get a sighting of them. Our guide had an amazing ability to spot monkeys from a distance in the trees, even when they were not moving around. Such eyes! Wish I had been able to photograph all the monkeys we saw but sometimes the binoculars were the tool of choice.

Black Mantled Tamarin. We hung around in hammocks watching these guys steal bananas (yes, really!) from the outdoor kitchen. 

Black Mantled Tamarin

Part of the Black Mantled Tamarin troop.

Pygmy Marmoset. My personal favorite. These moved very slowly along the branches, as though trying not to call attention to themselves. The Black Mantled Tamarins would chase them when the opportunity came. 

Pygmy Marmoset

It’s a baby Pygmy Marmoset. Squueeeee!

Squirrel Monkey

Squirrel  monkey flying through the air

 

I’m thinking this is Monk Saki Monkey.

 

Rainforest Adventures: Night Creatures

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‘Tonight we walk in the rainforest with flashlights. We will look for insects, reptiles, and amphibians. We will leave in 15 minutes’.  Our guide, Diego, was ready to rumble. We grabbed flashlights, rubber boots, and cameras and cautiously set out into the woods, not really knowing what to expect, but hoping to see something cool. The woods were wet with the day’s heavy rain. The night was black. Night creature noises were everywhere. We took some deep breaths and ventured forth.

A Katydid shaped like a leaf. Size is about 3 inches.

The photos tell the tale of this part of our rainforest adventure. Let’s just say we all went carefully, being mindful not to touch anything before looking.

A cute little frog. 

I cannot even remember what this thing is called. It was huge – 6-7 inches, which, to me, is big enough that it should just go ahead and be a mammal. He was pretty gross, to be clear.

A nice fat toad.

A tiny little tree frog; only about 2 inches long.

We think it’s a moth caterpillar of some kind. Note that the leaf he is on (which is half way eaten by him) is about 10 inches wide. Everything seems big in the rainforest.

Diego picked up this ‘scorpion spider‘, which is actually an insect. I didn’t get too close a look at it because ugh. I was lucky to still be on the forest walk by this time.

Killer “Banana spider”. Apparently this spider is responsible for several deaths per year in the banana fields. I don’t know the Latin name.

Large and interesting caterpillar.

A tarantula, tempted out of her burrow by a twitching stick. She grabbed it pretty fast. We found two of these, skulking in their burrows.

A lucky find, this small praying mantis only a couple of inches long.

A mantis molting. Another lucky find.

A nice little katydid, just a normal size.

The next evening’s activity was Caiman Lizard spotting. We took spotlights out on the lake to look for eyes reflecting in the water. We located a tree boa by shining the light up into the trees that grow in the water. The eyes glow, kind of like spotting raccoons. Then we spotted this guy. He was about 7 feet long. 

When the sun went down in the rainforest, I realized after the first night that I had actually forgotten about something I would have to deal with during this trip. I wrote about my phobia of a certain type of bug in this post on anxiety last year. What’s interesting to me is that I never even thought about these bugs the whole time I was planning this part of the trip. It never occurred to me that cockroaches (YIkes! I actually typed the word!) were ubiquitous in the rainforest. I’m not sure what to think about that. In fact, as knowledgeable as I am about anxiety and phobias, I am confused by this fact.  I literally did not think of it, even though for decades you would not have been able to get me near a place where i knew for sure I would be faced with them. As a rule, I am on alert for them pretty much constantly anywhere south of San Fransisco. That’s not an exaggeration.

I was absolutely fine with never one intrusion into my psyche until I went to our room the first night and there was a rather large ugly one on the curtain. I was absolutely floored. I’m glad to say that while I definitely reacted negatively to it, and Mike did have to dispatch the nasty thing, it didn’t make me want to go home and really made me more angry than anything else. However, after that, I saw them everywhere in the evening, as soon as the sun went down. There are many species. And they all appear to live in the rainforest. One night at dinner, a large one landed on Mike’s back and I almost climbed out of my own skin. I thought I was going to die of complete disgust. It still makes me shudder to think of it, and I will probably live with that image for a long time. But I made myself sit back down at the table and finish dinner. That was very hard, but it just made me furious that such a thing might interfere with my good fun.  I didn’t want to leave because as afraid as I was, I wanted so much to be there and so much to see all the other animals, and even insects, we were seeing. I wasn’t going to let this ruin my time.

Of course, we were many miles out in the middle of nowhere, at least a two hour boat ride from the nearest road. There wasn’t actually anyplace I could go. Phobias are real fun destroyers. Had I not had many tools for handling anxiety at my disposal, including challenging thought patterns, breathing exercises, and anti-anxiety medication, I could have had a pretty bad time in the evenings after that. Those bugs grow really big in the rainforest, and on the night walk I discovered, to my dismay, that they were really common, sitting on lots of leaves. There was one as big as a hamster guarding our bedroom door one evening. Let me tell you this: I’ve made real progress if I can sleep through the night after that.

You’ll note there are no photos of the cockroaches. There. I typed the word again. Cockroaches. Cockroaches. You won’t make me miss out on my life, you disgusting creatures from hell. I wish I could learn to love you. I’m pretty far from that, but at least I’m learning you won’t make me die. Deep, deep breath. Deep, long, slow breath. Stop wringing your hands. Deep, stillness breath.