Hike to Cocococha

Our second day at Explorer's Inn = a hike to Lake Cocococha. It was a > 5 km hike to the lake, and then back again. We stopped at a neat swamp where I took some photos (made a nice composite in Photoshop, too). When we got to Cocococha, we looked for giant river otters, but they were gone by the time we got there (they are early morning creatures). We then went out in boats, and saw hoatzin and howler monkeys, both of which were pretty cool. The people who went out in boats after us did see the river otters - turns out they were hiding behind a little hill near where we saw the hoatzin and monkeys.

Some photos uploaded, but not the pictures of hoatzin or howlers. I'll get to them soon.

Oh yeah, and there's a Scarlet Macaw named Wowie that hangs out at the Explorer's Inn. I think the story is that E.I. had a domestic Blue and Yellow Macaw, and Wowie "fell in love" with it and stuck around, even though he was a wild macaw. The Blue and Yellow Macaw was "eaten by an ocelot" or so the story goes, but Wowie has stuck around... He's kind of violent and doesn't really like people... so if you get too close, he'll bite your fingers/toes. On the other hand, he has walked right into people's cabins before (I've seen photos!) so I don't quite understand him.
Yes, I took plenty of pictures of Wowie. It's not every day you have a wild macaw posing for you.

First Hike

We settled into our cabins and then met for our first hike. Before we even started hiking, some of the people from Explorer's Inn told us that there were monkeys behind the lodge. We checked it out and sure enough there was a group of Saddle-backed Tamarins. They're super small monkeys, and they were hyper and constantly moving, making high-pitched squealing noises as they moved through the trees. I got a few pictures, though the lighting wasn't ideal in any of them.
Hiking in a big group isn't ideal because that many people moving through a forest tends to make a lot of noise. And if there is anything cool in the firs,t the people up front see it first... while the people in the back are oblivious. I got a few pictures of plants and insects, though.
More photos posted.

Getting to Explorer's Inn

The boat ride to Explorer's Inn took 4 hours. And yet I wasn't bored. The vegetation lining the river was what you'd expect - lush, tropical forest - and it was so different from what I'm used to in Canada, I was trying to take it all in. We saw oropendola nests, which was cool. And loads of birds flying around, which I didn't get photos off. There were lots of colourful and conspicuous birds, which was nice. I'm used to boring conspicuous birds, or small colourful secretive birds... so it was nice to be able to SEE brightly-coloured / cool birds. We were always on the look out for cool mammals like capibarras which are the world's largest rodents, but we didn't see any.
When we got to Explorer's Inn, we had to walk up recently made wooden stairs.. which was a little scary. As we were walking the path from the cliff to the lodge, I could hear a really obnoxious bird. I looked around a bit, and up above the path was a Scarlet Macaw, which is only my favourite bird ever, so that was pretty cool.
We got into the lodge and were given some lunch. Peruvian food is weird. Lunch was fried cauliflower (i think) and beets served with mayo on top, among other things... Kyle got my cauliflower, I got his beets. it worked out well. Explorer's Inn really liked their beets with mayo. So weird. OK I'm not going to get into E.I. food, because I think I could waste a whole blog on it.

Yup, more photos posted today.
the picture in this post is 2 macaws I saw within a few minutes of getting to the lodge. These ones are Red-and-green Macaws, not Scarlet Macaws.

Puerto Maldonado

When we landed in Puerto Maldonado, we were ushered to a bus that drove us around the town/city (not sure which is more appropriate). The city was interesting... Very few cars, most people drove around on motor bikes. The rules of traffic were therefore fairly fluid; people would just honk when they wanted to pass you, just so you knew they were there. Because of this, there was a constant ambient noise in the city of "beep beep" or "meep" or "honk" or "kent" or any other varieties of horn. Tons of stray dogs, just wandering the street. It was a bit sad.

We found out that the resort we were going to stay at, Explorer's Inn, had been hit fairly bad by a flood overnight. The stairs leading up the cliff from the boat landing had been completely washed away, and do had the water pump. The only way we would be able to get up to the resort was to climb up the cliff on a rope. Um, yeah, so we stayed in Puerto Maldonado overnight. Steph and Dan (the professors) organized dinner for us with a place down the street. Unfortunately, right around dinner time, it started POURING outside. We're talking heavy Amazon downpours here.... And because we were on the equator, it was dark before 6 anyways. So we're walking down the street, getting soaked from head to toe, in the DARK, trying to find this restaurant. Oh and then we do find it and guess what? There was a power shortage on that block of town. Excellent. Well we got inside and it was all lit by candlelight. It took a while, but eventually we were all prepared dinner - I think their kitchen ran on gas rather than electricity.

What an adventure.

I posted some more photos, this time from Puerto Maldonado. I was still being reserved with my photo-taking because I didn't want to run out of batteries. Once I got to Explorer's Inn, however, I started taking more.

The bird photo is a fledgling Silver-Blue Tanager. It was on the sidewalk we were walking on, and the parents were going nuts. It couldn't fly yet, so it just sort of flapped and ran away. I was scared it was going to get hurt....

From the Plane

More Peru photos posted. This time it's the photos from the plane. After our long stopover in Lima, we flew to Cusco, then directly to Puerto Maldonado (which is down in the Amazon basin). Cusco looked awesome from above, and I caught a few photos of it. The mountains themselves were different from what I'm used to (i.e.: the Rockies). They seem... softer, somehow.

Airports

I've started posting my pictures from Peru. I took well over 1300 photos, and I deleted many of them while they were still on the camera. I downloaded 1,135 photos on Sunday... I started uploading them today, but I won't upload them all at once.

Today I uploaded three photos, from the two airports we were in on the way to Puerto Maldonado.

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