Over a three course lunch in the open-air dining room, Julio, our guide, explained our plans for the next three days. Our first chance to explore would be around 3 in the afternoon in a small canoe. He then walked us around the jungle camp, showing us the butterfly-house and the rest of the facilities. Finally, we were taken to our room out in the jungle. Most of the rooms are 2 roomed, thatched-roofed bungalows, and ours, number 21, was the last in a row of bungalows. The lodge can has 26 rooms with facilities for 52 guests, so it was pretty quiet.
The en-suite room had no windows, just insect screens. It also had a balcony, complete with a hammock, which looked out into the jungle. The room also had one unusual feature, a humidity box. This box was for cameras and electrical items to prevent them getting damp in the very high humidity.
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| Smooth-billed Anis |
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| Red-Capped Cardinal |
Before our boat trip, we walked out to the sun-deck where lots of noisy Yellow-Rumped Caciques were nesting in a palm-tree. In the nearby trees we also saw Tropical King Birds, Greater Anis, Smooth-Billed Anis and Red Capped Cardinals. Also to be seen and heard were Oropendolas that build very long hanging nests to avoid predation by monkeys. They had a very loud, unusual and obvious call that sounded like a drop of water falling into a pond. We saw many of these birds during our stay.
We then got into our canoe with John and Rita, a couple from Hinckley, that formed our small group along with Julio our Ecuadorian guide and Jaime, our indiginous native assistant guide.
We were slowly paddled back across the Pilchicocha lake toward what looked like inpenetrable jungle only to find a very small waterway hidden between the trees. These waterways, often only a couple of feet wide and surrounded by jungle, were to become quite familiar to us during our visit. Right at the entrance to the waterway, we came across a night-heron camouflaging itself in a semi-collapsed tree, we managed not to disturb it.
Only a few yards further into the jungle, Jaime (who only spoke Spanish and Quechua or Kichwa) spotted something in a tree just above us. After quietly manoeuvring the canoe we were treated to the sight of a three-toed sloth dozing in a tree just a few yards away. It was very well hidden, and true to its name, it slowly turned its head to look at us before turning back to more important things, sleep. Both Julio and Jaime were suprised to see the sloth so close to the lodge, what a start to our visit.
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| Three-toed Sloth |
After heading back to the lodge, we relaxed in our room until dinner time. We headed down to the dining room and the bar located about where we quenched our thirst with a pre-dinner beer. John and Rita joined us. Diner was at 1930 and we discovered that we had soup, salad, a main-course and sweet to eat, this set the scene for all our meals at the lodge. The food was delicious and during the meal I discovered that John used to be a language teacher at RAF North Luffenham - what an amazing coincidence. We had many mutual friends and colleagues!
After dinner, we headed out by canoe again for a jungle exploration by night. One of the first things we saw, by the light of a torch, were Greater Bulldog Fish-Eating Bats, they swooped low over the water of the lake grabbing the fish from just under the surface of the water, an amazing sight. In another very narrow jungle waterway, we came across a large Tarantula Spider only a foot or two from the boat. We couldn't go all the way along the creek, because a Caiman was nesting there and had previously been quite aggresive, chasing the canoe and leaping out of the water onto a canoe. Needless to say, Jaime was not keen to repeat the experience!
Back on the lake, we saw several pairs of Caiman eyes gleaming in the distance, but never got close to them. Back at the lodge, after a very long day, Julio told us that we would be woken at 5.00, have breakfast at 5.30 and leave on our next excursion by 6.00 the next morning - the joys of wildlife watching!
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