I actually slept until my 4:45 alarm this morning. Got up, had some coffee, a shower, and then a very light breakfast of two small pieces of toast, half a glass of orange juice, and I got a good fulfilling whiff of a plate of dragon fruit (Gary's given both Dad and I an eye-opening look at our eating habits on this trip). From there, we gathered our gear and loaded into the canoe (ow! My butt!) and proceeded to work our way down the stream. We saw and stopped for plenty of birds along the way, making the 7km trip in a leisurely 3.75 hours (ow! My butt!!).
From there we hiked to a parrot clay lick, where birds eat dirt and people watch. I'd like to think there's a place on this planet where those roles are reversed. Anyway, after about a 30 minute wait, the birds did come in and there sure were a lot of them.
Before they dropped down to the clay lick though, I wandered around the park a bit. I got some pictures of a spider, some other bugs, and the like. While I was trying to take a picture of a grasshopper jumping (it didn't work of course) I heard a buzzing around my left ear. I figured it was a wasp or a bee or perhaps a curious beetle, as they'd been buzzing around all week. I looked up to find a giant bug the size of my nose heading right at me, clearly intending to see first hand if it was as big as my nose, and while it was at it, it might as well see what my nose tastes like too.
Would not hop on command
Have you ever tried to swat a bug, and have the bug deflect the swat and laugh at you? Becuase I'm pretty sure that happened to me. Fortunately the bug decided to leave me alone, either due to my startled scream or because it saw I'd had such a light breakfast and was hardly worth eating.
Turns out, the thing is called an assassin bug, which only confirms my long-held belief that one of you is trying to kill me and has hired this bug to do your dirty work for you. Well, nyah-nyah to you! I lived.
Assassin bug: "I was born in the shadows...."
After the clay lick we got in a boat and took a quick ride to the same community center where we'd had lunch before. We were served talapia whole, with a side of cucumber salad. Everything was delicious but I kept hearing Gary telling me I was fat, so I only ate 3 bites of fish and half a slice of cucumber.
After lunch, we walked a trail through the local community along the Napo. From the boats going up and down the busy river, you'd never know there was a whole village back there. It was really interesting to get to see how the folks there get along in life. At one point, we passed a group of people - four or five adults, three teenagers, and two little kids - running a kind of open kiln and drying and knocking corn kernels off of the cobs. It was a big operation and all manual labor, but many hands make light work.
Village solar
We saw a lot of birds, including several kites, a Rufus (sp?) Headed woodpecker, jacamars, a ferruginous owl, and some other things that I don't remember. Also, I kinda hit my limit with the birding thing. The others got very excited trying to get to some bird, but it was not cooperating, and it was down in some bushes where you can hardly see it. Now don't get me wrong - I like birds. I even like birding. But I really prefer photography. So I'm more of an opportunist when it comes to birding. I'll take pictures of what I can see. That said, the idea of spending two hours in ankle deep mud playing the same recording over and over again and having the same nondescript small brown bird on a brown background with brown reeds in front of it make the same call back from the same place in the hopes that said bird might shift position enough for someone to get a photo of 19% of that bird so they can in later years show that picture to someone and say "See that slightly darker smudge of brown there in between all that other brown stuff? That's the tail feathers of a Brown Crested Wandering Pygmy Shrike Heron. Or it might be its wing. Either way, pretty cool, yeah?" has no appeal for me. So I wandered around instead.
Birders birding
Some other sort of butterfly
They finally gave up on the bird and we contained our hike along the river. I'm pretty sure some more stuff happened, but I was feeling cry faint due to only consuming 545 calories in two days (thanks Gary), but somehow we made it out of the woods. At the mouth of the stream. Where a canoe was waiting for us. Ow. My butt.
Fortunately, we saw nothing of interest on the way back, and the guys paddled the whole way in an hour and fifteen minutes. Afterwards, a tasty dinner of 3 pieces of white rice washed down with a refreshing glass of particularly humid air.
When I passed out on the way back to the room, I was told by the lodge doctor that I needed to eat something and should stop listening to this Gary guy. I was prescribed some cake, ice cream, waffles, eggs, and bacon, to be taken daily with a meal.
Once feeling myself again, back to bed. Out like a light.
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