Amazing Amazon : Best and worst

Most frequently used words

They were probably "Where?", "Huh?", "What are we looking at?". Most of the time, whatever our guides have found are so camouflaged that we have no idea what they have spotted. Bless Christian and Jhonatan. They must have had a hard time with us.

Gentlest

Dorilla, the woolly monkey. Dorilla was a baby when she was found by staff from our lodge in a market. She and her mother were captured but unfortunately her mother died. Staff from the lodge purchased and later released her to the wild. 

Dorilla has yet to be accepted by other woolly monkey families and currently lives on her own. Staff from the lodge will visit her from time to time. Our guides called out to Dorilla and she jumped into our boat. Her eyes and coat were both soft and shiny. I could feel the strength of Dorilla's limbs when she hung on my arm to reach out for an orange. Yet, she was so gentle when she took the orange from me. I so much wanted to give her a cuddle and bring her home.

Photo credit: Christian

Biggest surprise

When Dorilla urinated on me. Christian captured the priceless moment when she peed and my reaction immediately after:

Most adorable

The sloth moving in slow motion when we first found it. Christian whistled to it and after a while, it lifted its head and right hand in slooooooow motion and then opened its eyes even more sluggishly, as if going "Huh, what is happening?". It reminds me of ET and Yoda.

Photo credit: Christian

Photo credit: Christian

Best find
Definitely Christian for finding the sloth!

Most fascinating

The creatures we saw were fascinating BUT I think Jhonatan beat all of them, hands down. Jhonatan would run for anything that moved and was often on all fours, looking for something that caught his eyes. When a snake slid away from us, he would run for it. Keith laughed at how he would have run in the opposite direction. 

Jhonatan rummaging for something on the forest ground again

Most claustrophobic

In a tree trunk. Keith did not have his rabies shots and I could not let the very enthusiastic Jhonatan down. We duckwalked into a tree trunk, home to common myotis bats:

Can you see the bats?

It was fine except that when the bats flew away from us, the echo produced by the flapping of the wings felt like the sound of propellers turning right next to my ears. It did not help that there was a tailess whip scorpion spider and army ants in the picture.

Photo credit: Jhonatan

Tailess whip scorpion spider which Jhonatan kept wanting to catch
while I kept saying nonononono

Bat baring its fangs

Best catch

Everyone, except me, fished very well and kept getting big trouts and barracudas on the line. Someone even caught an electric eel (which has since become the coolest eel in the lake as it has been released with a fishing hook piercing - well nobody wanted to touch the electric eel and could only cut the fish line) but I did not see that catch so it does not count.

So, the winner of the best catch goes to Manuel who speared an armoured catfish at night.

Armoured catfish

Thick sucker-like mouth

We were camping and had barbecued fish for breakfast.

Our catch from the previous night
From top: barracuda, armoured catfish, trout 

I had to ask Christian how to eat the fish. Its skin was really a shell and we had to break the fish into pieces and dig the meat out.

Scariest

I cannot decide on the winner. The front runners for the scariest things I did in the jungle would be:

1. going on the canopy zipline 45m above ground

2. going on a swing

3. swimming in the river (with piranhas and Pepe the dangerous caiman lurking in the background)

Christian threw me an empty container for just in case
(just in case I need a weapon to hit Pepe?)

Loudest scream

The loudest scream would have come from me on the swing (Keith said he heard me from his room). "A swing?" I hear you say. Well, to my defence, it was not an ordinary swing. It was a swing hanging from a tree some 30m from the ground. When I first saw it, I thought whoever swing hard enough could probably do a Tarzan and dive into the river from height too. I saw Matthäus and Britta having so much fun on the swing, I thought I should give it a go too.

Matthäus giving a demo and Britta looking tiny on the swing

Matthäus said whomever heard me would probably thought I did a bungy jump. Everyone who saw me had a good laugh. I think the video is funny too (embarrassing but funny).

Video: Swinging

Most elusive

I knew beforehand that I would have next to no chance to see a jaguar so it was not too disappointing not to see one.

Scratch mark of a jaguar

The bald red-faced Uakari monkey was another matter. We trekked for almost 10 hours but did not see one. It was really disappointing since Rose had seen them in groups of 30 - 100. This is how it looks like:

Source: www.perujungle.com

Bravest

Rose, who is planning to stay at the river for 18 months (or however long it requires) to do her research on the red-faced monkey. She will be away from her family in the USA, cannot take Malaria pills, cannot apply insect repellant, will not have telephone reception and hot shower, have to trek for hours to find her monkeys (if she finds them at all)... Much as I love my stay in the jungle, I do not think I can live here for this long. And she has already lost weight! My hats off to you, Rose and Good Luck!

Rose

Sweetest

The cakes. We had cakes on special occasions (such as Lanie and Chris's wedding anniversary) and farewell dinners. Keith, John, Miki, Anne Marie and I were leaving the next day. I protested that Matthäus and Britta had "Come back soon" on their cake and Christian had to add the words to ours too. ;p

Last night at the lodge
Rose, Keith, Jhonatan, Nataly, Christian, John, Miki, Anne Marie