Tuesday April 22 - Day 6

 

Tuesday April 22 - Day 6 


7am alarm?! We’re on holidays! Sigh.
Breakfast 730. Tour at 8.
Onto 25 seater powerboats and off to the shoreline.
2 hour hike through the jungle. Amazing guide Arand who’s lived here for 30 years and speaks perfect English.
Flora and Fauna galore

Reminders from our guide include my personal favourites :
‘Put this in your mouth’
‘Don’t eat that’
‘Don’t touch that. That could kill you. ‘
‘Here, drink this’
‘Don’t step on that’
lol

2 hours flew by as we traipsed through the rainforest hearing so much information about biodiversity and Amazon life.
Back to the ship for lunch and a few hours of pool time and a solid sunburn with our new friends from Colorado. Snacks and then onto the boats again and headed for the riverside and several lakes for a couple hours.
Macaw. Parrots. Egret. Tricoloured Heron. Three toed Sloth. Red capped Cardinals. Ducks. Hoatzin bird- Two stomachs. One for poisonous leaves to fart at enemies - the other for digesting food - known as the ‘Stinky turkey’. Dozens of birds with Portuguese names that are very difficult to pronounce. lol
Sunsets are even more spectacular than my homes in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Storms in different areas of the rainforest hundreds of kms away make for incredible daytime and nighttime skies. Pictures and videos do not do justice to the sights and sounds when you turn off the boat.
With a whopping 5 lumens of daylight left long after the sunset, we started our 5 km trek back to the ship arriving in pitch darkness.
But wait.
Let’s go into the dark woods and look for snakes in the trees. Super! Wife not so happy. Sure enough we found a Boa. But then we spent another half an hour looking for snakes in the dark lol
Shower. Sun gel.
Supper.
Scheduled ‘Karaoke’ - 4 dudes with two horribly tuned instruments and a stone cold deaf lead singer. Still cheered them on for a bit. Off to Bed.
Ironic realization that ‘The Band’ was directly above our room.
God has a wicked sense of humour - don’t doubt it for a second. 😉😁🤪
7am alarm set again. More madness tomorrow. 😁


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thursday April 17th - Day 1

Image
Thursday April 17th - Day 1  After three busy days of teaching and meetings 430-10pm, a quick 4 hour nap and off to the airport in an Uber bound for Toronto. 5 hours later we arrived to a beautiful 10 degree blue sky and 8 hours to kill. Not one to sit still, I twisted Krista’s arm and onto the train headed for downtown! Got a day pass for $12 so that worked out great! Arrived at Union Station and walked under the CN tower and around downtown for an hour before grabbing lunch at Jack Astors. No Blue Jays game today sadly   but a million Leaf fans downtown for the last regular game of the season against Detroit that they managed to win 4-3 in Overtime. We walked along the waterfront to get some steps in and then grabbed a train back to the airport. An hour wait to get into the lounge, bite to eat and boarded at 930 and gone by 10 in a giant 787 for a monster 10 hour flight to São Paulo, Brazil! Spring break 2025 and 26th Anniversary trip is underway!
Read more

Wednesday April 23 Day 7

  Wednesday April 23 Day 7 After breakfast we loaded up the boats and headed for shore to meet the Kombayba tribe of indigenous people. We walked across wide beaches to their outdoor community centre and were introduced to the beautiful Children’s Choir who performed their National Anthem for us. All the tiny villages and homes for an hour in every direction send their kids to school here. The Government has provided significant funding and numerous fairly modern buildings adorn the campus. Kids can either attend school 7-11am or 1-5pm. 7-10pm is adult classes. Elementary students picked up and returned daily. High school kids come Monday and leave Friday. School holidays revolve around low water level months. Casaba potato and fish diet twice a day. Land is sandy. Can’t grow much food. Times have changed since they got electricity 10 years ago and now with this school they have a teacher and a fully trained nurse. Flat head tribe. Board on head from Birth to make flat head and sho...
Read more

Thursday April 24 Day 8

Image
  Thursday April 24 Day 8 After breakfast we jumped into the boats and headed deep into the forests in search of wildlife. Like Indiana Jones middle of nowhere in the Amazon jungle type stuff. If our boat died, I have no idea how on earth we would ever find our way back to the River kind of stuff. We saw a few different species of birds but were looking hard for monkeys. We saw a troop of howler monkeys but by the time you see them they scurry deep into the trees where you cannot get photos/video of them. Our first official stop was near some smallish Squirrel monkeys who came out of the forest to eat the bananas we brought with us. They climbed right onto the boat onto people’s shoulders and heads and were rewarded with the sweet fruit. 5 bananas and 15 monkeys later we headed to the next stop. There used to be a huge Amazon lodge built 10 years ago by a very rich man from Manaus. After 5 years, some major fines from the government over improper pollution and a failure to pay his ...
Read more