Family Pics from the Amazon Basin

The last couple of posts have been seriously lacking in people pictures.  I guess we humans are a little boring in comparison to the beauty of the Amazon, so it was easy to overlook our people pictures from the trip, but here we go...

Lots o' pictures of people riding in a boat.  We did this a lot.  Every day.  Several trips in a boat each day. 

more boat...

Dempsey entertains himself in the Amazon by making a sheath out of leaves and liana vines.

Dempsey got a couple of Calvin and Hobbes books, and they were a big hit on the trip... here is a new friend, Laurent, from Belgium who was a little starved for some kid-style-entertainment.

Whatta scope!

Amazon Princess

TREE!!!!

Hopping on the plane for the short flight from Coca to Quito

Wildlife

Before making the trek out to the Amazon Basin, we met my parents in Quito at a great little hotel called Hostal de la Rabida.  Despite the similarities in the word "rabida" and rabbit, it does not mean rabbit.  However,  they did have a pet rabbit there named Brownie that would hippity-hop around the yard and into any door the was left open.  Linnea found Brownie in my opened suitcase... luckily no rabbit treats were left behind.

Rabbit

We all traveled together by taxi, airplane, motor boat, on foot, and lastly by canoe to get to the Sacha Lodge.  Once we were in the Amazon Basin, the animals became much more exotic.  Here are a few that we were able to get pictures of.  There were countless more that will be in our memories (not in pixels).

 Millipede

Our kids got up close and personal with a lot of millipedes.

Yellow-crowned Amazon, Blue-headed Parrot, Orange Winged Amazon, and Mealy Amazon.

Parrots come to this part of the Napo River every morning to lick this clay.  There is salt in the clay that helps neutralize all the acids from the fruits and seeds that the parrots eat all day from the forrest.  This parrot lick is on the edge of the Yasuni National Park.  

My parents had heard about the Sacha Lodge and the opportunities for viewing wildlife and especial birds.  So this was our destination and WOW, did we see a lot of wildlife...

Crested Owls                                              and a hungry spider

      

 Night Monkeys

Grasshopper                                                  Crested Forest Dragon

Caiman and Howler Monkeys

I forget the name of this little bird

 Crimson-crested Woodpeckers 

 Squirrel Monkey

Paradise Tanager

According to my parents (who are BIG birders), we have quite an extensive bird list for people who don't make a whole lot of effort to see birds.  Amazingly, our guide knew all the names and helped us remember them later as we never had the time to write them all down on the spot.  Here is what we saw in our 5 days at Sacha:

Roseate Spoonbill (that one was pretty amazing and beautiful... all the way from Canada, I believe)

Black Vulture

Greater Yellow-headed Vulture

Hook-billed Kite

Slender-billed Kite

Roadside Hawk (a lot like the Redtail Hawk we often see in Northern California)

Limpkin

White-eyed Parakeet Aratinga

Dusky-headed Parakeet

Cobalt-winged Parakeet

Red-bellied Macaw

Blue-headed Parrot

Yellow-crested Amazon

Mealy Amazon

Orange-winged Amazon

Squirrel Cuckoo

Greater Ani

Smooth-billed Ani

Hoatzin 

(the common name for this bird is Stinky Turkey)

Crested Owl 

(these guys were great and we saw them during a day hike.  They just sat together in a tree and we could take our time to enjoy them - they never flew away.)

Ladder-tailed Nightjar

Short-tailed Swift

Neotropical Palm-Swift

Ringed Kingfisher

Green-and-Rufous Kingfisher

Pied Puffbird

White-fronted Nunbird

Gilded Barbet

Many-banded Aracari

White-throated Toucan

Chestnut Woodpecker

Cream-colored Woodpecker

Crimson-crested Woodpecker

Straight-billed Woodcreeper

Great Kiskadee

Lesser Kiskadee

Social Flycatcher

Piratic Flycatcher

Crowned Slaty-Flycatcher

Tropical Kingbord

Eastern Kingbird

Black-tailed Tityra

Screaming Piha 

(we saw this one on our night hike and it was so close in a tree we could almost touch it)

Spangeled Cotinga

Purple-throated Fruitcrow

Wire-tailed Manakin

Orange-crested Manakin

White-winged Swallow

White-banded Swallow

Green Honeycreeper

White-vented Euphonia

Rufous-bellied Euphoria

White-lored Euphoria

Opal-rumped Tanager

Opan-crowned Tanager

Paradise Tanager

 (seeing this bird caused WWAAAAAY too much excitement from our guide and my parents, but definitely worth it!)

Green-and-gold Tanager

Palm Tanager

Yellow-rumped Cacique

Oriole Blackbird

whew!  and this is only the 60 or so that we saw out of the 570 species that have been seen in this area just around Sacha.  Those were just the birds.  We also saw:

poison dart frog

giraffe frog

aguti

sloth

crested forest dragon

squirrel monkey

howler monkey

night monkey

capuchin monkey

cateye snake

whip scorpion (this was a type of spider)

our friend the caiman

millipede 

piranha

Semana Santa Adventure in Ecuador

This may have been our most travel intensive Semana Santa yet!

Our final destination was Sacha Lodge, deep in the Amazon Basin near the Napo River in Ecuador.

               
                But to get there, we needed to take a flight from Bogota to Quito.   Then a flight from Quito to take us over the Andes to Cola.  From Cola, we headed by boat 50 km (and 2 1/2 hours)  along the Napo River until we came to an unassuming dock.  Once ashore, we walked 30 minutes through the jungle to the Pilchicocha lake...

Where we finally arrived at Sacha.  We immediately put on our swimming suits and headed to the lake for a swim.  Never mind the piraña and caiman also sharing this lake... we learned that the pirañas are scavengers of the already dead and the caiman seemed to be interested in hanging out near the bbq that gets fired up twice a week (Wednesdays and Sundays).  So, yes, we swam with the most feared (at least from a Hollywood perspective) animals in the Amazon.

 But the lake was just too beautiful and inviting to stay out of.  An interesting water fact about Pilchicocha is that it is a black water lake.  It looked like English Breakfast tea... you could only see a foot or two below the surface of the water.  This is because the dead leaves and branches that fall into the water release a compound that decomposes and then turns the water a deep black color.  A downside may be that you can't see the caimans and pirañas coming to nibble on you, but an upside was that the acidity of the water is too high, making the lake an inhospitable place for mosquitos to lay eggs.

 Pretty evening in the Amazon

Although only 2% of what we know as the Amazon is found in Ecuador, we were thoroughly blown away by the awe-inspiring sights and sounds.  I feel a little overwhelmed by the task of justly writing about our trip... so more installments to come of our time in the Amazon.