Day 52 - macaw clay lick and back to Yine Lodge.

Up at the earliest time yet – just before 5am. We’re all ready to go before Nicolás because we’re all enthusiastic about the clay lick where the parrots and macaws gather in the morning. Because they eat unripe fruit, they eat this mineral-rich clay in order to be able to digest everything.

The dawn is barely breaking and there’s a red gleam on the horizon, along with some feathered clouds. The full moon lights our way. It’s a fifteen-minute stint on the river, followed by a twenty-minute walk along a wide, dry trail through a palmito plantation (a palm tree with three-inch spikes along the trunk, the insides of which – palm hearts – are a great salad ingredient) and then through a breadfruit plantation. Breadfruit have been introduced to Peru from Africa. Rumour has it that tapir like breadfruit, but we don’t see any.

Before 6am we’re at the long observation platform with a roof and chairs with a prime view of the long wall of yellow clay with the dense forest behind it. Though the clay wall runs for a whole kilometre, it’s largely covered in vegetation, apart from the stretch in front of us.

As we munch on our breakfast pancakes, we watch schools of chattering green parakeets settle on the trees above the clay lick. They’re waiting for the macaws to arrive before they go to the clay lick themselves; there’s safety in numbers and they’re rather exposed on the wall.

There are two observation platforms, joined by a walkway. Surprise, surprise – Tim goes to the other one. I can’t figure out whether he does stuff like that just to be different or what. On one hand, he’s sociable on the surface, but also goes off by himself, and can’t seem to sit still. Maybe I’m an irritable person, but there are things about him that grate: his horribly smelly mosquito repellent, his wearing a baseball cap backwards, his speaking Spanish like a complete Anglo (bway-nose dee-yahs, mee nombray es Tim), the stupid things he says (when we were seeing Bruno and Cinthia off, and Austrian Christine got talking to the hot German scientist, he said: “you’re brother and sister”; that’s like saying that Americans and Mexicans are brothers and sisters by virtue of their countries bordering each other), his general demeanour….


The smaller parrots get spooked by a hawk and fly off, chattering madly. They then start coming down to the clay lick behind some trees where we can’t see them. When I ask Tim where the parrots are, he shrugs sullenly, which doesn’t help his case.


Then the red-and-green macaws begin landing on the trees. Soon there’s more than a dozen, yet they’re still waiting for something. They fly from tree to tree, they communicate in staccato cries, then a pair inches its way down to the clay. Then one of them is on the clay wall, digging its beak in, tearing off a lump of clay, holding it with one foot and licking it. Slowly, it’s joined by more and more of them. By the time they’re finished, we’d been there for five hours. I’m not a passionate enough bird watcher to be paying attention to them all the time; manage to finish ‘Icon’ during the whole thing.

Return to Tambo Blanquillo for lunch, and because we’ve spent so much time at the clay lick, we don’t have time to visit another oxbow lake; we have to go up the river to Yine Lodge.

I’m becoming mentally tired. Living at close quarters with complete strangers, having to spend entire days with them – it doesn’t come easily to me. Oh, I’m congenial enough, unlike Tim, but I’m beginning to long for solitude and my own company. When Nicolás suggests going for a walk along the airstrip, I tag along, but it’s quickly apparent that I really don’t feel like it.

Borrow Roger and Sarah’s guidebook and start marking things to check out on my city maps.

The early bedtime is welcome because it means retreating to my room. There’s only so much small talk one can make.