Day 54 - around Pantiacolla Lodge.

I can hear the rain pattering on the tin roof during the night, and when we leave at dawn to check out a small clay lick up the river, Nicolás is concerned that the parrots may not show; they don’t like wet clay. He worried needlessly; as we trudge up the beach, past the numerous capybara footprints, towards the red clay wall, we see clouds of parakeets and parrots landing on the trees ahead. There are some chestnut-fronted macaws and blue-headed macaws, but only the former come down. It’s quite a sight: red clay covered in multiple small green forms.


Back at the lodge, we go for a longer walk along the many nature trails surrounding the lodge. The insect life is as fascinating as the larger fauna; we see numerous columns of marching army ants, long trails of what looks like moving leaves - leafcutter ants, carrying leaves back to their huge underground nests where they’ll use them as compost to cultivate mushrooms, an enormous spider web with many little spiders on in. They work together, Nicolás explains, and weave communal webs up to twenty metres high – enough to trap large insects and even small bats. I shudder at the thought of walking into one.

The trail is muddy and sends us clambering over logs (I forget that you should never straddle a log in a tropical forest, but step onto it instead, because pit vipers tend to nest underneath them and they get understandably hacked off if you put your foot in their nest), splashing through streams, going up and down little hillocks.

Nicolás stops us suddenly. A branch falls from above and then we see small furry forms leaps from tree to tree – saddleback tamarin monkeys. They don’t have the Chinese emperor moustache of the emperor tamarin, but they have very serious white furry faces.

The next time Nicolás halts our group is when we see a short, colourful ribbon lying curled across the path. It’s a fer-de-lance, one of the two deadliest snakes in these parts. It’s very small, and is beautiful – with bands of red and yellow and black. We can see its little tongue darting out. Even though we’re wearing rubber boots, and Nicolás has a snake bite remover in his bag, he takes no chances and uses a stick to move the snake along. It slithers away.

A very hot and restless siesta after lunch. Then we’re off to the hot springs – all of us bar Tim the Grim. It’s another boat ride up past the clay lick. A cool stream joins the river, but a little way along the stream there are rustic wooden channels, pouring hoot water down from a hot spring. We settle down under the hot springs; the water’s almost too hot to stand. Little by little, I begin to feel less begrimed. Today is the last day I'll be wearing my icky, perpetually damp jungle rags. There are little fish swimming around my feet; I hope it’s not the candiru (orifice fish), known for swimming in and out of the orifices of big fish. Woe betide those people who decide to swim in the river; if an orifice fish swims up your urethra, it gets stuck and can only be surgically removed.

Sarah and Roger spend the evening marking the birds and animals we’ve seen so far, while I sit in the dining hall with the resident kitty in my lap.