Amazon - Part 2

The jungle felt so good. There was just pure nature. No bright lights or sirens or horns, no contention or division or shouting. No news. No masks. It was just our group and the forest. Nature is quite brutal. All living things are struggling for their survival, trying to get a piece of the limited resources. It appeared that there is a lot of destruction. Vines climb trees until the tree becomes too heavy and falls. With that sudden opening to sunshine, many plants that have been waiting for their turn in direct light begin to grow as fast as they can for a chance to survive. Everything that dies is immediately consumed by living things around it. Despite the seeming dog eat dog, surviver takes it all ecosystem, all living things contribute to all other living things. While every living thing appears to be doing its best to fulfill the measure of its creation (and taking what it needs to do so), part of that measure seems to be giving to the whole throughout the entire life cycle and even in its death. This was evident in every direction.

 

There was so much variety in the bugs, plants and trees. Geoff was captivated by the seemingly endless types of fungi. He took pictures of every new species he saw, capturing over 120. Here are just a few...

 

 

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Our guides explained endless amounts of information about the things we saw. For instance, there is only an inch or two of soil supplying nutrients to the entire forest. Beneath that thin layer is pure clay. To stand upright, large trees create "buttresses" to hold themselves up.

There are "walking palms" that literally move an inch or two this way or that depending on where they can get a sliver of light.

Termites build their large nests high up in the trees because the river swells up and floods the forest floor (from rainfall in the Andes mountains). They create "tunnels" down the tree trunk to get to the forest floor. One day I was in a different group than Geoff and the girls, but somehow Geoff challenged the teens to eat termites. Ceci, who is always up for a good challenge, ate a few live termites right from the tree!

The bugs were so interesting!

 

 

Of course this is just a sample of all the LIFE we saw.

 

We wanted to see a jaguar or puma along the shores of the river or in the forest, but we never did, despite our hopes. But we did see a LOT of monkeys. And this first picture is the howler monkey who is very, very loud with a noise that Ceci described as a 1970 haunted house recording. She is pretty much spot on.

We saw lizards and geckos, lots of different birds, a lot of macaws, a few of which were like seagulls who would wait for an unsuspecting kid to leave their plate for some reason before jumping to the table to steal some food.

They are also loud birds, but their magnificent colors make them tolerable.

We saw these large rodents a couple times on the beaches.

We saw an agouti, the small animal that cracks brazil nuts.

On one night hike, Geoff, Adele and Ceci saw a snake, I saw a tarantula (a very large variety) and many saw fluorescent scorpions and frogs. The forest is so alive. We woke up to howler monkeys and birds at 5AM (dawn) and went to sleep to the sounds of crickets and frogs of endless variety. It got dark at 6PM when the day shift ended and the night shift began. In the dark, red eyes are mammals and yellow eyes are amphibians. 

So. Much. Life.