There were tons of spiders in the forest as well.
This is a baby tarantula. He was on the roof of the dining area.
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Amazon Ants
There were tons of ants in the rainforest.
This is an ant territory war. They are fighting over the water pipe between cabins, which serves as kind of a highway for them. The little ants on top are currently dominating it, but this army of larger ants wants to take it over. The even larger ants lower on the rock seem to be minding their own business.
These are the really big ants.
The locals use them instead of stitches.
They get them to bite across the wound to clamp it shut, then rip the body off of the head so it can’t let go.
This is a leafcutter ant.
They also use the water pipes as a highway.
Some of them carry mushrooms.
There were a lot of ants.
This might be an ant with wings, but we aren’t sure.
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Amazon Birds
The Amazon is the opposite of the Galapagos. The birds in the Galapagos are afraid of nothing and sit happily on the ground next to the trail. The birds in the Amazon are afraid of everything. They chirp loudly when nothing is in sight, but go still and silent when you get within sight, even if they are on the top of a 50m tall tree 20m away. And if they think you have seen them they fly away immediately.
Even the rooster would shut up in the morning if you walked over and stood within sight of his cage.
There are plenty of trees to hide in, and most of them are incredibly tall. This made it pretty much impossible to see anything.
Thus our bird pictures are not very good.
Except for the domesticated birds of course.
This is Nina.
She was captured by people trying to sell her as a pet. They injured her, and now she cannot fly or walk properly.
She hooks her beak on everything to climb around.
The rest of the birds were very far away and hard to make out details.
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Amazon Plants and Fungi
These pink bananas are not edible, but are very pretty.
This is a shiny mushroom.
This is a really delicate plant that was growing everywhere.
This tree is growing a new root. It is as long as Matt and still hasn’t reached the ground.
These are birds of paradise.
You had to be careful walking around as many plants had defenses against animals. Like this palm tree with long spikes that grew in dark rings around the trunk. They were about 5 cm long and we were told would definitely cause an infection if poked.
This is a monkey brush. Monkeys use them for grooming. They are quite hard and the spikes are firm.
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Into the Amazon
Through a long bus ride followed by a short truck drive on smooth, paved asphalt roads complete with reflective lane markers and power lines.
A bit past the fancy highrise hotel.
Finally through the village where the people lived and across the football pitch, we found ourselves deep in the edge of the Amazon rainforest.
So deep that you could listen to the constant chatter of birds and crickets in the breaks between the loud Carnival music in the nearby town.
Our cabins were nice with running water and power.
This is the cabin from the outside. There are 4 guest rooms in this cabin.
The rooms the rest of the group stayed in did not yet have power and were illuminated with candles.But they did have a view of the river.
As well as the village.
Compact fluorescent bulbs covered in natural fruit shells are neither efficient nor attractive.
We didn’t even actually get to see the primary forest. We were supposed to hike out to the edge, but the rain forest hasn’t had enough rain so the river was too low for the boat to drop us off. It wasn’t exactly the Amazon adventure we were planning on, but it was fun. We will try again some day.
There are a few little creeks that run through the resort, in addition to the Napo river.
One of the scariest things we saw was four year olds wandering around with machetes.
Don’t worry, he’s just digging for worms.
There are only a couple of places where you can see above the trees. It clouded up every night so no brilliant sunsets. It was also cloudy in the mornings so the sun rises were also less than spectacular.
