Peru Travel Diary - p. 3

22 Oct 2001
Today begins a trip to the remote upper Rio Tambopata in the southern lowlands of Peru.  After boarding the flight at Cusco, I embrace and kiss the prettiest woman on the plane - my wife Charlotte, who flew down to Lima yesterday to join me for the final week's adventure. 
    We fly to Puerto Maldonado, then journey by open boat for 3 hours upriver to Posada Amazonas, our first night's lodging.  Nothing, not even New Orleans in July, compares with the heat and humidity of these sweltering lowlands.  The thick muggy air, difficult to breathe, hangs over the land like a miasma.  It saps our energy, and the slightest exertion leaves us soaked in sweat.  Fortunately there are showers, cold-water of course, to which we retreat after hikes, meals, and sometimes just because we cannot bear the steamy heat for another minute.  We are surely the cleanest ecotourists in Peru!

23 Oct 2001
In driving rain we begin a 6-hour boat trip upstream to Tambopata Research Center.  The storm abates after lunch.  Our lookout at the front of the boat, whose job it is to alert the driver to sandbars and floating logs, suddenly points to the shore.  There, relaxing among the low shrubs, is a jaguar.  As our boat approaches, he slowly ambles along the bush and into the forest, a picture of grace and power befitting the monarch of this jungle.  What can top this, we wonder?

24 Oct 2001
Our guide Antonio awakens us at 3:45 a.m.  By first light we are standing at the edge of the Tambopata, some 400 m from the world's largest clay lick, a bank along the river about 40 m high.  With each passing minute the cacophany of parrots and macaws increases.  They soar in, perch in trees above the lick, then descend to the bank en masse.  The most common parrots are White-bellied and the handsome Orange-cheeked, but there are lots of Mealy and Blue-headed Parrots as well.   In an hour we see an incredible five species of macaws.  Scarlet, Red-and-Green, and Blue-and-yellow are the most numerous, but both Chestnut-fronted and the rare Blue-headed Macaw put in an appearance.  They really do eat the clay.  Conventional wisdom is that the clay provides minerals for their diet, and neutralizes toxins that are abundant in the fruit and seeds that they eat.   This makes sense.  Much of their food comes from plant families notorious for toxins, such as the anacardiaceae, which includes our own poison ivy.
    Unfortunately for photography, the birds are too far away.  Even in my lens, the equivalent of 1000mm, the parrots and macaws are little more than small, albeit colorful, dots.   Antonio, however, is determined that I get macaw photos.  After breakfast at the lodge, we hike about a kilometer to a blind that has been set up above the clay lick.   Many of the macaws, after visiting the lick, fly along a narrow channel in front of the blind to trees with fruit and seed to their liking.  Charlotte and I settle in, along with countless flies and mosquitos.  I photograph the birds as they perch and feed, and as they fly back out to the clay lick for a second helping.

30 Oct 2001
We fly overnight from Lima to Houston.   Sometime after 3:00 I awaken and view the clear night sky, seeing for the first time in nine weeks a familiar constellation -  the Big Dipper, pointing to the North Star and home.