We started our day out bright and early by meeting at 5 a.m. to take a boat to a nearby colpa (clay-lick) to wait for macaws to feed on the clay. We learned that with many things in the Amazon, much patience is required especially when viewing wildlife, a lesson that is hard for 20-somethings to grasp. We sat and waited for a couple of hours but as before, although we saw many birds in the trees they didn't come down to feed. However we did get to see see a a red howler monkey and squirrel monkeys so there was some reward for all that waiting.
When we returned to the lodge for a lovely breakfast we were surprised by two visitors from the rainforest. Two scarlet macaws that were chicos (see below) decided to join us and delighted or horrified people by flying and sitting on top of them looking for bread and rolls to eat. Hannah made the mistake of walking back to her room with a roll in her hand and was immediately surrounded by two birds, one on each shoulder (see below). The macaws then started quarreling with each other while perched on Hannah. The look on her face was priceless although I'm not sure she enjoyed the whole experience as much as we did.
We then set out for our morning hike in another part of the flood-plain. While sloshing through the mud we saw dusky-titi monkeys, more capuchin monkeys and a golden orb spider which eats the male after mating. Listen continued to point out the characteristics of various trees and plants and what some of their uses are.
After retuning to the lodge, there was time for lunch and even a siesta. Several students took advantage of the hammocks and some wrote in their journals. Then it was time for our next hike. This time we took a trail that was higher up and ran parallel to the river. We paused at several overlooks for scenic views of the river. At one point we got into a discussion withe Listen about gold mining which is destroying large tracts of land in the Amazon. Listen described the process by which the gold is mined in the Madre de Dios region. Not only is it extremely labour-intensive, the yield is also poor and the gold is not of high quality. However because the price of gold has sky-rocketed (in 2003 gold was $250 an ounce, by 2011 it had risen to $1300 due to the world financial crisis which caused the demand for gold to increase as investors sought it as a safe commodity), even this low productivity activity is financially lucrative. It is also attracting many miners to the region resulting in social problems like increases in prostitution. In a film we watched later that night we learned that an English teacher makes about 70 soles per day (2.8 soles = $1) while a miner can expect to make 100 soles per day. The mining process itself is also extremely harmful to the environment because it involves the use of mercury which is later dumped into the river and absorbed by fish and eventually humans.
After this long conversation we continued on our way and entered the bamboo forest. Bamboo is not native to the Amazon but it grows extremely rapidly and is used for building floors, roofs and walls of houses. Listen told us that the roof of our lodge was made with tightly woven bamboo reeds that had to be replaced every couple of years.
As we continued along, Listen soon beacame very excited and asked us to be quiet while he went to investigate ahead. When we quietly approached, he called us one by one to a spot where we could see about 50 or 60 peccaries (small wild pigs) at a clay-lick, feeding on the clay. That is a rare sight so we were fortunate to witness that at just the right moment . On our way back we saw an owl and discovered that yes, in fact there are owls in the rainforest. This was our longest and most interesting hike and as we headed back after three hours, the forest became dark and we had to use our flashlights. Most of the students didn't really like the forest at night although we did get to see an enormous cane toad which Listen said weighed anout half a kilo. Tomorrow we will have a night hike so that should be interesting!
When we got back to the lodge we had time before dinner to watch a film called Amazon Gold. It discussed the effects of deforestation on climate change and how gold mining was destroying large swathes of land in the rainforest. The interocean highway from Brazil to Peru that connects the Atlanic and Pacific oceans has made access to mining much easier. In addition to the explosion in government permits for mining, there are numerous illegal mines, family run operations where the entire family lives on the site. The film showed the mining process and the devastation it caused to the area, decimating the rainforest and resulting in loss of habitat for all the species that reside there. One tree in the rainforest harbors dozens of bird and mammal species and over 40 species of ants (more than in the entire British Isles). The rainforest could take between 300-500 years to recover from an activity that took a week to destroy it. We only got through half of the film before dinner and will watch the other half tomorrow night.
After dinner (the food here is absolutely delicious; we are enjoying Peruvian cuisine almost as much as the rainforest) we heard a lecture by the scientists who are staying at the TRC studying macaws. The talk was extremely informative and interesting; we learned about the different species; their nesting habits and gestation stages and also why they eat clay. The most common theory is that the clay absorbs toxins that are in the foods that they eat but the researchers have discovered that the clay is also extremely high in sodium and that the macaws are using it to supplement their diet. Macaws also select only a couple of eggs to focus on leaving the other two to often perish. Scientists decided to experiment with recovering eggs 3 and 4 and raising them until they fletched to see if they could increase the population that way . The resulting chicks are known as chicos and are thriving in the wild. They still come back to the lodge because they know they can get food and that's why our breakfast visitors were chicos. The macaw project was started at the TRC in 1989 and during a four year span scientists recoverd and raised about 30 eggs and chicos. We also learned that macaws are both flagship species, meaning it is easy to get support for conservation efforts because of their popularity, and umbrella species, meaning that because their range is so vast conservation efforts to protect them will benefit lots of other species as well. In economic terms that is known as a positive externality and in order to produce the optimum amount of this activity, it should he subsidized. Thus the creation of a reserve zone like Tambopata and conservation efforts like the Macaw project make perfect sense from an economic point of view.
After the lecture, we concluded a long but fascinating day. I'm pretty sure all the student beat me to bed by an hour and were asleep by 9 p.m.!
Truly enjoy your entries! Thank you so much for sharing your trip with us!! What wonderful adventures!!
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