Marañon & Yanayacu Rivers
We began our expedition in the Upper Amazon of Peru by exploring an area on the Marañon River that is flooded seasonally and thus very rich. Every year, the river goes over the banks here for a few months, depositing rich nutrients that add a little bit to the soil. This type of flooded forest, or varzea, is an incredible place to explore. Today, we were exposed to the riches of this area in the water, the forest, and the air.
River dolphins were our beginning and end to our day. At first light, the smaller gray river dolphins were feeding around the ship. Not putting on too much of a show, they did approach very close and were a nice appetizer for the afternoon main course. Around lunchtime, we arrived at the mixing point of two rivers, and were soon surrounded by pink river dolphins. Their brilliant pink color and odd body shape helped us to understand a bit as to why there are so many myths about these creatures. One pink dolphin put on an amazing show I have never seen. For over ten minutes, it was surfacing with a large, probably eight foot long, tree limb in its mouth. Many theories were thrown out as to what it was actually doing, but some sort of social interaction is probably the best guess.
In the morning, we walked amongst some massive trees for our first Amazon rain forest experience. The diversity and lushness of the vegetation were explained to us by our knowledgeable guides, and many beautiful flowers were observed. We also enjoyed manyu different critters including frogs, butterflies, leaf cutter ants, and caterpillars. One group of fuzzy caterpillars had nearly completely devoured the plant they were on, maybe even eating themselves out of house and home, depending on if there were any other plants of that species nearby.
And finally in the afternoon, we explored the smaller, blackwater Yanayacu River. Quite a number of sloths were observed, including one that actually moved and showed us his face and three toes. The air was filled with birds. One small lake we explored contained numerous ducks, egrets, hawks, and flycatchers. As we returned to the Delfin II at sunset, a procession of parrot pairs were flying by, heading to their nighttime roosting destination, as we headed towards ours.
