During the night we came downriver to start our day looking for wildlife by skiff and by kayak on the Río Zapote. There is the small village of Urarinas nearby, and we met a few children from the village that were floating about in small wooden canoes. We stopped and spoke with two little boys, ages 8 and 12 who had been very successful fishermen this morning. They showed us their catch of several piranhas and a small catfish, and probably wondered why these people coming to them in skiffs and a couple of kayaks were so interested in photographing their breakfast.
The village is in the varzea, the flooded forest, and we explored the entire village later in the morning via skiffs. School is currently closed, as the building is flooded. We floated over and peeked into the school, a pile of child-sized chairs were stacked on a shelf out of the annual floodwaters reach. We drifted across the center of the village, across what is the inundated soccer field. Homes are on stilts, and life continues. If you visit your neighbor, you get in a canoe and paddle over, the same with the small porch that serves as the local convenience store. There were children in canoes everywhere, paddling, conversing, watching the world go by. The younger boys seemed to go from point A to point B in perpetual canoe races.
One resident was busy carving out a new canoe. He paused in his work to explain the process of burning, cutting and at the moment, he was thinning the walls using an adze. Colorful chickens as well as a couple of dogs surrounded him as he carved away on his stilted working platform.
For our afternoon explorations, Supay, an enchanting little river that leads to and broadens out to a lake was our destination. As we cruised along the riverfront, we continued to add to our bird list, with some names now becoming quite familiar. Our newest additions included a flock of a hundred or more sand-colored Nighthawks, a skulking scarlet-crowned Barbet, a Chestnut-eared Aracari, and a dozen or so Silver-beaked Tanagers.
Back in the lake we took several minutes to cut the engine and absorb the sounds of the closing day. Horned screamers competed with a distant band of red howler monkeys. Kiskadee, kiskadee rang out across the lake hollered by its namesake and the tuki, tuki call of the wattled jacana came from the area of the giant Amazon lily pads. As we returned from our last evening outing, a lone tree at the mouth of the river erupted in a flurry of egrets, snowy and great egrets were roosting in mass and took a short flight, something like a basket of laundry whites thrown into the air, before resettling for their night rest. They closed their day and we did as well. Upon our return to the mother ship we prepared to enjoy our photographic slideshow and farewell fiesta dinner on our last night aboard the Delfin ll.
