While in the Jungle we were able to do and see some cool stuff. For instance, we met a real, live Shaman. A shaman is a kind of witch doctor. He heals people with spiritual and natural medicine. Interesting fact: to this day, Shamen intake hallucinagenic plants in order to diagnose and treat their patients...any takers for this alternative medicine?
We also saw a ton of cool animals. But in order to keep your reading attention, here's our top five list...
5. Three different types of Monkeys...all were polite and didn't throw poop at us. We also saw a relatively fresh dead monkey while hiking. It's pretty crazy (and gross) how quickly nature takes care of decompsition. Sorry, we didn't take a photo, but the monkey looked like it was still moving because of the amount of flies and mosquitoes covering its body.
4. Baby Anaconda...relieved to not run into a full size adult. Apparantly, they've been spotted as large as 12 meters AND small children HAVE been eaten.
3. Pink River Dolphins...we were really fortnate to see one of these guys. They are much smaller than the dolphins you see around the California coast. It's amazing that they are able to survive in a body of water containing so many predators.
2. Caymen...speaking of predators, I'm betting these guys could do their fair share of damage. According to our jungle expert, it's much easier to see caymen during the dry season because they all congregate to the few, small watering holes because it's their only option. Our guide decided it would be a good idea to go caymen hunting at night. Remember, our boat was made out of a tree and barely floated higher than the surface of the river. These guys are pretty creepy...especially at night because you can only see their red eyes reflecting the light of the flashlights. As soon as we saw the caymen go under water we were out of there pretty quick...thank goodness!
Last, but not least. Drum roll please....
1. Pirhanas...okay, you might be thinking Pirhanas are cool, but with the vast variety of animals in the jungle, why are they number one on our list?
Here's how we answer that question...because we got to catch them! (and eat them if we wanted to.)
Using tree branches as rods and red meat as bait, we sat in our small tree canoes in a lake where it wasn't safe to swim. At first we were only getting bites of lakeweed, but as soon as it started to pour down rain the baby pirhanas started chomping (literally) at the bait. It was crazy! We could hold the meat just above the surface and the little guys would jump out of the water to get at the meat. Don't worry we threw back all of the babies.
Once the rain let up, we decided to paddle over to a different part of the lake in hopes of catching some big pirhanas. Our luck didn't seem to follow us. We sat for a solid hour before we even got a tug. Finally, our guide caught a big guy! I guess his friends weren't too far behind him because a few of us got some solide tugs on our lines. The bigger pirhanas definitely put up a fight disproportionate to their size.
Once we finally got these guys into the boat, the next challenge was keeping the fingers away from their jagged teeth while taking out the hook. Personally, I gave this resposibility to our guide...figure he could us the practice :) But, other, more brave (or stupid...there's a fine line dividing the two) fisher-people attempted to unhook the big pirhanas by themselves.
Unfortunately, there was one casualty. The incident went down as follows...Roisin (pronounced RO-SHEEN, not raisen) a very nice girl from Ireland, wasn't in the same canoe as the guide when she caught a big pirhana. She needed to get the thing off of the hook and her brother told her she'd be fine so she gave it a shot. The picture at the top illustrates how this story ended. That's her bloody finger and her brother's the guys smiling at the bottom of the picture. Check out the teeth on that fish!! Luckily, she was a tough Irish girl and made it away with only a flesh wound and a great story to write home about.
After we had our fill of Irish-girl-eating-fish, we decided it was time to call it a day. At this point, our guide informed us that we had at least a two hour paddle back to camp. After we confirmed that he wasn't joking, we came really close to understanding the phrase, "up a river without a paddle".
Okay, yes, we did have paddles, but we had become comfortably accustomed to our tree-boat with the 40 horsepower engine. Three near-miss accidents with other boats on the river, 2 and 1/2 hours, and one gnarly sunburn later we made it back to the lodge. Lunch never tasted so good. We were all super sore the next day. Gracias a Dios for 4 stroke Yamaha engines!
We also saw a ton of cool animals. But in order to keep your reading attention, here's our top five list...
5. Three different types of Monkeys...all were polite and didn't throw poop at us. We also saw a relatively fresh dead monkey while hiking. It's pretty crazy (and gross) how quickly nature takes care of decompsition. Sorry, we didn't take a photo, but the monkey looked like it was still moving because of the amount of flies and mosquitoes covering its body.
4. Baby Anaconda...relieved to not run into a full size adult. Apparantly, they've been spotted as large as 12 meters AND small children HAVE been eaten.
3. Pink River Dolphins...we were really fortnate to see one of these guys. They are much smaller than the dolphins you see around the California coast. It's amazing that they are able to survive in a body of water containing so many predators.
2. Caymen...speaking of predators, I'm betting these guys could do their fair share of damage. According to our jungle expert, it's much easier to see caymen during the dry season because they all congregate to the few, small watering holes because it's their only option. Our guide decided it would be a good idea to go caymen hunting at night. Remember, our boat was made out of a tree and barely floated higher than the surface of the river. These guys are pretty creepy...especially at night because you can only see their red eyes reflecting the light of the flashlights. As soon as we saw the caymen go under water we were out of there pretty quick...thank goodness!
Last, but not least. Drum roll please....
1. Pirhanas...okay, you might be thinking Pirhanas are cool, but with the vast variety of animals in the jungle, why are they number one on our list?
Here's how we answer that question...because we got to catch them! (and eat them if we wanted to.)
Using tree branches as rods and red meat as bait, we sat in our small tree canoes in a lake where it wasn't safe to swim. At first we were only getting bites of lakeweed, but as soon as it started to pour down rain the baby pirhanas started chomping (literally) at the bait. It was crazy! We could hold the meat just above the surface and the little guys would jump out of the water to get at the meat. Don't worry we threw back all of the babies.
Once the rain let up, we decided to paddle over to a different part of the lake in hopes of catching some big pirhanas. Our luck didn't seem to follow us. We sat for a solid hour before we even got a tug. Finally, our guide caught a big guy! I guess his friends weren't too far behind him because a few of us got some solide tugs on our lines. The bigger pirhanas definitely put up a fight disproportionate to their size.
Once we finally got these guys into the boat, the next challenge was keeping the fingers away from their jagged teeth while taking out the hook. Personally, I gave this resposibility to our guide...figure he could us the practice :) But, other, more brave (or stupid...there's a fine line dividing the two) fisher-people attempted to unhook the big pirhanas by themselves.
Unfortunately, there was one casualty. The incident went down as follows...Roisin (pronounced RO-SHEEN, not raisen) a very nice girl from Ireland, wasn't in the same canoe as the guide when she caught a big pirhana. She needed to get the thing off of the hook and her brother told her she'd be fine so she gave it a shot. The picture at the top illustrates how this story ended. That's her bloody finger and her brother's the guys smiling at the bottom of the picture. Check out the teeth on that fish!! Luckily, she was a tough Irish girl and made it away with only a flesh wound and a great story to write home about.
After we had our fill of Irish-girl-eating-fish, we decided it was time to call it a day. At this point, our guide informed us that we had at least a two hour paddle back to camp. After we confirmed that he wasn't joking, we came really close to understanding the phrase, "up a river without a paddle".
Okay, yes, we did have paddles, but we had become comfortably accustomed to our tree-boat with the 40 horsepower engine. Three near-miss accidents with other boats on the river, 2 and 1/2 hours, and one gnarly sunburn later we made it back to the lodge. Lunch never tasted so good. We were all super sore the next day. Gracias a Dios for 4 stroke Yamaha engines!
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