Rio Ucayali: Yanallpa & Rio Dorado
The Yanallpa area of the Rio Ucayali is phenomenally rich. The exact combination of climate, elevation, plants, and river route that produces this richness might be difficult to catalogue, but we all noticed it. All the skiffs headed out before breakfast to take advantage, and we all had different interactions.
Some had their first close look at hoatzin, the punk-rock styled, leaf-eating, chick-clawed wonder of the Amazon. It’s interesting to contemplate the grazers of Amazonia. We who do not live in the rain forest think of grazers as gentle and meek: cows, sheep, and the like. But here, in the Amazon, the plants are aggressive and the chemical composition of their leaves present a phenomenal challenge. Toxins, alkaloids, and other dangers lurk within the green. These grazers deserve our respect.
Another treat of the Yanallpa was the chance to see a small family of night monkeys peering from their tree stump home. This group tucks into the safe, dim shelter during the day and then ventures forth at night to forage. They’re curious beasts, though, and they turned their large, brown eyes on us as we sat quietly in our skiff beneath them. Those eyes. Much as our intellectual sides know that they’re large in order to take in the light they need to navigate the darkness, they feel like they are designed to woo us. We gave in. Adorable, we decided. These are the world’s most adorable monkeys.
Back aboard the Delfin II, we tucked into breakfast, then continued exploring Amazonian foods through a cuisine demonstration with the chef and our guide Luis, who taught us to make juanes. The river continued on, and we continued on upriver, watching recently eroded trees drift by and canoes navigate the eddies. Pink and gray river dolphins did distract us a bit on the upper deck, but who doesn’t want place to assert itself above all else when traveling in a location as strange and remote as the Amazon?
Rio Dorado beckoned for the afternoon, and we headed out for a skiff ride that would span the transition from day to night. This river of gold brought us our first good views of Victoria lilies, called alligator blankets in Brazil and wildly wonderful in any language. Wattled jacanas strutted over their broad surfaces, and we even had a chance to see the new, fuzzy chicks on male was guarding. When we approached, they were gone. No doubt, they’d jumped into the water to hide, but try as we might we could not discern their little beaks snorkeling the surface.
Night brought a new chorus of sounds to the river, and we listed to frogs singing. The skiff drivers and guides brought out their high-powered spotlights and peered into the darkness for eyeshine. Success! Low in the vegetation, a pair of ruby glints indicated a caiman. We were able to slowly maneuver our skiffs in so that we all could look at these crocodilians at rest in the still waters of their nursery. We didn’t linger long, as the bugs were rising with the setting sun, but we had a taste of the river’s second shift, yet another fragment to add to our building understanding of this world.
