Manu Reserve Jungle Trip (part 2) |
Day 5 - Exploring Manu |
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The still waters of Cocha Salvador |
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The otter family come to check us out |
Fish for breakfast - yummmm!!! |
Giant river otter giving us the evil eye |
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A peccary gives away its location in a rare spot of sunlight |
Once more into the river boat |
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... look high into the canopy and you might see .... |
... a woolly monkey |
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... a brown capuchin monkey |
... squirrel monkeys leaping about |
... a capuchin watching you |
... or a woolly monkey hanging by its tail |
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At last we spotted the rarer black caiman |
Ever get the feeling that you are being watched |
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Heliconia - a rare splash of colour |
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Smooth trunked emergents in the rainforest
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The path to Cocha Otorongo |
View of the canopy from 15m up |
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Day 6 - Manu Reserve Zone to Yanayaco Lodge |
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Once more on the still waters of Cocha Salvador |
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Startled hoatzin |
Crimson tanager |
Falcon feeding |
Macaws in fight |
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A lone black caiman lurked in the shadows at the waters edge, thinking itself invisible to us, while the otter family swam by one last time on their morning fishing trip, dismissing us with a couple of quick snorts. |
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Spider monkey in mid-leap |
Silhouette of a spider monkey |
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Leaving the safari camp in Manu Reserve |
Sunny day on the Manu River |
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A pair of black skimmers |
The horned screamer |
River swallows |
Capped heron in flight |
Tortoises, white caiman, a family of capybaras wandering along the bank, all drifted in and out as we negotiated our way through the snag beds and around the broad meanders of the coffee-coloured Manu River before finally checking out at the ranger station and eventually reaching the junction with the Rio Madre de Dios.
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The diversity of rainforest trees |
A pair of rainforest giants |
River boat heading up the Manu |
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.... and wandering along the bank |
Settlement on the Alto Madre de Dios |
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Low clay cliffs of the Alto Madre de Dios |
As we trudged back, I reflected on how silent the jungle was, once you remove the background noise of crickets and cicadas chirping and loud Israeli voices. |
Dining lodge at Yanayaco |
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Day 7- Yanayaco Lodge to Erika Lodge |
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Off over the left bank, a large flock of vultures was circling - we were heading home, but life and death continued in the Amazonian basin. Passing a low grey clay cliff, we made our last and best monkey sighting - a troop of the elusive red howlers clambering up vines that overhung the river. |
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Troop of red howler monkeys |
The red howler who wasn't scared |
We pushed on, the journey broken by the occasional passage of another river boat and the odd electric flash as a blue morpho flitted across the river. Soon we were passing through the Pantiacolla Hills, from this perspective the first small ridge in a series of ever-increasing contours that rise up out of the rain forest flatness to form the Andes Mountains.
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Away to the west, the long snow-capped ridgeline of this mighty range slowly appeared out of the morning haze and seemed to be suspended high above the jungle. |
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