Life in the Amazon: Day 3

Saturday

6:09 PM

Since we've been busy all day, I haven't had time to write until now. We left at 6:00 AM to go early morning parrot watching. We rode a boat out to a small sand bar. It was a sight that was common for the birds to come and eat the salt. The parrots never came, but it was a nice relaxing hour there.

At 9:00, we began our trek to go zip lining. The hike was difficult and we were all out of breath by the time we got there. We were soon putting on harnesses and helmets and shooting down onto the first perch. Soos was the first to go, but she stopped too early and had to use her hands to pull herself backwards up to the platform. It was quite amusing. After we all made it across, we had two more zip lines to cross. Once we reached the end, we had to rappel about 40 feet down, completely relying on ourselves to lower down to the ground. The whole experience was very exhilarating and fun.

On the way back, we got the chance to see a family of monkeys hopping around in the trees above! So incredible! The monkeys were absolutely adorable. We also got to see a baby viper, after several minutes of being very close to it, we found out it was even more dangerous than the adults - yikes!! - and we saw a huge spider, who stays by the river and catches fish.

Then we got back and ate lunch, very tasty. After about an hour of free time, we got back in the boat and headed to another part upstream. We docked and began to walk through many tall grasses and tall cane.

Eventually we made it to a more foresty part, where we walked through lots of muddy areas and over lots of streams. There were so many different types of beautiful birds.

And the ants here are actually quite intense. Below is a picture of just some of the millions of army ants hustling along. I lost track of their trail eventually.

My favorite part of tonight was when we boarded small river rafts made of logs and floated around observing the birds.

We reached the other side of the small pond we were in, and our tour guide took us to eat termites. Yes, I ate a termite! Another thing we got to try was bitter cane. The locals use it as a source of water when they don't have access to clean water. When re-boarding the rafts, Soos tripped and fell in. We are all giving her a hard time about her silly moments. Very soon after that, we spotted a pair of green and blue macaws sitting in the trees above.

We are all back now, and about to eat dinner!