Jungle: Part 3

Here are Richard and our fearless guide, Silvia. What you can't see in this picture is the machete Silvia is carrying. If you go trekking in the jungle, a machete is essential. This pic was taken at the end of our hike up and down the 1000 m (~3000 ft) hill behind our lodge.

The day we went on this hike, I was feeling better, however, I hadn't eaten much in several days. I was pretty tired, but I really wanted to get to the top. I couldn't have done it (or gotten back down in one piece) without Richard & Silvia's help. Oh, and it was my birthday. It was a great birthday.

Along the way, we saw monkeys. It was so cool-just like in the zoo, except of course the monkeys are free. Apparently, they are curious and territorial. Since Silvia can make monkey calls, they had to come check us out. They were small, cute, and did some running up and down trunks and big jumps for us.

We saw lots of amazing butterflies, but they are really difficult to photograph. This is our best shot:

I noticed that a lot of the butterflies are one color on top, and completely different on bottom. For example, there are these huge lavender-iridescent butterflies. They are incredibly gorgeous. On the bottom, they are brown. The effect this has is that they are quite difficult to follow as they fly: when the wings close, the iridescent part disappears. I guess this helps them from being eaten.

We also saw ants. This is a group of army ants, the stinging kind.

The other ant path crossing our trail was of leaf cutter ants. It was funny to see these little dime-sized leaves bobbing, apparently by themselves, across the jungle floor. Only when you looked closely could you see that ants were carrying them. Richard wondered why the ants were going all the way to the top of the trees to get the leaves when there were plenty of leaves closer to the ground. According to Silvia, it is because they like the tender, new leaves growing near the top of the canopy.

Here we are in front of a huge old strangulator tree. These trees grow around other trees, killing them. The jungle people consider them sacred and believe that if you let a child wander too close, s/he will have visions. They keep their children away from these trees. (We had no visions. At least, I didn't.)

The view from the top!

Our last full day in the jungle, we got up before dawn to go to the parrot clay lick, shown below.

This is an area of exposed clay and earth along the river. Parrots come here to ingest the minerals. Apparently, since they eat not-yet-ripe fruits and nuts, they get toxins in their system. The minerals in the clay neutralize the toxins. (Perhaps the metals bind them? I didn't get all the chemical details.) We weren't close enough to get good pictures of the parrots, but we could see them-green with blue heads-through binoculars.

We watched a little drama unfold, narrated by our guide. At dawn, the parrots begin to assemble, flying in and hanging out in the trees on top. There are always watch-parrots on the lookout for predators. If it's safe, groups of parrots will take turns flying down and licking the clay. When we were there, we waited and waited and the parrots didn't come down. Silvia figured out that it was because there was a hawk in the area that the parrots knew about. Eventually, the hawk retreated a little. The parrots then decided it was safe and came down. We watched them for a while. Then the hawk returned and the parrots scattered. (It didn't appear that the hawk was successful.) Pretty neat.