Its a Jungle Out there!!!

[rubixcube06]

This weekend we visited the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazon jungle. It was absolutely awesome! First we took a plane, which literally lasted only 20 minutes. As soon as we leveled off we started to descend again. Then after arriving at coca, a small town where the airport is, we hopped a bus to the river and then took a 2 hour ride down the Napo river. Once arriving to shore, we hopped a “monkey bus” a bus with no windows or doors for 2 more hours, then another boat down the Tiputini river for 2 more hours. And when I thought that Raystown Field Station was in the middle of nowhere, I was way wrong! This place is amazing. I like how Alicia put it when she said that the jungle looked like it was bursting at the seams from the river. It really did. All different kinds of trees overlapping onto the water. It’s so much to look at at the same time!. once we got to the field station. We pretty much just ate dinner and fell asleep. The next morning we woke up at 5:30 to hike to this watch tower where we spent the rest of the morning looking for birds. From there we could hear wooly monkeys. We saw toucans, loris, parakeets, piping gwans, woodpeckers, egrets and so many song birds to even name! we also saw this conga ant which is apparently really dangerous. It was defiantly the biggest ant I’ve ever seen! After hiking back to the station and eating lunch, we proceeded on another hike where we saw army ants (they were amazing! Soo many of them!) fire ants and lemon ants. We actually ate the lemon ants and yea..they do really taste like lemon! The next mornings hike we were in search of the salt lick, where a lot of animals go to drink. But on the way we saw a group of wooly monkeys and chased them off of the trail into the jungle. We got pretty close to them. Actually so close that I guess they felt that we were invading because one of the bigger monkeys started shaking trees and throwing huge branches at us! They almost hit us too. It was soo amazing to see, but he was not a happy monkey. Anways after our big chase we made it to the salt lick where we could see bats in this little cave! One bat flew at my head, just barely missed me. we also saw tapir tracks and tapir pee. But no tapir . We then spent the rest of the afternoon on a boat in search of animals. First, of course we put on life jackets and let the current of the river take us down stream. It’s a little un-nerving swimming in the same river as piranhas, snakes, caimans and huge fish, but thankfully we all survived and had soo much fun! Once it got dark we took out a big spot light and searched for caimans. We found a couple actually. They are soo awesome looking. And blend in soo well, I’m still amazed that our guide spotted all that he did.
So my goal for the weekend was to see a macaw, but however on none of our adventures did we see one, however on the way out, I happened to spot them!! Two red ones sitting and screaming high in a tree. I was so proud of myself that I spotted them. (well I mostly heard them, lucky for me I know the macaw scream quite well!!) but another cool thing was that in the tree with the macaws were monkeys! Two for one! So that definitely made my day, as if being in the Amazon jungle wasn’t enough. This was just an absolute amazing trip, I can’t even describe how awesome it was. I’m am so absolutely excited to be there for a month at the end of my trip. I just finished posting pictures so you should check them out!! Tommorrow we don’t have school…well…cause its carnival of coarse!! Hehe anyways just cause I can’t get enough of sitting on buses waiting to get to places, we are planning to go to Ambato, which is this town 2 hours near here that is having this festival of flowers and fruits. Its supposed to be really pretty, and they are having bull fights, so I’m trying to go to one of those, I just want to see what its like, I think I’ll be an interesting experience.