© Allan and Amanda 2008
fruits and vegetables served with grilled catfish… quite a feast! The amazing thing was that we were the only guests staying at ARCC; we had the whole place to ourselves and had nine staff looking after us! Incredible!
After lunch I just had enough time to ‘wet a line’ but unfortunately nothing to show for it… different tactics next time!
In the afternoon, around 4pm, we went for a forest trek with our guides (when the lodges are full there would be several groups, each with their own guide, but because Amanda & I were the only ones there, we had four guides just for us…) Anyway, off we went across the lake by boat and into the depths of the forest. One guide was an expert in forest medicines and he showed us all the plants and trees that his village used to cure a whole range of ailments… little did I know, at this stage, that I would be grateful for his knowledge later that same day.
During our walk we saw a group of spider monkeys high in the canopy above us. I also saw, albeit very briefly, a very large ground feeding bird called a Trumpeter standing about three feet high.
The forest was alive with sound; calling birds and the ubiquitous cicadas, and what a racket they make. Strange creatures with an amazing life cycle and when you pick them up they grunt and squeak like some demented gremlin or Furbie!
monkeys with a group of brown capuchins closely following behind them. We returned to the lodge area and much to our surprise and delight we saw an agouti, a large rodent of the capybara family. It was happily trotting along the paths right outside our hut with not a care in the world and seemingly oblivious to us.
Later that afternoon we joined three of our guides out on the lake for a fishing match; me against the rest it seemed, with Juan acting as referee. They would be using more traditional hand-line and pole methods, where as I used my rod, reel and line. I was lucky enough (or perhaps a little skilled?) to catch about six or seven piranha, two carp like fish called lisas and another small fish that no one knew the name of but wouldn’t have looked out of place in a tropical aquarium! The hand-liner did catch three rather impressive corvinas, fish of the bass family. It transpired that he was using a piece of one of my piranhas as bait, so perhaps that was his secret.
After another great meal we then got back out on the lake in the pitch dark searching for caiman by torchlight. Under the powerful beam of the light you can spot the caiman eyes shining back at you. We saw several, including the large black caiman, which can grow up to 12 feet long! Big powerful creatures related to crocodiles and alligators. At one point we drew the boat level with one just lying still in the middle of the lake…
Being out on the lake at night was quite special and the light show put on by the fireflies and glowworms was spectacular. All through the bank side vegetation and deep in to the forest the fireflies flew leaving an illuminated trail. The beds of floating plants on the lake and all along the muddy banks the glowworms shone, twinkling away looking for all the world like it was a town shining beneath us as we flew past; It was all rather magical…
Another long and tiring day and another early night. It was feeling unusually cool. The wind had turned and was now coming from the south, from Patagonia and through Brazil bringing the temperature down from about 90 degrees to about 50! Quite a drop and it was actually feeling chilly. We were forced to wear our fleece layers that we had been saving for colder regions later in our trip. The inclement weather meant a change of plan for the morning. We were going to go up the platform tree to see the sunrise but instead we went back out on the boat on the ox-bow lake. We saw huge shoals of fish wallowing in the shallows and we were also treated to our now daily glimpse of the giant otter family. In the surrounding trees we saw howler monkeys, brown capuchins and spider monkeys - all trying to keep warm on this fresh morning.
We returned to shore and had a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs… well I did, Amanda probably just had rabbit food or something! Afterwards, I again had the chance to fish for a while and, despite only being able to fish from the landing stage, I caught another six or seven piranha, a couple of lisas and a corvina- great fun!
Later in the morning we went for a long forest walk around the lake with a machete wielding Indian guide leading the way. We saw lots of spiders, ants and butterflies but generally the forest was quiet, probably due to the cool weather.
After lunch we continued our day walking by taking the boat across the lake to pick up a different trail some distance from the lodge. Our aim was to walk to the mammal clay lick and, when we found it we saw quite e few very large and impressive birds including spix’s guan and the blue-throated piping-guan. We came across a group of scarlet macaws happily playing in the canopy above us, and below them, seemingly oblivious to the macaws cackling was a roadside hawk feeding on a freshly caught kill…life in the raw indeed.
We then came across the last remaining mahogany tree in the whole region. This one had evaded the illegal loggers saw and was now protected under the watchful eye of the ARCC. We returned to the lodge and nearly trod on a very small but beautiful green snake which had been eating one of the numerous little frogs which are all over the site.
Dinner at 7 was followed by a night walk into the forest which is quite an eerie experience but one not to be missed. The cool night was unusually quiet but we did see our first tarantula, albeit a small juvenile but impressive non the less. We saw fantastic looking caterpillars and all manner of weird and wonderful insects. Throughout our walk we were bombarded by large moths and beetles flying at our torches. We were ‘buzzed’ by enormous bats, both large fruit bats and the very strange bulldog fish-eating bat.
Our last evening at the ARCC came to an end and an early night was taken after deciding on the last morning’s activities. We decided to go back on the boat again which we had both developed a strong liking for. I guess with someone else doing all the hard paddling, it was an easy choice for us…
The morning dawned very cool and cloudy; not at all what you expect in the Amazon Rainforest, but apparently does happen from time to time. Not a great deal to see around the lake but we did see a small troop of brown capuchins huddling together for warmth. We think we saw some spider monkeys at some distance away from the lake, but we couldn’t be sure.
A menacing group of king vultures were seen circling above the lodge area… wondered who had died of hypothermia in the night!
One of our guides then sensed animal activity ashore and, without further ado, we landed the boat and scaled the bank just in time to see the back end of a hoard of very smelly peccaries causing mayhem charging through the forest.
All too soon our time at the ARCC came to an end, and after saying our goodbyes to Lilly and the other staff, we made our way to the waiting boat for the journey back to Tipishca for an overnight stop.
