Having travelled up the river and arriving at the camp that we would use for the next two
weeks was quite an experience.
It is strange but there are very few places where you can land along the
river as the forest cover is very dense at the water’s edge. The growth goes from the water edge upwards
to the canopy, whereas once inside this outside edge growth there is not enough
light in the lower levels and all the growth is aimed at going higher to reach
the overhead canopy. Trees go up 70ft
and more without a single side shoot, all the energy is going to reach up to
the light.
Prior to our arrival a lot of work had already been done,
fuel, food and materials for a camp had already been brought up to the
camp. A large tarpaulin canopy gave cover
to form a tented area with the hammocks and cooking area contained under its protection
from the rain. We met the two ladies who
would be doing the cooking, Trudy and Amy and they were to prove to be very
good at their task. I’ve already
mentioned Raymond who did most of the driving for our boat though occasionally
Joe would have a session in the smaller boat with Laurence as the driver. The last of our happy band was Jonathan who
helped with a lot of the labour that occurred about the camp keeping the fire
going and looking after the generator, occasionally he took the ladies out for
a short session, fishing local creeks, it broke the days for them and they did
catch as well.
Rather than go into the fishing at this stage I thought I
would run through some of the wildlife and such that we came across. The major mammals stayed well away in the
forest and we saw only a few of them though Mark did see a jaguar just a short
distance away from the rocks that we were fishing off at the time. He tried to call my attention to it, but by
the time I looked it had gone back into the undergrowth. I did manage to get photos of four different
snakes, three of them alive and one of them, a coral snake and quite deadly was
coughed up by a redtail catfish of about 15lb caught by Andy. I was going to pick it out of the water for a
better photo, but Mark stopped me since it would appear that even the touch of
its skin acts as quite an irritant to our skin.
We saw a number of iguanas and these would be resting in
trees over the water and you would either hear or see as the creature dropped
off its branch into the water and it would swim back to the bank. One of these was brought back to the camp for
the ladies to see and it did give the chance for better photos. There were numerous small insects and the one
photo shows a splendid fellow with what looks like feathers for a tail and an almost
starry look to its wings. The spider was
the largest I saw and I placed the coke bottle near to it to give a size
reference. We saw numerous butterflies and
travelling on the river you would see hundreds of the white or yellow type flying
across the water from one bank to the other, but often a really colourful
specimen would fly past, reds, bright greens, and all the colours of the
rainbow though they did not land to give a chance for photos. The camouflaged moth shown was very common
and in the torchlight you could see dozens of moths of various sizes something like
the English night sky 50 years ago, but not now. The woodland butterfly shown looks like one
of our common browns but it was perhaps four or five inches across its span,
unfortunately I could not put a reference for size as they are too nervous.
The bird life was tremendous but again difficult to
photograph, you would see one in the trees but by the time you tried to zoom
into its resting place it would be gone.
I’ve not identified many, but there were three sizes of kingfishers, and
of course we did see a number of ospreys.
The black vultures were common and we were quite amused when on a midday
break the lads set up their version of a deadfall to try a get one of these
birds. For some reason they wanted the
feathers. Strange though it might be you
were far better off bird spotting in Georgetown, perhaps the lack of cover was
the reason. One thing we could sort of
see was the caymen, they were everywhere but all you generally saw was the eyes
in the torchlight. With the river up
over two metres they had retired back into the trees and it was very difficult
to get photos. We thought we had hit the
jackpot when fishing one place in a slack created by an island, there were
eleven pairs of eyes staring back at us within a very short section of bank but
the check showed it to be juveniles with no large one about at all.
The black Vulture.
A quite pleasing find was that of a wild mango tree on the
banks of a large lake we fished. A
clearing had been made by fishermen for when they were in the area netting fish
and I collect quite a large number that mostly went back to the camp, I did eat
a few before we got there and they are delicious. There was also a coconut tree but the guides
advised they would not be ripe yet, maybe next time. Last and one of the more exciting sightings
was that of the giant otters which we saw of three groups on different
occasions. I did manage to get a shot of
a single animal after Mark had run me quickly to the far side of the river from
our camp; the noise they make could not be missed and was only equalled by the
howler monkeys that were heard most mornings, a haunting and very loud call. We also saw spider monkeys shifting quickly
through the upper branches of the trees but no photos.
So that sums up the trip and wildlife, in the next blog I’ll
look at the fishing.
Note all photos will enlarge if you click over them.
Note all photos will enlarge if you click over them.
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