En la selva - Part 3 Gaitana River

For this trip we had a different guide, Rafael. Like Victor he had had a lot of experience guiding in the jungle. However, he misidentified a couple of birds, which seems odd. Maybe he just got the English names mixed up.

Once again we were loaded into a long boat canoe. We headed upstream and Rafael kept an eye out for caiman. However, the exciting wildlife was higher up. Rafael was explaining that a tall, grassy plant was not sugar cane, but closely related, when a small face peeked out between the stems. It was a squirrel monkey and once we looked in the right places there were scores of them, moving through to the fruiting trees just along the river bank.

The boatman reduced engine revs so that we could watch until our necks were sore. Finally, however, we had to move on. We were on our way to fish for pirañas.

Once we turned out of the main river into the Gaitana River the banks were much closer and wildlife was easier to spot. There were glossy kingfishers in several sizes, blue morpho butterflies, unidentified birds and the call of the unseen ´wolf-whistle bird´. This avian, which Rafael said was small, brown and very difficult to spot, duets with its mate. The female gives a soft call and then the male responds with a two-tone blast that is the perfect wolf-whistle. No spotty human male could produce such perfect notes.

At a river fork Rafael insisted on taking the smaller channel. I don´t think the boatman was keen, but our guide had a special fishing spot that he wanted us to have the benefit of.

The long boat was difficult to manoevre in the narrow waterway. There were many fallen branches and tree trunks that obstructed the channel. See the example in the picture.

But who cares, because we saw red howler monkeys from this creek. They live in family groups, but I only saw two. They were ambling confidently from tree to tree. They are large monkeys and clearly sport red fur.

Round one corner the debris in the river was too much. The boat grounded on at least two submerged tree trunks. With the aid of the emergency paddle Rafael eased us back into deeper water while the boatman struggled to manoevre his monster drive shaft to a position where it could assist.

Back in deeper water Rafael sternly ordered the boatman to have another go - with maximum revs this time. So the clearly doubtful engineer gunned engine and aimed at the narrow opening, under which we knew there were obstacles. Rafael almost lifted us over the submerged wood and somehow we made it through.

Rafael now concentrated hard on picking the best channel from his perch in the bows, and that is why he missed seeing the otter. We knew there were otters in the region, and we also knew that they are rare and not terribly often seen. It was either Mary or Gabriella who saw it first, and I think all the tourists got a glimpse before it saw us and dived from the bank into the river. It was sandy brown, which Rafael said meant that it was a young animal. The adults, who can reach 2 metres long, are black. The name in Spanish is "lobo del rio", which means "river wolf".

After more tight corners and scrapes, Rafael admitted that the river was too low to get to his favourite fishing hole. Nevr mind. We dropped back to a bend in the river and dropped our kidney-baited hooks into the water.

Jungle-style fishing poles.

Pirañas are bloodthirsty devourers of anything that smells of blood, right? No, actually. Most of the 30-40 species are vegetarian and maybe we should have tried broccoli for bait. There were a few alleged nibbles, but no real bites.

When we got tired of this we turned around and headed for the swimming hole. Swimming in a piraña-infested river? Yep. Rafael insisted that it was perfectly safe and that he would be the first in.

Back in the main Gaitana River channel at a broad bend there is a liana that makes for perfect Tarzan swings out over the water. True to his word, Rafael demonstrated its properties before we cautiously donned our togs and followed him. The bank was very slippery and we could have made a great mud slide. Several of us slithered around anyway, to the amusement of those still in the boat.

After we had jumped from the bank, Rafael demonstrated the even better take off from a horizontal branch. The branch was a bit moist, too, but with care no-one came to harm. The river was only about 20 metres wide, but I could not touch bottom except when very close to the bank.

When we were about ready to pack up, Gabriella decided to go ashore. Like everyone else, she slipped on the bank. Having muddy clothes made up her mind. She would do the liana swing. So I was no longer the oldest swimmer - and Gabriella did her jumps fully clothed.

Happy with our water games we set off back to the lodge. There were some showers but they were warm and I sat in the boat in my togs rather than pull dry clothes over a wet body.

Back in the main river there was a noticeable wind, and the temperature wasn´t so tropical. The rain got stronger and ahead we could see a real downpour coming towards us. What we didn´t see was the icy blast that came with the downpour. The rain really stung as it lashed my skin and I hurried to pull my waterproof out of my day pack.

The last 15 to 20 minutes of the journey were most unpleasant. The Amazon basin is one place where I did not expect to be blasted by cold, horizontal rain.

Back at the lodge we found that the rain had been forced through the insect screens into the cabins. Luckily for Jaimy and me, it only affected the hammock space, not the bedroom. Others, particularly near the river, were not so lucky.

We had experienced a rare, but not unknown, phenomenon of cold air coming down from the Andes into the river basin. The lodge was caught unawares and had no sensible response. For a while, even the generator seemed to be affected by the weather. In Caiman cabin, Jaimy used both spare blankets that night while I used my sleeping bag inside the bed; not a tactic I expect to employ again in the tropics.