Nauta, Peru

This morning as we left the Aria a school of grey dolphins appeared along the Yarapa river entry. They like to gather at the mouth of the river to eat the small fish that are whisked out into the main waterway. We proceeded up the river and picked up our local jungle guide, Alberto, from his stilted hut along the flooded plains. Alberto is a shocking 74 years old! With his machete he helped carve out a path for our walk through the rain forest. Unfortunately, as we made our way down the path Alberto discovered that the recent heavy rains have flooded the area we were hoping to walk through so our land excursion was a short one. The muddy ground is very slick and deep and challenging to walk through. There were beautiful local fauna-red lobster claw flowers along our path. We were warned not to bump into the “Punishment Tree” along the path. People were gruesomely tortured by being tied to the tree which is inhabited with poisonous ants.
I would have said that only occurred in the old days, but as recently as January of 2017 a woman was tortured in that method in Bolivia!
We saw several insects and butterflies. There were large fungus beetles inhabiting a tree stump covered with mushrooms. One of the guides found a 3 inch black scorpion-quite an ugly thing. Thankfully, it had been stepped on and was dead! We also found a baby Caiman, about 8 inches long that was hiding from predators in the murky mud.
Unfortunately just as we were returning to the boat, I took a face plant in the Amazonian mud and buried my I-Phone. The charger port is filled with mud. 😦 Hoping it will still work after it dries out.
When we returned to the skiffs Jim and Christian went kayaking in the river. I opted to go swimming in the black waters and try to wash the mud off my clothes.
As we were preparing to exit the river back to the big boat a Woolley Monkey put on quite a show for us as. He came down very close to our skiff and the water and was trying to untie the ropes holding the kayaks. He seemed to be enjoying performing for us!

Among the mammals we’ve spotted this week have been the Common Squirrel Monkey, Long-nosed Bat, Pale-fronted Capuchin Monkey and Wolly Monkey.

In the afternoon we visited a wilderness Amazonian village and went into a home (i.e. hut) to meet the family and several village residents. They have several chickens and a dog running about. Most of the children go barefoot all the time. Several of the boys were playing soccer.
The NG filming crew arrived a few minutes after us and played soccer with the little boys and did some filming of them for their documentary.
We brought gifts to give to the children–pencils, notepads and puzzle books. Before leaving, our Guide gathered us around and we sang with the children. It was very cute.

We returned to our skiff and proceeded a bit further up the river to another dwelling and the boys, at last, got to meet and hold Mr Anaconda. I opted to stay in the boat as far away from it as I could! Apparently, the village family found it laying along their fish storage nets and kept it for us to see. He was a young snake, probably 3-4 years old and about 10-12 feet long. Christian was delighted to have his photo taken with it.

This evening before dinner, we were to introduced to some of the crew members we had not met, who work “behind the scenes” aboard the ARIA. The guides had put together a wonderful video presentation of our week’s adventures and revealed it at our Happy Hour before dinner. They also put on a show and performed some musical numbers for us.

It’s been a delightful week aboard the Amazon Aria.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b4rpy965ovw36 8w/13%20TO%2017.mp4?dl=0