Amateur Traveler: Friday, May 29

Our breakfast was at 5:30am. On this morning we were to tour an oxbow lake. An oxbow lake is a body of water that was once a part of the river. Often the river will make a new path leaving a lake behind. That is how an oxbow lake is formed. It is of course a feature that attracts a wide variety of wildlife.

We took off on the motorized canoe down the river and then docked against the river bank. It was a short walk to the lake. At the lake we sat down on a platform that was fixed across two canoes. We sat down on chairs attached to the platform as 2 men sat at the back of each canoe and paddled us around the lake. At first we watched mostly birds, but then we caught the site of a large black caiman. Tristan estimated it at about 8 feet long, we kept our distance. A little later we came up very close to another caiman, this one was much smaller and we were able to take photos. We continued to explore the lake and were able to view another group of Red Howler Monkeys. They were feasting on young shoots of leaves high in a tree. Then we watched as they followed one another to another tree.

The last animal we saw was a Three Toed Sloth. This is a large mammal with, you guessed it, three toes on each leg. It is a tree climber and it must be the slowest creature alive. Its defense is its slowness, other animals don't notice it is there. We watched it eating some leaves, and it really does take a long time for the sloth to grab the leaves and bring them to its mouth. Apparently it can take two days to get down from a tree. We were rather pleased to have seen this exotic animal. As we started to paddle back it started to rain, we didn't know at the time of course but it was going to be well into the next day before it stopped.

We arrived back at the lodge well before lunch, I decided to have a beer and talk to Louis the bartender. He did not know much English so we used both English, Spanish, hand waving, and pen/paper to communicate. A funny thing happened then, let me explain. On the first day when we were first welcomed into the lodge, there was a lady lounging around having a beer. It was 11:00am and I thought, "what kind of guest just hangs around the lodge drinking beer in the morning?". Later I found out that many of the people in that group were from our neck of the woods, Berkeley. At that time we were seated for our welcome/introduction to the lodge which included a juice drink prepared for us. So now, it is about 11:00am in the morning and I am lounging around the bar with Louis and guess what? In comes a new group just off the plane. They come in and sit down for their welcome/introduction and Louis makes up their juice drinks. I wonder what they were thinking about me!! It didn't matter, one of them was probably drinking beer at 11:00am a couple of days later.

After lunch we went to get a view of the jungle canopy. Many jungle lodges have these platforms that you climb up on to get a view over the top of the jungle. However, it was still raining. The platform was about 100 feet high. We climbed up a circular staircase to the top. Just think of a large pole planted in the ground, secured by cables and a circular staircase built around the pole. When we got to the top, well there wasn't a lot to see because of the rain. It was still fun to have climbed up there though. Well that was our last event for our visit. We relaxed in the lodge, had dinner and called it a night.

Bats