November 28, 2010

Another day with getting up at 5am and no fish.

We had spent our last day at the main lodge and packed all our stuff to head for what Amazonia Expeditions call their research center. It is a lodge very much like the main one, but is inside the national park about an hour and a half further up the river. Research is only done there for about 3 months during the end of wet season.

The heat was the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) so far. We used an open boat to the center and I have to admit it would have been tempting to turn down the sauna a little bit. The view from the boat was as always great and relaxing.

We noticed as we made our way up the river that the jungle was getting denser and the river more wild in the sense that many fallen trees were lying in and by it. We were now in the national park where there are no villages.

On our way we stumbled across some otters They were quite far away, but with my suerduper zoom I managed to get a photo of one. While there we only saw black moving blobs. It was only when I post-processed the images on the computer that I got to see the otter.

We also saw some bats who were resting by the shore, but they flew grumpily away before I could take any pictures. The research center gave a good first impression:

Iseline wanted to have a swim while I made sure to keep my lures humid. Iseline was a little bit skeptical when Weninger told her not to swim too far out into the water, but stay by the boats. There could be anacondas where the water was deeper…

I tried more or less every single lure I had brought, including trout lures. No results. I could hardly see the lure myself when it came in because of the muddy water. Nope, this is definitely bait country.

Weniger took us out in a boat on a fishing excursion. There was not much activity in the water. The day was simply too hot for fish to be biting much. I did manage to get a nice catfish (foot added for scale) and Iseline caught a fresh water sardine (no photo, sorry, but it was a nice, fat sardine).

Hélène didn´t last very long and read a book while the rest of us fished.

Afterwards I continued fishing a bit by the shore next to the research center. As I was heading back, when dusk was starting to set in, one of the guides was down by the boat and asked me to not move. They had seen a caiman, a type of crocodile, in the water. I froze and kept looking at the shore 4-5 meters from me. After a short while the beast stuck its nose tip and eyes out of the water (nose to the left):

Very cool, i have never seen a wild crocodile before.

The sunset was beautiful and made the trees seem to burn:

I´m writing this at about 10pm in the evening. i believe most others at the lodge are sleeping now. The big difference between being in the forest in Norway and being here is the noise level at night. There is an impressive cacophony of sounds out there now. Insects and frogs are fighting for the audio spectrum while fish are continuously making loud splashes while they are eating each other.

Eirik

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