Ah, yes the uneventful international plane ride. Does such a thing even exist? Not in my experience and sure enough right out of the gate we ran into a problem with our 6:00 a.m. flight from Austin to Dallas. Somehow we were automatically upgraded to first class on the Austin to Dallas leg which meant we could not use the express check-in, which the attendant could not override, which caused the ticket agent to scratch her head for 30 minutes, which resulted in us having to take our checked luggage through security, which required that we remove all liquids, which slowed us down and ultimately resulted in us having to run down the concourse in our socks because there was no time to put our shoes back on, which caused us to literally slide into the gate as they were calling our names for final boarding and closing the plane door. Whew. Then we flew to Dallas and sat because the plane to Miami was delayed.
Made it into Manaus about 11:00 p.m. and remarkably so did our luggage. Spent a couple of days getting our bearings but Manaus is not a place to hang your hat for long, it is a large industrial port city where everything that gets picked, hacked, sawed or harvested out of the Amazon jungle is loaded up and sent down or up the black anaconda of a tributary called the Rio Negro. But where the noisy, over crowded city of two million ends the unbroken forest takes over and that's great because that's why we are here.
On our first day we saw no shortage of toucans, parrots, iguanas, lizards, sloths and monkeys to assure us we were in deepest, darkest Amazonia which has provided many a traveler's gruesome tale of exploration and adventure. Of course, in our case we were only birding the grounds of a luxury hotel on the banks of the Rio Negro but still someone could have stubbed a toe in the parking lot or something. Danger lurks around every corner here.
Toucan play at this game
A hiphop iguana, otherwise known as a raptile
Hurry, hurry get the camera
I held up a cracker but he ignored me
Day 2 found us sweating our way down a road in the Ducke Reserve in the morning and sweating our way up the Musee canopy tower in the afternoon.
Benzene Ring Road
The road into the Ducke Reserve is great because it's paved and if you get there really early the heat is tolerable, and by early I mean pre-dawn and by tolerable I mean you only have trickles of sweat running down your back instead of being full on drenched by 10:00 a.m.
I saw some really interesting wasps here called armadillo wasps, so named because they make nests that look like the back of an armadillo. No one cared but me because this is a birding trip and some people can be a tiny bit obsessive about that. Apparently, these wasps are listed as having one of the most excruciating stings in the entire animal kingdom and they are fairly aggressive. They were way up in the tree canopy but I would have loved to have seen their nest closer up because it was damn amazing. Not too close up mind you I'm not that crazy.
Fred carries his own permanent warning sign about venomous snakes
Couple of jacamars hanging' out
This shot is a really big deal for all you non-birders out there. It's a rufous potoo in daylight and I double dog dare you to find one on your on
Fred and signs, what can I say
After a much needed siesta, we hightailed it over the Musa Tower which is a steel viewing platform that looks out over the Ducke Reserve and the city of Manaus.
It's a long climb, it's hot, it's humid, it's sweaty but....
Once you are up there the views go on and on
We were at this tower at the end of our trip as well, so I'll share some photos from here at the end of the post.
That night we went to dinner and Fred ordered the fish.
But enough of this city, let's head out into the heart of the jungle. Up pre-pre-dawn for a two hour drive to a different tower and then on to Presidente Figueiredo a small town 110 km north of Manaus on our way to the hammock camp we will be staying at for 3 days.
But first let's climb way up for a monkey's eye view of things. Note to engineers in the Amazon iron and humidity do not equal long-term stability
We only stayed one night in Presidente Figueredo, there is not much there and the town was only created in the early 1980s after the road came out this way. It is known mostly for a few waterfalls and a cave but that's not why we stopped here. Nope we came to see something truly amazing.
Center of thriving Presidente Figueiredo
On the way to our very own National Geographic moment
Bam! There he is the Guianan Cock of the Rock
There were eight of these birds on a lek and we watched them displaying for a female for a good while, it was one of the coolest, best most amazing experiences. They are spectacular, the most velvety orange color and did not seem to mind a hoard of people all clicking away as they tried to impress the female by dropping down from the branches onto the lek and flattening themselves out. They were doing their best but she was decidedly unimpressed by any of her suitors.
My tribe was pretty pleased with themselves
All this communing with nature was exhausting so we stopped for lunch and rewarded ourselves with grilled tambaqui (fish), pork, chicken, fresh squeezed juices, farofa (a granular manioc), beans, rice, plantains, watermelon and other plates of tasty stuff I can't remember the name of.
Suffice it to say no one went hungry this trip
The food here is fresh, delicious and healthy, mostly grilled, and is always served with a couple of kinds of freshly squeezed fruit juice that we could generally only guess at. It was all good and so was the beer and the favorite national cocktail a caipirinha, made with cachaca or fermented sugarcane. Or, as Fred likes to order it a caprinenya or a cipranya or caprineeha. Proper pronunciation was obviously not a requirement given the number of these he consumed.
Next up a three night stay at the long dreaded hammock camp.
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