So the hut where I'm staying has four individual rooms but the walls are so thin that you can hear everything anyway in the other rooms. Which I'm sure was great for everyone else this morning when my alarm went off at 4:30! Haha! I was as usual late.
We then all went Macaw spotting, we all got on one of the company's long thin boats and headed down the river.
On our way we also picked up a few more tourists from another spot along the river where they had been camping, they seemed very Peruvian and so I assumed that they were from Peru, but as we started talking I asked them where they were from and they said they lived in the U.S., and I asked where and they said Colorado, which I was surprised by and asked where again and they said Boulder!
I actually found people from my hometown in the middle of the Amazon rainforest! Who does that! But if that's not crazy enough I started talking to the girl and she's also seventeen and goes to Boulder High! What are the chances! It was so crazy! I would be telling stories to her about things I did in Boulder and start describing something about boulder before realizing she already knows!
Me and Melissa on the front of the boat
Then we arrived at the clay lick at around 6:45. It was deserted, so we sat down to wait a while, and what a while it turned out to be. There was not a single bird for the grueling next four hours we spent in the humid mosquito filled swamp, exhausted and miserable by the end.
The exposed wall of clay with no Macaws. The hours dragged until when they finally showed up it barely felt worth it especially because when they did come they only went up to the trees and not down onto the lick.
Through the binoculars!
Zoomed in
And more
Although they were pretty cool I was ready to go back! At the very end when we were walking back to the boat I went ahead but a few others took forever, and of course when they finally arrived back at the boat I learned they had found this amazing spot where all the Macaws were on the lick. Oh well.
During lunch I talked a lot with the guide as the American family is extremely quiet, apparently being a tour guide is a really hard occupation. You are away from home for two or three weeks at a time and he told me how this ended up causing him to get divorced and his kids, nine and two and a half barely getting to see him! How sad!
Then in the evening I was supposed to go for a jungle walk with the shy American family but Melissa invited me to go with her family zip lining and I jumped on the offer! Zip lining through the jungle has to be one of the most amazing things to do, and something I've always wanted to do!
Oh if only it had been what I was imagining.
It was not one of the most awesome things I've done, it was not at all how I imagined it would be. It was actually one of the most mediocre things I've ever done. The zip line was not high up in the canopy as I thought but in front of the huts that contained our rooms. At the lodge. The lodge!
I was so disappointed but decided to make the best of it so went first, it was actually not awful, it went out over the river a little, and was pretty fun. The only hard part was that the guide told me to stop ten meters before the end, but I don't know how far ten meters is! How many feet is that! Anyway I ended up misjudging it quite a bit and stopping maybe 30 meters before the end and barely having enough speed to make it to the end! Haha, poor Melissa though misjudged it the other way though as she turned around backwards and couldn't see how far from the end she was and ended up slamming into the guy that was stopping us at the end!
Me on the zip line!
I then had five hours of free time to kill, it is actually very frustrating that I went to the Amazon, spent all this money just to sit in my room.
The only thing that made it bearable was spending it with Melissa, it would have been awful by myself! We played cards and talked a lot!
Then finally we had another activity after the sun set. Caimen spotting, we all went back to the boat to look for Caimen a type of alligator. This was also disappointed because we barely saw any and looked for maybe 45 minutes. So all in all although of course being in the Amazon was amazing it was a disappointing day.
