Sunday 11 March 2012 - Flora and fauna walk

After a breakfast of cheese empanada, scrambled eggs with some unidentifiable greenery, bread, mermalade (jam), jugo and papaya, we got onto the motorised canoe and were dropped off with a canoe (and paddles) for our 90 minute hike into the forest, with Samula. On the way we spotted some tamarind monkeys, which Zamula said were the second smallest monkeys in the world.

We saw a large spider (which had golden in its name), which Zamula said had the strongest spider silk in the world, so much so that people sought out its silk to use for clothing or for fishing nets, a horned colourful spider, as well as a walking tree. The walking tree has roots that grow towards the light. Roots that don´t get enough sunlight eventually die off whilst others grow towards sunlight and gradually the tree moves. This can be quite slow or quite rapidly: we saw a second tree on which Zamula pointed out the growth of one root which had grown about 10 centimetres or more since the previous day. There´s so much competition for the light (only 1% gets through the canopy) that different plants have evolved different strategies.

There was a bamba tree with hollow buttressed roots that the indigena use as a drum for communication, eg. when lost in the forest as well as a very delicate but beautifully made basket by a butterfly, used to suspend and store its cocoon! It looked like it was made of fine copper wire.

The forest also had a quinine tree which, of course, is the basis of a lot of the malaria tablets and whose bark the indigenas use as well as another tree whose bark is burnt as a mosquito repellent. There was also a white tree whose bark is an antiseptic, if I remember, around which was wrapped a vine which can wrap up and down trees and grow so large that they connect several trees to the extent that if one tree falls, the vine could bring down all the others like dominoes.

We also saw the two types of termite nests: wood (man-tall) and clay (on trees with channels leading to and from the nest); a soft paper ant´s nest, which smells or produces very strong formic acid, making it less susceptible to attack. However, that fact also makes them useful to the indigenas because they rub the small ants onto their body to release the formic acid, acting as a mosquito repellent! They´re also known as "take your underwear off" ants, as they move so fast, that they´re on you before you know it and the only way to get rid of them is to take off your...underwear!

After the walk, we had to kayak our way back to camp (an hour: no one warned me we would be working out in this way!) for lunch.

After lunch, I went out for another canoe trip (this time with a group of French: at last, a mixed group; not all couples!) where we saw another of those "stinky turkeys" which I think is also known as the hoatzin; the largest toucan in the world, and more monkeys. We revisited (for me, at least) the lagoon where a few of the French went for a little dip, before we then waited for dusk, so we could do our night walk: insect repellent and head torch a necessity!

We saw some cormorants on a tree (see photo album) which had less leaves than a nearby one, and I was told that the reason for this was that it was the only place in the reserve where you could get a mobile phone signal. As a result, it gets climbed by people wanting to make a phone call...of course, the mind boggles as to how this was discovered. Someone deciding: I know, I´ll climb that tree on the off-chance I can get a mobile phone signal...?

As it became dark, we made our way to shore and in single file, followed the guide as she showed us a scorpion spider on a tree (it doesn´t spin webs, but lies in wait, pounces and injects venom), a wolf spider (similar modus operandi, I think), as well as a number of different grasshoppers. One of them had antennae about two or three times its body length and one of them was the larges in the world! We also saw weaver spiders, a tree frog, and a scorpion. At last, a picture of a scorpion, after the two that I´ve seen at La Hesperia whilst working (and therefore without a camera in hand, especially as I only brought the large one), and which is also larger than those seen at La H.

We made our way back in complete darkness, at high speed too! - again, so glad they know the way! - the sky was beautiful with stars and I could see Orion´s belt really clearly.