Monday, November 3, 2008

Hi,
Well we woke up this morning at around 7am!!! Thanks to Jake cluttering around in the kitchen with breakfast. So hesitantly got out of bed and headed for the family room. Breakfast was on the table when we arrived and we had bacon and eggs, it was really nice and woke Phoebe and I up perfectly. While eating breaky Jake announced what we were doing for the day. Phoebe and I choked as he said 15km walk!!!! Yes we choked on our food and dropped the cutlery as he spoke. He said we should both be fine because it was MOSTLY flat and he also said we would she a load of animals. That cheered us up a little. So once we had finished we went into our bedroom and got ready for the day. Phoebe and I carried a tiny backpack to help the walk a little and to our surprise Jake carried an absolutely massive bag, full of food, water, cameras, first aid gear and probably the kitchen sink judging by the size of it!!! Anyway, he said he would be fine because he is used to it, but Phoeb's and I doubted that we would even be able to handle our bags for 15kms let alone that so called bag!
We headed out at around 9:30am and we walked through different varieties of trees, bushes vines and loads more and we saw a lot of a lot of birds of different shapes, sizes and colours. We walked for around 2hrs before we caught site of a monkey. According to Jake it was a squirrel monkey and they were also called Saimiri sciureus (Don't worry I can't pronounce it either!!!) They were so cute and only grow to about 10-14 inches long, how adorable?! We took some great photos and then we had to move on. We had walked about 4km now and so we still had 11km left, bit with the beautiful scenery around us we didn't notice the distance.
We kept walking and suddenly Jake told us to stay completely still and look straight in front. We were a bot shocked at the alertness in his voice but did as we told. We looked in front and saw a big, lanky Black Jaguar and boy was he beautiful!!! He was black and silky and looked as if his fur was velvet. His walk was graceful, sneaky and luckily didn't notice us. We got a photo of him because Jake didn't want to scare him with the flash. He said they are usually called Panthers.
We decided to take a long path around him because Jake said he would probably be hunting, so we went with that!
We kept walking for around and 1hr and a half and then we decided to have lunch. We sat on the ground under a tree and Jake pulled out some sandwiches he made this morning, probably at like 5am!!! Then he got some fruit and biscuits. We all started eating and then he told us some facts about the amazon:-
  • Amazingly it covers up to 40% of South America!!!
  • It is the biggest rainforest in the world
  • It is the only large rainforest that is densely covered with plants and animals
  • Out of 5.5million square kms in 2.7 acres of that there is 700 different species of trees and double that in plants.
  • In just 4 square miles of the Amazon there was found 125 mammal species, 400 species of birds, 100 different reptiles, 60 different amphibians and 150 species of butterflies!!! Just in 1 square meter of leaf liter there was 50 different types of ants found!!!

Once we were totally in awe over the facts we kept eating and that was when I realised that the tree we were under was incredibly tall!! I asked Jake how tall it was and he said it was only around 90m but they can grow to around 130m tall and some can be around 200ft!!! I kept looking at the trees and then I realised that I was struggling to see because of the trees covering pretty much all of the light coming from the sun!!!

Jake said we had walked as far as we could go if we wanted to get home before dark and he said it would be safer if we did, so we packed up and started to head back.

We had walked around 2km from the tree when i saw a beautiful bird. It had an orange, green, yellow, red and black bill that was absolutely massive!!!! It had a black body with yellow down its chest and green around its eyes. I showed Jake and he said it was a 'Keel-Billed Toucan'. I took a million photos, but I will only put a few on my next post. Oh I will also put a map of the wetlands and Antarctica on there because i forgot to put them on my last picture post.

We kept walking and it took us around 2hrs to get back to camp. That was with a few stops because Jake showed us some different ant and other insect species.

Once we were inside and relaxed it was around 5pm so it wasn't too late but we were pretty tired because of all the walking. We sat and talked for a while and then had dinner, cheese on toast (we weren't very hungry!!!) Then we all had showers and Phoebe and I packed to go back tomorrow. We are off to the Sahara Desert next and are really looking forward to it, thought it is a little different from the amazon!!!! We will actually be able to see the sun!!

Anyway cya tomorrow,

I will put the pics on another post along with the maps!!!

Cya Mon xo

No comments: