Animal Planet LIVE

Ok, last Amazon post.  Animal and insect sightings.

There are monkeys, giant spiders and other exotic birds everywhere.  It´s pretty cool to see in the wild.  Tons of pics below.

We bumped into this guy on the boat trip back.  Wow.

Pensive male howler monkey.  When he roars, he sounds like a 747 taking off.  It is unreal.

Wondering what those big awkward apes on the jungle floor are up to.

Caiman - like an Amazonian crocodile or alligator.

Dragon blood tree.  It bleeds red when cut... and the liquid is used by locals as a healing lotion.

Capybara  - a big, awkward aquatic rodent.

Macaws - they are huge and are awesome to see flying around.  Much cooler than in pet stores.

Paper wasp - one of these bit me and it felt like someone had fired a staple into my neck.  Usually not aggressive though.

Woodpecker at long distance.

A flock of ... parrots.

A toucan!  

A tree-strangling vine.  It will eventually strangle the tree and grow over it, becoming a tree itself.

Crazy looking fruit.  Bitter and not really edible.

Giant ant.  You can´t really see it here.  

Thorn spider. What a weird shape.

Mushrooms at the base of a tree... also surreal looking.

Fairly large orb weaver.  For some reason, all these oversize spiders fascinate me.

Potted plant in the US... this thing grows big here.

Butterfly with transparent wings!

He´s lookin at you.

Butterflies all swarm to these clay licks, which have a lot of sodium.

Another bizarre looking butterfly.

Poison dart frog.  Natives use these on the end of their spears and arrows to hunt, since the body is really poisonous.

Good sized tarantula, spotted at night.

Little blurry here... but a caiman with a huge fish in its mouth.

Parrot fly by.

These macaws were raised by scientists as part of a program to increase their numbers in the wild.  It worked, and they are mostly wild, but sometimes they come back to stalk the breakfast table at the lodge.

This one stole a couple of pancakes.  Now they are going to fight over it.

Another howler.

Each tree is like its own little ecosystem.  

Another terrifying large spider.  This one eating a moth.

A spider monkey wondering whats up.  They are endangered and prefer to live in primary forest, which is disappearing across South America.

Dragon fly.

Spider monkey hanging out directly overhead.

Cappucin monkey dining on some fruit.

Terrifying wasp nest.  Do.  Not.  Disturb.

Another spider monkey high above the trail.

Curious what the gringos are up to.

Orb spider at night - when most of the spiders come out.

Our aggressive friend again.

This moth succumbed to a fungal parasite... just bizarre.

Tree frog!  Just like on TV.

Woodpecker

Maybe the most bizarre and evil looking bird ever... their meat is slightly toxic so they have no natural predators.  They are also very awkward in the air.

Bats sleeping during the day.

April 25-30: Deep in the Amazon

¨You had to be there!¨

It´s one thing to see the world´s deadliest insect on Animal Planet.  It´s a whole different world when it´a foot away from your face.

Tarantulas.  Tarantula-eating wasps.  Ants the size of small mammals.  The world´s most painful insect stings.  The world´s most poisonous spider (which happens to be the size of a tarantula and is ¨extremely aggresive¨)

It is all there, and it´s not even hard to find.  6 nights in the jungle was a crazy experience.

Welcome to the jungle.

Hello Wandering Spider - the size of your hand and extremely, extremely poisonous.   

The Brazilian wandering spiders appear in Guinness World Records 2010 as the world's most venomous spider.

Going to step away from the Don for a few days.  It´s not conspicuous here.  At all.

Getting ready to hop on a boat for the cruise upriver.

Cruising through the jungle.  It´s like the Venice of rainforests.

Supply boat heading upriver.

View off the bow.

This guy is writing a book on the Tambopata Natural Reserve, our destination.  His camera gear was cooler than mine, by a big margin.

Water and jungle.

The kitchen at a ranger checkpoint.

Ranger checkpoint... 

Accomodations - make sure the mosquito net is tight!  Insects and bats own the place.

Electricity is sporadic (solar panels and a generator provide power from 530 - 9), so kerosene lamps do the rest at night.

Sunrise over the Amazon.

So humid your clothes actually get wetter overnight... and forget about drying anything unless its out in the sunshine.

Ranger life.

Heading further upriver... sediment gives the river that dark orange hue.

The jungle is trying to own this shack.  It will win.

How the locals get around.

More sunrise... its brief this close to the equator.  No more 3 hour sunsets like I had down in Patagonia.

The jungle is just everywhere.  It is kind of spooky, and really easy to get lost.  Very happy to have a guide.

Cruising a small lake in the jungle.

Our leader.

Jungle life

Signs you are really far from home:

The bathroom doesn´t have toilet paper, a toilet seat, or soap, but does have two chickens.

People wash their cars in rivers.

A ¨gas station¨ is a tarp shed where a child pours gasoline out of a plastic can..

There´s no traffic, but there are waterfalls, rock slides and river crossings to worry about.

Air conditioning means fans.  Real AC?  Ha.

You laugh every time you see a sign for high speed internet.   Ha.

When you use the internet cafe, you get this message:
Upgrade to a modern browser such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer 8.
I didn´t realize Internet Explorer 5 wasn´t ¨modern?¨  What is it, pre-industrial or something?

A taxi is the back seat of a motorcycle.

A taxi ride costs less than a can of Coke.

Lunch costs less than a can of Coke.

You want ice with your Coke, but the ice might kill you.

No shirt, no shoes, no service seems like an absurd American invention.

America seems like some fantasy world on TV.  People really live like that?

April 24 - The Amazon

From the world´s coldest continent, to the world´s driest desert, to the biggest salt lake.

And then, across the Andes, to the largest rainforest.

The last 300km of the road from Cuzco drops 13,000 feet into the jungle.

It´s one of the world´s most abrupt climactic transitions.

At the top you can hardly breathe and it snows.

2 hours later it´s so hot and humid you´re practically drinking the air.

How they built a road through those mountains is pretty awesome.  The road must make thousands of turns until it straightens out.

And at the bottom, welcome to a different world.

Two months ago there was nothing green on the horizon...

...but not anymore.

Here we go.  

High up on a ridge, you can see the mountain range that borders the Sacred Valley.  Cuzco is somewhere in the 3rd valley.

Up and up... to the snowline.  Am I in Patagonia again?  God it´s cold.

Highest point, about 4,500 meters.  

Starting towards the Amazon... and over the continental divide.  All this water drains to the Amazon, and the Atlantic.

Starting the descent... cloud forest in front.

Getting green an impossibly twisty.

Beware the waterfall hazards!

More and more lush... and that stream 100km back is already looking pretty serious.

Jungle gas station / horoscope center.

Starting to feel jungly.  Just like TV.

Hello, Amazon Basin.

Stopping for supplies.

The road to Brazil, still under construction.

The last link to Brazil... 

Overlooking Puerto Maldonado and the rainforest.

Welcome to Puerto Maldonado - carved out of the jungle and a frontier town of sorts.  But you can´t help but get the feeling that nature is creeping back just about everywhere.

A good spot to catch up with friends.

And this is home for a few nights.  The dining lodge.  Hungry?

If it looks like it might be hard to find the hut during the day, just imagine what happens when it gets dark.