What is there to see and what I did manage to capture to share with you - Amazon experience in Ecuador

The green color of Ecuadorian Amazon jungle wants to come at you; Just looking at it it creates a feeling of overflow, serious abundance of richness. It is so vivid and juicy that it makes you want to drink it, swim in it, look at it..... all the time. How come one part of the world can have it all, while elsewhere in the world people are oblivious to it; never given a chance of experiencing the paradise. In the Amazon you are bathing in pure form of prehistoric beauty. The green thick coat is craggy. The sound of jungle is crooning to your ears. End of rainy season produced water levels so high that most of the trees are half way under water. It makes river transportation so easy and risk-free. High water means to risk of bumping into underwater rocks, dead trees and other surprises.

Two species of Sloth in the Cuyabeno area. The bigger of the two is smiling at you from this photo. We caught him taking a nap. He looked at us and curled away disgust with all the interest he was getting. 

 

Yes, that is right, curled into a ball, back to his nap. These animals are active only few hours a day. Interesting fact: they go down to the ground once every week or two to poop. It is a clean animal, the poop gets covered as well! The reason for that is simple: keeping predators away form his hiding place. Even though they go from tree to tree within several miles radius, while they are asleep they do not want to be seen or smelled. Hence pooping happens elsewhere, not from the tree level. We also did see the smaller Sloth species but it was too hidden to photograph. His fur was covered with spots and the color was a bit darker than this ones.

Monkeys everywhere, 10 species I managed to see and capture some. This one I believe is a Capuchin monkey. They are said to be the most predatory, the eat pretty much anything and unlike their other cousins, their diet includes eggs and meat.

Little boat in a big jungle.

This bird was so hard to capture. We caught him hiding in is camouflage position. Still and almost transparent in between tree branches. If I am not mistaken his name is Grey Potoom. He was also high up on that tree, even harder to photograph with my little lenses.

Didn't I say I loved the trees?

And more trees :)

 On the day two I decided to skip the 'group p adventure' and stay in the lodge. The group of seven of them went onto exploring a local community of Siona people. Out of the 5 different communities in this part of jungle, our Lodge was working closely with Siona. They provide food and service for the lodge. They give boatmen and guides, they are the local cooks and the maintenance staff. The group went to visit them, make Kasawa traditional bread and eat roasted meat of a local animal (I cannot remember the name, I will update when my memory comes back to me :))

Staying alone in the lodge was the best idea ever. I had the whole place to myself. After breakfast, even though it was raining hard, I went straight up to the watching tower to take a better look at the surroundings from the tree top level. 

The rain was so heavy and the bird was so far away.. struggling with my camera.. but at least you can see big rain drops and get the idea how it looked like in reality.

In case you forgot, it was a rainy season. It rained every day for few hours, but then rest of the day was usually sunny and very warm. During one of the rainfalls I captured this vulture, Hoatzin is his name.

In between two tree branches, just above water level, the two beautiful snakes were resting.

I really enjoy looking at snakes, they seem so weirdly interesting to me.  These two are two different Boa species.

First time in my life I got to see great parrots wild and free. Aras are said to be a barometer of jungle's health. If there are wild Ara parrots it is considered a healthy animal habitat.

Can you see two of them? They pair up for life. Two parrots joined for as long as they live.

Finally we get to spiders. I am sure, like me, you were dying to see some pics. Here we are, the real true Tarantula hiding high up on a tree. It was too far for my lenses to capture enough light to make it sharper. But you get the idea ;).

I was hoping for some colors, and here they are, the jungle is not all green after all. This beautiful tree was blooming, it made me really happy.

After sunset picture, birds sitting in between tree branches. I like the contrast between the skies and the tree.