Amazon 3

January 22 2013

After lunch, we went on another hike, this time on the tower trail with Santiago as our guide.  This hike was very exciting because there were LOADS of opportunities to see birds (best animals ever).  I wasn't able to get as many photos of birds on this outing as I would have liked to, but there were many more opportunities for me later in the week.

more epiphytes along the tower trail

The tower trail consisted of two different sets of towers.  The first was a system of bridges in the canopy.  We were provided harnesses just in case we fell, but thankfully no one ended up needing it.  We walked over the first two sets of bridges without any problems.  When it was time to move to the third set, Santiago did not warn us (possibly because of the language barrier, possibly because he wanted to play a joke) of the ants on the trees on the third platform.  James, Morgan and Sarah and ants all over, but my timidness prevented me from going to the third bridge in the first place.  The last part of the bridges consisted of a sketchy ladder that ascended another 5 (maybe?) m into the canopy onto another platform.  This was again too sketchy for me to participate in because of the heights involved.

harlequin bug on the bridge cable 

morgan ascending even farther into the canopy

beautiful birds in the distance

The next tower was my favorite.  The platform was placed in one of the largest trees I'd seen in the rainforest.  It was essentially a birding station (I guess you could look at other animals, but that wouldn't be very fun) with a scope.  One of our professors, Andrés, was also in the tower with two bird books--one mental and one physical.  Here we saw lots of fun and exciting birds, like parrots, paradise tanager, and a difficult to identify flycatcher.

part of the tree that we were in

not the best photo, but there was a parrot fly-by 

view from the canopy, of the canopy

probably a flycatcher 

lots of ants (big and small) in the bridges and towers

for tree species, it is rare to be common and common to be rare.  there isn't a dominant species

more parrots, either the red and green or the scarlet macaw

When it was finally time to leave the tower, I took a cold shower while I was still hot from the hike so that I would be refreshed rather than chilled.  It took my hair forever (longer than overnight) to dry because of all the humidity.  Just before I fell asleep, it started raining very loudly.  The rain seemed extra loud in the rainforest because all of the levels of vegetation increase the sound.  We woke up just in time to be late for breakfast because the rain was louder than my alarm!  Over the next few days, the river rose at least 1 m and covered up a lot of the banks we saw on our way in.