2014 - Peru Day 13 (Amazon Day 6)

Today we head to the macaw clay lick and the observation tower.

Tambo Blanquillo's local tapir

The start is really early with a 5am meeting time in order to see some macaws. We got to the platform at around 6am. There are hundreds of parrots and parakeets here for the first hour. The second hour was build up of the macaws gradually showing up but not at the clay lick itself. The third hour was them actually being on the clay lick. It is all quite the sight, unfortunately our camera does not have sufficient zoom for good pictures, but it is a sight to behold.

Sunrise

Tambo Blanquillo's bar

Breakfast was served at the platform which was plantain bread and regular bread with hot drinks.

We left the clay lick at around 10am. Before we left we took a count of all the fauna/birds that we have seen during the trip and the count is quite staggering. We saw 8 species of monkeys, 92 types of birds and lots of bugs.

We're in the jungle!

Count the macaws

Headed back to the lodge after the macaw lick and rested for a bit before lunch. A cold beer has never tasted this good! The temperature in the Amazon has a pretty big range. From afternoon to evening, it feels like a 20 degree Celsius difference (sweating during the day, cold during the evening). Lunch was a buffet style with turkey sausage, some fried potato dish like lakhas, cabbage, boiled eggs, and fried rice.

Buffet style lunch

We took the afternoon off and rested before we headed to the observation tower at 3:30pm. The observation tower is pretty neat. I believe it is the one and only one in the jungle of it's size (50m high). They dug up the area around the tree roots to build a foundation and then built the platform at the top of the tree without using any nails to secure it to the tree.

Going up!

Atop the observation tower

It does provide you with a very nice view of the jungle since it is the highest point in the area. Unfortunately there is a bee nest at the top of the platform which cut our adventure short (we spent maybe 10 minutes there).

Me with the Israelis and Germans

Sunset

By the time we finished at the observation tower and headed back to the boat, the sun was already setting. So we headed back to the lodge and had our final dinner as a group in the amazon. Dinner was chicken with beets and cabbage slaw finished up with jello with peach for dessert.

Soup

Chicken, beets and rice

Jello with peaches

Tomorrow we spend the whole day returning to Cusco.