Rainforest - Day Two

I woke in the dark and lit a candle (there was no electricity in any of the accommodation I stayed in. It was only available for the kitchen and for charging batteries for a few hours in the evenings). I dressed then headed to the road where we were meeting. It was dawn and everything was in shades of grey. Marlene and Dave (the male part of the Canadian couple) met me and we wandered up the road to the hide. The sun was rapidly rising but when we arrived at the hide the thickness of the trees meant that the sun was barely noticeable.

The cock-of-the-rocks were already displaying. There were three. One would start squawking and the other two would quickly join in. They would also dance about a bit, bobbing up and down as they squawked. Then one would stop and the others would also stop. It was quite comical and very cool to see firsthand.

Cock-of-the-rocks have a lek mating system. This is the same type of system as birds such as grouse. The males all get together in an area and display to any females present. The females then pick the best male and mate with him, none of the others get a look in. But if the best male is by himself he doesn’t get picked – he needs the others to prove he’s the best. The other males play along because they may be able to grab a female unawares or take top spot once the best male dies or loses his crown somehow.

After watching for about half an hour we headed back to the lodge for some breakfast. The monkeys were around. A troop of brown capuchins live around the lodge and have got used to people and now expect bananas. They weren’t disappointed.

I got my things packed then went for a quick bird-watch with Marlene. We crossed the road to the porters’ quarters and in the trees were tens of birds. They were mostly tanagers and in the space of five minutes I must have seen 8 different species. They were all different colours, mostly sparrow-sized or thereabouts, and very fast. They reminded me of finches. Best, or at least brightest, of all was a pair of inca jays. They sounded exactly like the jays in the UK but were much more colourful:
We left the lodge after breakfast and continued on our way. We had another day and a half of travelling before we reached the Manu Wildlife Centre which was to be our final destination. On our way we passed through several villages. One had cocaine plantations on the outskirts and we visited one. Cocaine is legally grown as it is used in the Andes as an antidote to altitude sickness. The leaves are put in hot water as a tea (mate de coca) or chewed. Apparently the government buys the leaves which are then sold on to vendors in places like Cusco, but they pay very little and there is a lucrative black-market for the leaves. I got the impression that little goes to producing powdered cocaine but I could just be naïve. The leaves are dried on tarpaulins in the sun. We started seeing wildlife, including these arucaris (a type of toucan):

The afternoon was spent sailing down the upper Madre de Dios river to the next lodge, Pantacolla. We arrived around 3pm and after settling in had our first walk in the rainforest proper. It was fantastic. I saw trees with buttress roots for the first time, lots of different fungi and, best of all, frogspawn on a tree trunk: