Mark is very uncertain in his identification of these
as Greater Schiffornis (bigger version).

Saturday, April 18, fifth day in Perú ( II )

On the Amazon, ‘Monkey Island’, and Puerto Miguel

From my journal:

«A cooking class at 11:30, where we learned to make Juane, rice with chicken and hardcooked egg, steamed in a leaf. Traditional to this area for the Feast of St. John [which I assume is Midsummer’s Day, June 24, as it is in England and France]. We had this same dish at lunch, with a superbly seasoned fish. This followed an appetizer of vegetables, and was followed by a zapote sorbet, very nice.

«At 3:30 we left for more exploration in skiff. But there had been a downpour earlier, and we were all getting ponchos distributed, so I didn’t take any camera beyond the iPhone.

«First we went looking for Victoria waterlilies, and got a bit tangled up in weeds with fouling of the screw, but we got out of the mess to travel to Monkey Island, where Javier showed us how to impale a mini-banana on a long stick and hold it up to attract the creatures. There are [at least] five different species, howlers, sakis, squirrel monkeys, capuchins, and spider monkeys. Anyway, I got a lot of video, with loud audio courtesy of a howler.»

As it happened, it was just as well that I was concentrating on using the iPhone, because I got a lot of video of the monkeys. Unfortunately, I often got so wrapped up in watching the interaction of the various kinds of monkeys that I forgot to point the iPhone in the right direction. So my unedited footage shows a lot of the people’s backs, and a lot of forest with no monkeys in.

At any rate, the first clip, one minute in length, shows the competition between a black spider monkey and a red howler, who is much larger, and shows his displeasure in a very loud fashion.

The drama that repeated itself over and over, as members of our group held up the bananas for the monkeys’s enjoyment, was that the little spider monkey usually fared poorly in the face of the big howler’s threats and vocalizations. We all were rooting for the little black guy,and cheered when he finally got something to eat. (Video below, 26 seconds.)

In both cases, I had to clip the video off when the action started happening beyond the person in front of me. I wish I had had at least some talent as a video camera guy, but alas, that’s not the way it was.

And so we bade a fond farewell to Monkey Island, and made our way back to the Delfin II, by way of a stop in the village of Puerto Miguel, where there was a nice covered market with lots of crafts for sale. There were a couple of things that I kind of liked, but didn’t buy, and some things that both Mark and I liked, and we did buy.

One of our last approaches to the Delfin II by skiff, after our monkey-watching
and craft-buying excursion. You see the stern of the vessel, with the dining-hall
on the middle deck and the big lounge on the top deck. (31-second clip)

Somewhere between Monkey Island and the Delfin II, we passed the tree full of little gray birds that you see in the picture at the top of this page, but aside from the nice sky shots to the right and below, there were no more photographs for the day.

After our return, there was a dvd on the geological history of the Peruvian Amazon, a documentary, very well thought-out and produced, completely worthwhile.

After that, supper, barbecue, not terribly interesting in comparison to the superb food we had been getting all along, but good grub withal. Then a fine dessrt of poached pear, and it was off to bed for our last day on the Delfin II.