I was up before 4am as normal. I felt rested and was happy to go up for coffee and have the deck to myself.

By 5am the beginning of sunrise had started.

I went back to our room about 5:40 and was somewhat surprised to find Ash up. When he went to bed he wasn’t sure he would come out for the 6am outing. We got dressed including the rubber boots assigned the night before. They fit perfectly and were surprisingly comfortable.

The boat had moved south all night. We had been near Nauta up above all day yesterday. We went up to where that river joins this one to form the Amazon, then turned south. The goal is 192 miles down the river and then we will work our way up day by day. We will be traveling south most of today.

This river is much wider than where we were yesterday.

We left at 6 AM. Had a skiff ride a good 20 minutes south at a pretty quick pace before we moved into a creek.

An odd little detail that I thought was worth remembering: on three different skiff rides now, this water bottle has stood firm between my feet by itself. The ride is smooth enough for it to not even shake much less fall over. And at times we’re going at a pretty quick speed.

A flock of tiny birds sitting in a tree. 

A structure occupied by a local, with the smells of breakfast coming out of it.

A tree rat. The photo on the left shows what it looked like from the water.

A beautiful red bird that moved too fast for me to get a decent photo 

Tamarind monkeys.

This clip provides a nice perspective on what we see from the river.

Close up of the monkey and he turns around so you can see his face. 

Teeny tiny green bird. I never actually saw it. All I could see was leaves. I was just shooting in the direction everyone was pointing at and when I zoomed to crop, he was there.

Coming up on the part where the rubber boots will be needed.

There was just a small portion of it that was pretty muddy, but I can see where that could change quickly.

We were surprised to see an actual sidewalk after walking through a fruit orchard. Some of this land is developed, and there is a community that lives further in. 

The point of this whole excursion this morning was this little guy here. He is a pygmy marmoset, also known as a pocket monkey. This species is the smallest monkey in the world.

This clip again gives you a nice perspective of where he was in the tree relative to where we were standing 

I managed to catch him looking in our direction so you can see his face a little bit.

Hibiscus.

We were surprised to see when we got back to the skiffs that the boat had come down to meet us.

Breakfast was at 8:30. It is now about 10:15 and we are just hanging out. There are three presentations of various kinds before our next outing at 4 PM. I am not planning on attending any of them, although Ash might. So it will be a very relaxing day.

Lunch was at 12:30. They always do a beautiful job setting the table.

The appetizer was a cold, shrimp dish and a yellow Peruvian chili sauce that was mild and lovely.

The main was a white fish cooked in a leaf with salsa.

Dessert was a type of flan with spiced pineapple and candied almonds.

Nap time after lunch.

We woke up to realize we had stopped and had this beautiful greenery outside our window.

We went out again at 4:30. The sun was hot but thankfully we weren’t in it for very long. Trees help quite a bit.

Right off the bat we saw a sloth hanging upside down.

We stopped at a little village, where the guides dropped off some candy for the children for the holidays. 

And then we had another sloth encounter. This was how we first saw him in the red circle above.

I was able to get a pretty decent shot from that angle.

Then the driver repositioned the boat on the other side of that tree so we could see more of him.

Ash snapped this photo of us while the driver was repositioning.

The view from the river from the other side of the tree.

Pretty cool, huh?

We came across a couple of exotic birds in these bushes.

These are called hoatzins.

We were on the Dorado river. We went quite a ways in this direction at a pretty fast speed. You can see from the spray on my immediate left as well as from the wake of the boat in front of us that were moving pretty fast. 

We went through some dark and creepy places to get to a beautiful lake.

On the way, we encountered a toucan.

One of our fellow travelers offered to take this shot of us with the sunset.

We came across a bunch of huge lily pads. 

Our guide was trying to prove how strong these lily pads are, so he put my very full water bottle on it to show that it could hold it.

We were back to the boat about 7 PM. We had a briefing on tomorrow’s activities at 7:30, and then dinner at 8 PM.

The appetizer was mashed potatoes presented in a very beautiful way.

The main was a vegetable stuffed chicken breast that I completely forgot to take a photo of.

Coconut ice cream on a brownie with coffee foam.

And that, my friends, was our day. We have another 6 AM outing tomorrow, so we’ll be going to bed soon.