We visited the Los Amigos field station (also called CICRA),
which is run by ACRA, who are the same people that run the Wayqecha field station. We’ve not worked much with
Los Amigos, mainly because it takes quite a long time to get to, but it is
well-established with researchers focusing on animals such as jaguars, bats
and birds.
Photos contributed by Anthony, Marije
and Ana.
The field station at Los Amigos is an energetic, bustling place.
Our first day we traversed the muddy and mosquito filled trails to get to a
nearby lake. Hannah can be identified by her bright orange jacket,
widow’s mosquito mask (mourning the death of her skin to the bugs), as
well as her tentative approach to walking in the jungle due to a
statistically significant greater number of trips/tumbles/falls compared to
anyone else.
Meanwhile, our ridiculously gorgeous guide, Iona,
hacks her way through the forest with her machete and barely breaks a sweat.
Out on the lake after bailing out water from our canoes.
Somehow we didn’t manage to remove this guy from our canoe so he hung
out with us for the afternoon.
Okay, Yann Martel is famous and all, but is it
really necessary for him to be able to walk on water?
K-Clark armed with a camera, and trigger-happy. Also just happy.
Reflection.
Birds of the lake.
Red mushrooms.
Let’s totally go check out that mysterious nook.
Otters swimming out to meet us.
More curious eyes.
What’s under the nook—jaguars? Otters? What, a deer?!? What
country am I in again?
Up the canopy tower we went to watch the sunset.
It actually isn’t really even a canopy tower, as you can see we are way
above the canopy of the forest.
Super-zoom to see who’s down there.
It’s interesting because climbing up the tower at a certain height you
have to climb through a whole bunch of spider webs, which must mean that the
insects they catch probably commonly fly at that height. This guy, however,
made it to the top of the tower.
Marije and Charlie at the top of the tower. Marlene
helps Marije remove her climbing harness on the
left.
Me and Anthony.
One can see from here that the tallest trees are dead, which makes one think
about drought responses of the Amazon forest.
Perhaps the coolest thing about being up the tower is watching the beautiful
birds glide around the tops of the trees.
Birds
gliding past the sunset.
Hovering around, peering into the forest for food.
Also flying around was the plane looking for jaguars by listening for the
frequency of their radio-tracked collars.
A couple of pano canopy shots.
Shout-out to Cape Farewell.
Hmm, the wind is changing as the sun sets.
Clouds begin to swirl around.
Sun is moving quickly beyond the horizon.
We can now go back with lots of beautiful red and orange colors from the
sunset.
But not as beautiful as the reds and oranges provided from the forest to my
back.
