HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing Capybara’s
BUMMER OF THE DAY: It was flippin hot-burning hot, hot, hot, hot, hot
WORD OF THE DAY: Ramano (rolling the R with your tongue)
HAPPY EASTER. It’s Easter Sunday and I am thinking about my god-daughters this morning as they open their eggs and missing out on seeing their smiling happy faces. I miss you guys. Happy Easter everybody.
Sleeping in the hammock last night was okay. Besides the generator on just at the back of our hut till 11pm, a motor bike starting up in the wee hours, a rooster that doesn’t know how to tell the time cockling at 3.30am and then the generator on again for them to prepare breakfast at 5am, it was a restless night in regards to the noise factor, but I’m still enjoying my hammock sleeping experience and I think I just maybe getting the hang of getting out of the bloody things as well.
It was a beautiful morning and we were up at 5.45am to see the sunrise and we were lucky as there was a lot of cloud cover, but we got to see the wonderful colours of a new day begin with pink, blue and orange hues lighting up the sky. Good morning Los Llanos and Good morning Venezuela. Breakfast was served at 6.15am with a spread of scrambled eggs, muesli, fruit, arapas and iced tea-not a bad way to kick start what was going to be a busy day.
On the road at 7am and we were going to be traversing the savannahs of Los Llanos. Los Llanos (pronounced Los Yanos) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an eco-region of the flooded grasslands and savannas Biome. The Llanos' main river is the Orinoco, which forms part of the border between Colombia and Venezuela and is the major river system of Venezuela. The climate change of the Llanos is extreme. During the rainy season from May to October, parts of the Llanos can flood up to a meter. This turns the woodlands and grassland into a temporary wetland, comparable to the Pantanal of central South America. This flooding also makes the area unique for its wildlife. The area supports around 70 species of water birds, including the Scarlet Ibis and I have to say was one of my most favorite birds as the name suggests with its bright red plumage. The flooding also makes the area unfit for most agriculture before the advent of modern, industrial farming technology. Therefore, during the Spanish colonial era, the prime economic activity of the area came from the herding of millions of heads of cattle. The term llanero("plainsman") became synonymous with the cowhands that took care of the herds, and had some cultural similarities to the compare to the gauchos of the Pampas or the vaqueros of Spanish and Mexican Texas.
In Los llanos the governments of Venezuela and Colombia had developed a strong oil and gas industry in zones of Arauca, Casanare, Guárico, Anzoátegui, Apure and Monagas. The famous Orinoco Belt, entirely in Venezuelan territory, consists of large deposits of extra heavy crude (oil sands). The Orinoco belt oil sands are known to be one of the largest, behind that of the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada. Venezuela's non-conventional oil deposits of about 1,200 billion barrels, found primarily in the Orinoco oil sands, are estimated to approximately equal the world's reserves of conventional oil.
Rosita was definitely too big for this job today, and as the windows were too dark on one of the vans, the camp owner Alehandro offered his F350 tray back as the second vehicle that wasn’t covered. So people were able to take seats in the back of his truck, there were people in the van (me) and then people were also allowed to sit on the roof of the van. I chose an inside seat next to 2 windows that opened and was set for the day. It would have been cool to sit on the roof of the van, but sitting up there for hours with no back rest would have been too much for me, let alone when the day heats up, at least we will be in the shade. We drove for 15 minutes to another property to ask permission to access their land for us to see what wildlife we could find for our ‘safari’ this morning. High on the agenda was the mighty anaconda, but there was enough wildlife to also see while we were here. It is hard to fathom that driving through the beautiful grasslands that this is someone’s backyard and not a national park. The birds are amazing and we got to see a quite rare Burrowing Owl, he was about 5m from the van and was more than happy to stay there and pose for some photos. A little further down we also saw a family of 3, they were more than obliging which was cute. As we drove further we noticed that the cattle started to make a move and they were running after the van! It was hilarious, as far as 1km away there was a mass movement of up to 150 white cows all making for the van. They must get fed from a similar looking vehicle as they were pounding the grass running like crazy cows to catch us. It really was a cow stampede!!!! Needless to say we got some odd looking stares from them as we passed without the drop of a single thing for them to eat, but boy it got a good laugh from us. Moving cattle is one of the most important duties in this region, where cattle breeding is the most important economic activity.
So with our bird viewing we saw a lot of vultures and they seem better looking than their African counterparts, Oriel Blackbirds (beautiful bright yellow chests), Vermillion Flycatchers (bright red chest), white tailed hawks, American Woodstock’s, the Burrowing Owls, Tiger Herons, Spoonbill Storks (pink in colour and not the baby carriers), Jabiru’s (which we get back home) and the beautiful Scarlet Ibis’s which are a bright nearly fluro red colour and look amazing with the green grasslands as a backdrop. We stopped the vehicles on the savannah and got out to start looking in the river run off and the ponds that collect water during the rainy season to see if we could find us an anaconda. They live in the shallows of the ponds and are pretty much submerged 90% of the time. An anaconda is a large, nonvenomous snake found in tropical South America. Although the name actually applies to a group of snakes, it is often used to refer only to one species in particular, the common or green anaconda, which is one of the largest snakes in the world. Per National Geographic, the word anaconda comes from the Tamil word anaikolra, which means elephant killer. So with that being said some camp hands that had joined us and a few of the group joined to help look for this massive snake (crazy cats-crazy no way not this black duck) armed with sticks they got into the shallows of the pools and started poking the water and reeds hoping to hit the anaconda, locating her and then the jump on would start to catch her for us to see. There were about 7 people trudging through the muddy reeds poke poke poking and after around 1km, nothing was found so we jumped back into the vehicles to continue our safari. There were more opportunities to try and find an anaconda, so all was not lost just yet.
We continued our way following one of the larger river swamps and this is where we started to see a lot of caiman, and we actually saw one lurch out of the water and catch a bird as he flew over (unlucky) and the caiman disappeared quickly into the reeds to eat his catch, but talk about timing and a Nat Geo shot, well if we were ready that is (which we weren’t) and this where we also saw our first Capybara’s.
The capybara is the largest extant rodent in the world. Its closest relatives are the agouti, chinchillas, coyphillas and guinea pigs. Native to South America, the capybara inhabits savannas and dense forests and lives near bodies of water. It is a highly social species and can be found in groups as large as 100 individuals, but usually live in groups of 10–20 individuals. The capybara is not a threatened species, though it is hunted for its meat and skin. Capybaras have heavy, barrel-shaped bodies and short heads with reddish-brown fur on the upper part of their body that turns yellowish-brown underneath. The sweat glands of the capybara can be found in its haired skin surface, an unusual trait among rodents. Adult capybaras grow to 107 to 134cm in length, stand 50 to 64 cm tall and typically weigh 35 to 66kg, with an average in the Venezuelan llanos of 48.9kg. The top recorded weight was 91kg for a wild female from Brazil and 73.5kg for a wild male from Uruguay. Capybaras are semiaquatic mammals found throughout almost all countries of South America (except Chile) in densely forested areas near bodies of water, such as lakes, rivers, swamps, ponds and marshes, as well as flooded savannah and along rivers in tropical forest. They can have a life span of 8–10 years in the wild, but live less than four years on average, as they are "a favorite food of jaguar, puma, ocelot, eagle and caiman". The capybara is also the preferred prey of the anaconda. They are excellent swimmers, and can remain completely submerged for up to five minutes, an ability they use to evade predators. Capybaras can sleep in water if need be, only keeping their noses out of the water. During midday, as temperatures increase, they wallow in water and then graze in late afternoons and early evenings. They rest around midnight and then continue to graze before dawn. I have to say for a rodent they are a pretty cute looking animal. Our first sighting was an adult and 3 babies walking the marsh shore before they scurried into the water and swam away in the reeds. Awesome!!!
In this region there are only two very different seasons, where life changes completely: Rainy and dry season. In the first one, the woods, the rivers, the trees show all their beauty. A large part of the region is under the water. In the second one it becomes yellow and brown, and the dust covers most part of the plains, but that is when all the wildlife converges in the few spots where water is present. It is the season where you can see more birds and animals. Apparently the difference between the two seasons is so big, that you can't say that you know the "Llanos" if you don't go in both periods. Summer (dry season) is the best moment for bird watchers, because all the animals must go to the few spots where the water is. Transportation in winter (rainy season) is also more difficult because many roads are flooded under water. However in this season is when nature is more spectacular and this is the season we found ourselves in, the rainy season, but touch wood no sign of rain as yet.
We saw a lot of turtles, adults and babies, but as we passed by, we were only 3m from the water’s edge, they would move their little legs and make for the water before you could even switch on your camera, they were quick buggers. As promised this was where we also saw a lot of caiman. From big daddy’s sunning themselves on the banks to at one time 18 small caiman all just drifting in the marsh with just their snouts poking out of the water. It was cool to see so many of them together. One of the camp hands caught a small caiman and we were able to hold him to get a photo, they are a mean looking specimen that is for sure but it does look like he is smiling in my photo which was cool. They also did manage to catch a small turtle that we could also hold and with his baby webbed feet tickling your hand it was pretty amazing to have held these animals and wild animals at that!
On our way out we also saw a massive population of Capybara’s. There would have been over 200 of them, all in different families and I got some great shots of groups swimming together of all ages and we were also lucky enough to see a couple mating in the water, well they certainly aren’t gun shy with their sex life with 26 gringo’s watching the process and not trying to feel intrusive as we snapped pictures!!! So besides not seeing an anaconda, it was a successful ‘safari’ of the savannah. We were back to camp at 11.45am for an early lunch and a bit of a siesta before we hit the river in the afternoon.
The morning was hot; we had blue sky with patches of cloud cover so it kept the sun at bay even though the humidity still would have been around the 80% mark. When we returned from the morning, there were a lot of sunburned people, proving you can still get burnt in cloudy weather and they also did put on sunscreen, but I think a combination of being outside with no shade for nearly 5 hours and getting sweaty, it just didn’t cut the mustard for a few of our European friends pasty winter skin.
I used my 1 hour and 20 minutes siesta to its full extent and after lunch read my book for 30 minutes and then got in a 40 minute power nap to recharge the batteries for the afternoon. There were a few people who decided not to go and then we set off for our afternoon adventure. The first stop was about a 30 minute drive from the camp to some more swamps where our camp guys got back in armed with their sticks for more anaconda hunting. You gotta give these guys credit they are adamant in finding us one which is really nice. We waited in the shade of the trees for 30 minutes and we had to cut our loses as the day was getting on and we had to get down to the river, so again not all was lost as we were loading onto the vehicles one of the young kids caught one and he was outsized just on his own, so we now know where one is living, on our way out tomorrow, they will comb that swamp and catch her for us, half the hard work was now done, we know where one is, we just now need to catch it!! As we were driving out the truck got bogged from rain that fell yesterday morning before we got there, so we all had to hop out and we walked back to the tarmac road as they did their stuff and unbogged the truck and then came and picked us up 15 minutes later.
By this time it was 2.45pm and the sun was at her full force. The 2 aluminum boats had to be saddled up with their motors and one was half full of water, I am assuming since they are aluminum that the water was also from the rain and not from a leak somewhere…. I just made sure I got in the other boat just to be sure as the water was scooped out! So while that was being done, some of the guys tried some piranha fishing from the shore using raw chicken and hand held lines. This helped kill some time as the motors were now on, but weren’t starting! Poor Allan, things were just coming undone at the seams from no fault of his own. 3 people decided to stay with the vehicles and not come on the boats as they were already quite sunburned and another 3 hours in the sun would have probably killed one of them. So with our boat finally going we pulled out and waited for the other one to join us, and waited and waited. It didn’t start, so we ended up holding onto the boat as we travelled side by side on the one motor and it actually worked quite well. We went upstream for around 20 minutes into the full tensity of the sun, and even the boat guys said it was a hot one today, so they decided to turn around and head downstream so we had the sun on our backs for a little reprieve which made a massive difference. We had to pass back via the vehicles and 2 more people decided to get off, so we now all got onto the one boat and the others were driven the 30 minutes back to camp early.
The river was amazing. There were so many birds, especially Kingfishers, lots of my favorite the Egrets and Jabiru’s. We also saw a prehistoric bird called the Oatsin, which only comes out after dusk. We could hear them in the bushes the whole time, but we were lucky when we made our way back they were starting to come out and they had an amazing neck plumage of different colours. We saw lots of caiman and a few Iguanas’s sitting in trees as we motored by. The next thing we know is that one of the canoe guys has jumped into the river and I look over and all I see is an animal head sticking out of the water and I immediately thought it was an anaconda and I was paralyzed with fear as the canoe guy bough his catch, that he caught with his HANDS to the boat. It wasn’t an anaconda but a prehistoric turtle called Matamata. It was the ugliest thing I have seen since the wildebeest in Africa, oh and the Marabou Storks in Ethiopia, they are all in the running for the world’s ugliest animal and this one can be added to the list. The Matamata is a freshwater turtle found in South America, primarily in the Amazon and Orinoco basins. The Matamata was described for the first time by French naturalist Pierre Barrère in 1741 as a "large land turtle with spiky and ridged scales" It was first classified as Testudo fimbriata by German naturalist Johann Gottlob Schneider in 1783. It was renamed 14 different times in 2 centuries, finally being renamed Chelus fimbriata in 1992. The Matamata is a large sedentary turtle that has a large triangular flattened head characterized with many tubercles and flaps of skin and a "horn" on its long and tubular snout. It inhabits slow moving, blackwater streams, stagnant pools, marshes, and swamps ranging into northern Bolivia, eastern Peru, Ecuador, eastern Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, and northern and central Brazil. The Matamata is strictly an aquatic species but it prefers standing in shallow water where its snout can reach the surface to breathe. It was an amazing animal to see and while were still ohhing and ahhing over it, there were 4 otters 200m up river having a good look at us, it was hard to know which ones to take photos of and before we knew it the bobbing otters were gone, which was a shame as they looked super cute, I tried to snap off a photo in all the excitement and all I got was bush and water.
Now was time to get some serious piranha fishing in, where we wanted to pull up, there was a caiman sitting on the bank, once he heard us coming he swam off and we pulled right in where he was only seconds before. Is it just me, is no-one else not worried about a croc attack? Maybe that is just the Territorian coming out of me? I was just going to sit in the boat and watch everyone, but after some coaxing, checking my back for creeping caiman I got out to try my luck. I am yet to catch a piranha; I was unsuccessful in the Amazon, so I put out a challenge that I would be the first one to catch one and went in all guns blazing. Well I wasn’t the first one to catch a fish, but by the end of the hour we spent fishing I was the one that caught the largest one!!!! It was such a rush and I can see now why people like to fish, I was whoop whooping and jumping up and down and to have caught a biggy was awesome. I’m glad that my mouthing off paid off, otherwise I would have looked like a goose!!!! Kate caught one of the smallest piranhas so it made for a great photo with my whaler and her shrimpy looking piranha. Oh yeah and THAT is how you fish for piranha. In saying that I think everyone caught one, oh except Matt. Maybe next time buddy!!!
The run back to the cars was great, the sun was setting and the temperature must have dropped at least 10 degrees, so with the wind flapping the hair, the sky was showing some great colours as the day faded and I got some great snaps. I think I have a compulsion of taking photos of the sky when it has interesting cloud patterns and the colours that she shows at different times of the day, we live in a truly amazing world and nature has shown us her good side and her bad so far on the trip. Little was I to know just how true that was going to ring in the next 24 hours. There were storm clouds brewing about 5km away and you could see where the rain was coming down from the clouds, that was okay as it was 5km away, but while we were on the boats it had rained and as we drove back to camp with it now dark, we got bogged. The work truck was behind us and because the mud was that bad, they couldn’t stop to help, otherwise there would have been 2 cars bogged, so after about 10 minutes of back and fro-ing, we were able to grip our way back to the middle of the road and then we fish tailed the 1km back to camp, seriously there were a few scary moments we were travelling sideways as Hector tried to keep us in the middle, if we were to slide too far to the side of the road we would have no chance of getting out of that super soft stuff. But we made it back. Dinner was a beef affair tonight and our catch of piranha was BBQ’ed. I had to taste my catch and there really is not a lot of ,eat on these guys, so you wouldn’t want to rely on them as a food source as you would need a billion of them to make a decent meal, but they were tasty the meat that I did scrape of it. I ate piranha, and one that I caught!!!!
Allan was telling us that Gray would have to think about moving Rosita out tonight on the chance that the rain was going to come our way to try and minimize the chances of us getting bogged. He did say that if he moved the truck tonight there would be a 67% chance we would get bogged, if he left her where she was and tried in the morning it would be an 89% we would get bogged. You could see them having a discussion before dinner and by the time I went to bed at 9.30pm, Rosita was still sitting where she was, so with fingers crossed that rain would not come and Grays knowledge of what Rosita was capable of tomorrow would be a new day.
The bugs were just as bad last night and after a shower and trying to read swatting black bugs in my hammock I had to give up as my head torch was attracting them and I had no chance of reading without something crawling on me, so with the generator cutting on and off I turned off my light and looking out at 1pm of the mesh window I watched the full moon move up from the horizon. I wasn’t terribly sleepy, probably because I had that nap at lunch time but I did see the moon finally move above the window and then the lightning show started just after that. I have a feeling that we just may get rain tonight, so tomorrow will be an interesting day.
No comments:
Post a Comment