Full Day At Kabalebo

FULL DAY AT KABALEBO

            Today we have a full day here.  While it was mentioned somewhere that there would be an early morning hike, it never materialized.  So hubby and I decided we’d get up a bit early and walk out of the jungle to the lodge rather than wait for the golf cart to come get us for breakfast.  We are out the door before 7.  It’s still a bit dark and damp clings to our skin – not dew, promises of rain later.  I step around the corner of our cabin to the stairs and see something that looks like a large rabbit in the ravine.  I call to hubby and he comes to look.   It takes off running and soon there are 3 or 4 of them running madly to get back to the forest.  We believe them to be capybaras.  How exciting.  I’ve never seen a capybara.  Later we find out that they were actually agoutis.  This was also fine because I’d never seen agoutis either but a capybara would have been nice.  I try to take a few photos and later see that all I have are eyes in the forest.  Rather spooky.

            We walk slowly down the road to the runway, both to miss the puddles and also to hopefully see anything but nothing else.  We are halfway down the runway when we see the golf cart coming for us so we climb aboard and get driven the rest of the way to the main lodge and breakfast.

            Choices today are a hike to Misty Mountain which will take all day – probably 4-5 hours to hike up for the views and such and then however long to hike down.  One group member wanted to do it but it is predicted to rain this afternoon and he decided that hiking any part of it in the rain probably wouldn’t be that much fun.  Right after breakfast though, some members of the other group staying at the lodge left in the boat to go hike up Misty Mountain.  They didn’t get back until dinner and they were dirty and wet and not very happy.  Wasn’t a good hike as it rained on them most of the way and they saw nothing but the trees around them.

            Other choices of activities are kayaking, another nature hike but this time along the river, a boat ride down to Mui Mui Falls, or just relaxing on the veranda or swimming in the pool.  I don’t kayak since the time I was chased by an alligator as big as my kayak.  Another place, another tale.  With my luck, I’d fall out of the boat in the middle of a school of piranhas.  So we choose to do the boat ride to Mui Mui Falls.  It is downriver from where we went yesterday.  As we are waiting at the boat dock for them to get the chairs into the boat, someone points out a couple of vampire bats whose home is apparently the rafters of the boat dock.  They are just sitting there clinging to the rafter and maybe watching us.  As we are trying to get photos of them, a huge black tarantula climbs around the rafters as well and a moth rests on another beam.  That’s the closest we got to any wildlife.  There were a bunch of toucans flying around the place as well.

            Down to Mui Mui Falls and we climb up the bank and into the forest for a short walk to the falls.  When we get there, Kiernan, our native guide, walks to the far end of the pool and starts hitting his machete in the water, creating a disturbance.  Nothing happens.  He walks back and tells us he is making noise so the resident electric eel will come and see what is happening as in “is it food?”.  Wow, an electric eel!!!  In a few minutes, an eel of about 5’ glides up to our feet.  We are all standing right at the edge of the pool but now we are all careful to keep our feet out of the water.  The eel can discharge around 800 volts he told us.  This figure varies depending on what source you read.  However much it is, we’re not getting in the water.  The eel was very interested in us and stayed in the shallow waters, even coming up to some of the rocks and laying his head on the rocks where his upper body would be out of the water.  Fascinating!  After messing about with Elroy (I named him.), we climbed up to the top of the falls.  Kiernan helped us over the trickle on the edge so we could stand right in the middle of the falls and try not to fall into the lower pool with Elroy.  He then ran down to the bottom of the falls again with all our cameras to take a group shot.

            Time to leave Elroy eventually and head back.  The plan had been to slowly motor our way back to the dock but Kiernan and the boatman looked at the sky and hit the motor full out.  We didn’t make it back before the skies opened and it dumped on us, full Amazonian Rainforest Rain!   They are passing out raingear but by the time I had it on me, I was soaked anyway.  So I used it to keep my camera dry.

            Back at the dock, climb out in the rain, and the golf carts are coming down to drive us back to the lodge even though it’s only a few hundred meters to walk.  They are also bringing umbrellas.  So even though we are soaked, we get a ride and an umbrella.  Since we are soaked, we ask the golf cart driver to take us to our cabin down the runway and by the river so we can change clothes.  We get even wetter, if possible, riding down the runway, slogging through the puddles and running up the stairs.  All good fun though. 

            By the time we are dry and changed, the rain and let up enough to let us get back to the lodge for lunch.  We choose not to go on the nature walk and head back to our cabin after lunch to sit on our porch and see if we find some animals or just relax and read.   A man comes down to the river in front of our cabin to fish.   It starts raining again.  He stays there and fishes.  There are several people standing on the porch of the cabin next to us where our friends are staying.  They are people from the other group so we think they have mistaken the cabins as our friends were inside trying to sleep and these strangers are on their porch!

            We hear howler monkeys in the distance and for a few minutes it sounds like they might be coming our way but then the sound disappears and no monkeys.  We pass a pleasant afternoon on our porch in the rain and the forest.  We had the best rooms as we saw the most wildlife.  We had been told that they put the fruit out for the tapirs around 5 and that we should go to see them around 6.  We left the room around 5;30 and one pile of fruit had already been eaten.  We walked around to the other pile of fruit.  We stood there for 45 minutes but no tapir came.  The golf cart came to pick us up for dinner and she said we were standing too close and the tapir could smell us.  We had thought we were far enough away but guess not. 

            Another nice dinner.  Another spoonful of the hot sauce.  Another ride back to the cabin in the dark but no tapirs and no agoutis or capybaras.  And we turned on the A/C again as there was no breeze.