Refugio Amazonas offers several activities to choose from each evening. On our first night, we chose the night hike. On our second night, we chose to get drinks at the bar and then meandered upstairs to see if we were too late to join in that night’s lecture.
Drinks at Refugio Amazonas
The drink on the left is the famous “Pisco Sour”, the drink of Peru. My husband was a huge fan, I on the other hand, thought it was disgusting. I prefer my drinks sweet and fruity. An interesting and strange fact, it is illegal to bring into the country beverages manufactured abroad which are named “Pisco”.
Drinks at Refugio Amazonas
The banana chips were also slightly addictive.
Evening Lecture at Refugio Amazonas
Eventually, we settled in upstairs with drinks and chips in hand to learn from one of the resident scientists at the lodge. The first thing we learned was the top three causes of death in the Amazon. All of our ‘educated guesses’ were completely wrong, but we still get an A for effort, attentiveness and participation.
I will give you a moment to guess what the correct answers might be.
The Amazon Rainforest, Tambopata, Peru
1) Getting lost. (My safety strategy of staying close to the guide was obviously a good one!)
2) Getting hit on the head by a nut falling out of a tree. (Luckily we were not there during nut harvesting season.)
3) Having a tree fall on you. (Never would have guessed this one in a million years. Who knew trees were more dangerous than snakes in the Amazon!)
Our lecturer then asked us if we knew the #1 predator in the jungle. I was afraid to answer because I thought I might blurt out an animal that didn’t live in the Amazon. He told us it was a ‘Zwag – you – are’. The four of us all looked at each other, wondering what in the world a ‘zwag- you -are’ was. I was thinking that I had never even heard of this animal when he put a picture of it up on the monitor. We all started laughing at the jaguar. For the rest of the trip my brother in law and I kept coming up with reasons to say ‘zwag-you-are’. When we got home I had to look it up to see if Americans pronounce it incorrectly. Apparently, British and South Americans say ‘Zwag-you-are’ with Americans saying ‘jag-whar’.
There are cameras set up for several miles around the lodge, used to gather data about the animals. He showed us camera footage of the jaguar, all of which was at night. I was glad we saw this footage after our night hike. He also told us that the jaguars seem to like walking on the paths that have been made by the lodge. Just as I was starting to get nervous about a possible jaguar encounter, he informed us that they are trying to figure out this jaguar’s range; sometimes it will be months before they see it. I reminded myself that jaguars are not known for being aggressive towards humans and trees are inherently more dangerous.
Evening Lecture at Refugio Amazonas
We enjoyed the lecture and decided to go back the next night for another one. This time we learned about citizen science programs. These are worldwide programs which utilize any interested person to help collect data for various studies.
The presentations were interesting, the speaker was entertaining and it was a nice way to relax at the end of the evening.
Our next full day started after breakfast, with a hike to and a boat ride on Oxbow Lake to feed piranhas. As always, wishing you happy travels and fantastic adventures in this thing called life.
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More Amazon Adventures
Night Hike in the Amazon Rainforest
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