Mashpi Lodge Day 2

 This morning we started with birdwatching, with a guide called Andres. He’s from the nearby town of Pacto (as are 80% of the employees here), and his father has a farm but also used to help the logging companies get lumber out of this area with his mules. Andres thinks it’s cool that now he gets to help conserve the forest that they’d been tearing down.

After breakfast, we did a river walk hike and learned a bit more about the forest.

This is called a walking palm. It can send roots in the direction of the sun and MOVE between 3 and 10 meters in 20 years. 

The spikes of the walking palm are so sharp that Amazon tribes use it as a grater.

^us with a 500 year old mashpi magnolia tree (a new species found here)

This is a copal tree, whose sap smells like bengay and is used by locals as an anesthetic. The sap can also help start a fire because it’s very flammable (it’s hard to start a fire here because everything is very wet)

These are ficus roots on the copal tree— the ficus will eventually overtake the copal tree and kill it. As Andres said “trees eat other trees here.”

This weird sap helps protect new roots and kill any insects that try and eat it— and then the tree dissolves those insects.

Sylvia immediately got water in her boots but it was a pleasant feeling ultimately.

Very freaky looking Aragog-like spiders (that’s for Adir if he ever reads this). They’re called fisher spiders and they hang out by water and then rappel down when they see little insects or tiny tadpoles in the water. Then they rappel back up.

The wet rocks were good for face painting 

River walk!

After the river walk, we headed back to the lodge via the Dragonfly gondola. It was absolutely incredible to be high above the forest.

About to board the gondola 

This is a palm flower—the palm trees are all in bloom now.

Then we got back to the Lodge and treated ourselves to massages—Martins was amazing and Sylvia’s was awful (but refunded!). 

Then we had lunch and rushed to our next expedition, which was hummingbird watching. But after a 20 minute bumpy van ride to get there, and after seeing 4 hummingbirds and realizing we would be there another hour, Sylvia got them to drive us back early. Everyone was confused as to why we would do this—there is a slightly cult-y vibe here— but they don’t know that we see plenty of hummingbirds at 5524 South Dawson street.

So we had a lazy afternoon reading and napping and finally feeling ready to come home tomorrow. Then we sampled some cocktails, had an excellent dinner, and called it a night.