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It took 102 years for a colony of Italian snails to be discovered at...
Angels in the Amazon: River dolphins
Hot, heady and unforgettable, the Amazon is the world’s mightiest river, but its wildlife can be elusive unless you know where to look. Sophie Stafford learned how to penetrate its secrets and discovered angels.
Swimming with dolphins is one thing – swimming with piranhas is something altogether different, I realised, as I perched on the edge of the skiff, shivering in my swimsuit. The skipper was watching me with what can only be described as a smug leer, and belatedly I wondered what he knew that I didn’t.
While my travelling companions blithely splashed around in the mud-brown water, I hesitated, searching the tannin-stained depths for the flick of a fin or flash of an orange belly that might reveal danger. But I couldn’t see more than a few inches below the surface and the water was 20m deep.
Peace-loving piranhas
As I teetered there, I recalled our guide, Ado, saying that piranhas dislike open, murky waters and prefer to hang around in the clearer, sheltered ‘blackwaters’ at the edges of the Amazon’s lakes and lagoons.
“So,” he smiled reassuringly, “you can safely swim in the middle of a lake without attracting unwanted attention.” In any case, the piranhas are only dangerous when the water level is low and their food supply poor, apparently...
Taking a deep breath, I decided that our hosts were unlikely to offer up our intrepid band of journalists as piranha bait and jumped in. The water was surprisingly warm – like swimming in a mug of old tea – and as I bobbed around, I comforted myself with the thought that the piranhas would likely nibble someone else’s juicier appendages before they turned to my ‘spaghetti toes’.
Finding angels
You might not be surprised to learn that we had not travelled all the way to Peru, taking a slow boat down the Amazon from Iquitos to the heart of the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, a 350-kilometre journey, just to swim with piranhas. Our dream was to share the water with the area’s most famous inhabitants – the pink river dolphins or ‘botos’.
And, so far, our prospects were looking good. Unlike most other dolphins of my acquaintance, the botos turned out to be surprisingly easy to see, as they are invariably found hunting around the mouths of the river’s tributaries and streams, where schools of fish are washed in from the lagoons. Indeed, we saw them most days as we cruised in and out of creeks and backwaters.
A ring of angels
But botos are hard to get a good look at, as you never know where they’ll pop up next. Despite their thick bodies, they move surprisingly quickly, their grey backs and bulbous heads briefly breaking the surface on one side of the boat and then the other. It is, as one of my companions observed poetically, like being surrounded by angels.
Indeed, traditional Amazonian myth affords the boto magical powers. According to legend, at night it becomes a handsome young man who seduces and impregnates girls, then returns to the river the next morning. Such superstitions have helped to protect the species here as locals are loathe to kill it, believing this will bring bad luck.
Unfortunately, today, we were the unlucky ones – and the botos were noticeable by their absence.
Softly, softly, catchee caiman
Back on the boat with all my digits intact, I breathed a sigh of relief that turned into a ironic laugh as I spotted our elusive swimming companions breaching on the far side of the lake. With wildlife, it’s all in the timing.
Sitting in damp clothes, the journey back to the Delfin – our floating home for the week – seemed longer. Night closed in quickly, shadows crowding the banks like wraiths, the pale trunks of the cecropia trees transformed into skeletal fingers clutching the purpling sky.
Suddenly, the boat’s engine spluttered and died. We looked at each other anxiously. The Amazon’s flooded forest forms a maze of neverending channels within which you could get lost for a very long time.
Glowing eyes
Oblivious to our concern, Ado, who grew up on the river, was leaning precariously over the prow of our skiff, shining a powerful torch into the dense fringe of water lettuce and water hyacinth bobbing at the river’s edge. Suddenly, we saw what he was looking at – a pair of eyes glowed red in the beam.
As the boat eased forward into the greenery, Ado wielded the torch like a pro to dazzle whatever it was until he was close enough to lunge. Then, turning with a grin, he triumphantly hoisted aloft a baby caiman!
A quartet of crocs
The Amazon’s tributaries are home to four species of caiman – the black, white-bellied or spectacled, dwarf and smooth-fronted. The black is the largest and most aggressive, but the more abundant spectacled caiman grows to a respectable 2.5m.
At just a metre long, this was a mere tiddler, dangling motionless and unblinking from Ado’s hand.
Perhaps misinterpreting the dumbstruck expressions on my companions’ faces, our guide flicked the croc’s tail at them encouragingly. They reared back in their seats looking faintly horrified, so I figured that the interactive part of this trip was down to me and, holding out my hands, rescued the poor mite from Ado’s throttling grasp.
As I stroked its soft and surprisingly warm skin, the tiny caiman showed his fighting spirit and appreciation for my altruism by peeing down my still-damp leg.
The rest of the Amazon’s wildlife proved equally challenging, conspiring with the great river and the forest to conceal itself from our eager eyes. We soon realised that this land does not yield its secrets lightly to visitors. You have to earn them by learning what to look for and how to look for it. And, over the week we spent on the Delfin, we had a crash course.
Lessons in fieldcraft
The first thing we learned was where to look. Perhaps surprisingly, the Amazon river itself is not the place to see wildlife. Its wide, flat expanse of chocolate-coloured water (so vast it is sometimes called the River Sea) hides a fierce current that sweeps most creatures away, so we began our search in the quiet backwaters, creeks, lagoons and swamps. Here, the seasonal rise and fall of the water drowns the trees, providing excellent foraging for aquatic wildlife and safe roosts for birds and monkeys.
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These river dolphins are just
These river dolphins are just amazing to see. They are so beautiful to see in person. You need to take a trip and see them. You will not be disappointed at all with them.
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