into the jungle ... ***** 56k warning *****

[wickedglass]

hiyas :)
it's been a long time since I posted here, but we've been soooo busy with work, it's stupid. After all that hustle of activity, we took a month off and went to Peru for a well earned rest .... huh ... if you can call it rest .... but it was an adventure! we did the touristy thing and went up to machu picchu of course. we also climbed the mountain next door for a better view, trawled through the sacred valley and ended up in puerto maldonado, located by the rio madre de dios .... after an hour or so on the river and a 5km hike into the jungle we came out at sandoval lake, where we stayed for 4 days.
fish were very low on the list of activities allowed for by our guide, who was an expert on all the creepies in the ground and in the trees, but I used the hours after daylight to scour the shoreline for our piscine friends, much to the test of Laurie's patience. She loves fish too, but I think she indulged me a lot on that one, shining the light for me and braving piranhas, poisonous red-bellied watersnakes and annoying night insects which flocked to the light as soon as it was switched on. Here's some piccies of some of the lake, the fish, their predators and other stuff.

[wickedglass]

the jungle was so humid and stinking hot the day we got there .... completely different from the dry mountain air which cracked our lips within no time at all.

[wickedglass]

the surrounds of the lake teemed with wildlife, all of it attractive in its own way

[wickedglass]

more jungle fun

[wickedglass]

more critters you can poke a stick at ... I don't have any pics of it, but seeing an arapaima surface is an awesome experience. everytime one did, the camera took too long to focus. their scales are huge and they're like a massive serpent coiling through the water. often we saw signs of a mother arapaima shepherding her young along the surface, evidenced by a sudden "boiling" activity on the surface, which dissapeared just as suddenly only to repeat itself a couple of feet further on.

[wickedglass]

fish in the water at night are easy to find .... but if you keep the light on too long, the flying insects swamp you like nothing I've ever experienced before. If we had a 10 second window of opportunity we counted ourselves lucky.

[wickedglass]

apistogramma and geophagine species hung about at the shore but I wasn't expert enough to identify them correctly

[wickedglass]

I caught some with my amazing trap ... a sawn-off water bottle!

[wickedglass]

more fishing successes

[wickedglass]

nearby in a bunch of water-plants were what I took to be festivums, Sandoval lake is strange though, so it could have been .... the arapaimas are introduced here, too. anyway, here's a couple more pics .... none of the fish were harmed in this and returned back to the water as soon as the pictures were snapped!

[nicholas76]

AMAZING PICTURES chris please keep them coming!

[scott bowler]

wickedglass what a awesome trip mate and great shots thanks for shareing them with us. love to hear more about how it all was

[Dan]

Hey

WOW

Soo much fun!!!!!

Must have been an awesome trip!!!

Very jealous :)

[Ben]

Chris those pics are awesome mate and the whole trip would have been an experience like no other!

Its nice to see the same sort of fish we keep in our aquariums out in the wild.

Looking at the pike cichlid its funny that the locals think nothing of them but the same fish here in Australia would fetch $250+

[Mattzilla]

wow what an amazing trip

i am heading to peru next March... will have to chat before i go so you can point me in the right direction to find all this stuff

awesome pictures, thanks for sharing

matt

[Robdog]

Sounds like a great trip Chris. Glad to see you haven't dropped off the face of the earth. :wink:
That apisto looks like a little female baenschi with the stripey appearance. Having said that, all the other fish look like female baenschi to me too. :lol: Except for that beautiful pike. Great photos too

[oskastolz]

awesome mate, you have reinvigorated peters interest in his tank and trawling the Yarra for the beasts that lurk within......

[Merrilyn]

Welcome back Chris. We missed you :P

But, ohhhhhhhhhh what a wonderful trip you've had. Your photos are fantastic mate.

We look forward to seeing lots more.

[Bubbles]

Peru is just a dream for me, the only way I get to enjoy Peru is on the net, now I think I'm depressed after seeing your pics & all the info on where you have been - what an experience of a lifetime Chris.

Mattzilla - you will have to make room in those suitcases for the rest of us that want to go :wink:

[Mattzilla]

stowaways welcome....

[ozarowana]

Looks like you had a great time. Thanks for sharing. Some of those eartheaters look like Satanoperca of some sort.

[wickedglass]

hiyas,
it definitely was a great trip, and one of the best I've done so far! we had no concrete plans and did everything off the bat ... I love not being attached to a travel group!
here's a few more pics

[wickedglass]

lots of stuff to see in the jungle .... some of the plants are nuts!

[wickedglass]

a good part of our time on the lake was spent looking out for the giant otters! there's a small family of 7 living in the lake and they've just had a pup, so they were super shy and antsy. They would also relocate frequently to another of their numerous homes around the lake so they were hard to find. The locals call them "lobos del rio" which means literally "river wolves"

[wickedglass]

and here's some more of the critters from around the lake

[wickedglass]

dawn choruses of monkey were our alarm clocks at some stupid time in the morning ... we didn't have a watch so we never knew the time, but we knew it was stupid because it involved monkeys!

[wickedglass]

there were butterflies, too, giant ones ... brilliant blue hues .... the little bastards wouldn't stand still for a photo, and when we were lucky enough to find one, it had its wings folded up .... bah!
so there it it ... come share in my frustration!

[wickedglass]

this is only part of our trip, mind you, we spent most of our time in peru up in the andes mountains crawling all over ancient inca ruins and stuff ...
I just thought the jungle stuff would be most interesting for you because it pertains to fish and the environment surrounding their habitat ...

[Merrilyn]

Fantastic photos Chris. Keep them coming.

How did your gouldian finches cope while you were away. Have you got any recent photos of the babies?

[wickedglass]

hi Merrilyn
we had a giant hopper in the aviary while we were gone, no gouldian babies at the moment, but we have two birds sitting. Also just before we went away we were lucky enough to see a fledgeling double-bar flying about, he's still in there, and there's more on the way, one just hatched yesterday. we also have an emblema (painted) finch baby ....

and proudly presenting the little ugly guy in the pictures .... he will one day be a beautiful scarlet chested parrot !!