On Sunday, the three of us went south of Alter do Chão to the Tapajós National Forest, one of the few preserved tracts of rainforest in the rapidly deforesting state of Pará. To get there, we rode in a motor boat for about an hour and a half down the white sand beach-lined Tapajós River. The ride there and back was extremely wet; think Splashwater Falls without falling. Our base was the village of Jamararaquá, where we left our stuff and then took a four hour hike through secondary and primary forest. After the hike, we had lunch in the village and then went snorkeling in an igarapé, or a branch of the Tapajós River. I felt like I was in an aquarium and saw angel fish, some guppies, those bushy aquarium plants that look like strings of pom-poms, and even a piranha with a little red belly. The piranha was probably a vegetarian and expressed no interest in me.
Afterwards, we walked back into the forest and set up camp for the evening. We cleaned the area of leaf litter to make it unattractive to cobras, and we found another creature that had to be removed:
This guy, who was about the size of my hand, was sitting on a tree about three feet from where my head was to be. Our guide said that while the painful bite is not poisonous, if left untreated it can cause gangrene and require amputation of the affected limb. After taking care of spidey, we got in the hammocks and slept until dawn.
The howler monkeys howled all night, and at dusk and dawn other animals, especially birds, were very active.
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