Amazon 2007

These are some of the pictures from a trip to the Peruvian Amazon taken in January, 2007. 

I accompanied Dr. Larry Davenport's Biology class of about 10 students on a field Biology course that my son, Grant, was taking as his last graduation requirement from Samford.  Larry is the one in the "Our Group" pictures having the hair-restoration magic performed by the Shaman.  I got the same treatment, and it did not work for me either. :-)

After a flight from Lima, Peru, to Iquitos we took a fifty-mile journey down the Amazon River to Yanamono Stream where Explorama Lodge is located. We spent a few days in that area, and then took a boat ride down the Amazon and up the Napo River to the ExplorNapo Reserve and ExplorNapo Lodge. We had an afternoon visit to the ReNuPeRu Ethnobotanical Garden located next to ExplorNapo and tended by a local shaman. This garden is used to show visitors rainforest plants used in modern medicine as well as examples of native plant remedies which science may utilize in the future. We had several excursions by open boat along the Sucusari Stream and the Napo River.  We then hiked to ACTS for the night there to allow an evening and morning hike to the Canopy Walkway, a suspended bridge spanning one-third of a mile connected by tree platforms and reaching a height of over 115 feet above the ground. Here we enjoyed a "bird's eye view" of a part of the rainforest rarely seen by man.  Most of the birds there were too far away for good photographs, but there is one of a Ivory-billed Aracara (Toucan) in the "Birds" link below.  We saw an incredible sunrise there over the treetops that were shrouded in mist from the night-long rain, and there are pictures of that below as well in the "Scenery" link. 

There is also an Explorama Photo Gallery you might want to view, especially the Wildlife link.