Last Boat Ride Before Bonito

Today is our final day at Embiara.  Actually, it's only a half day because the drive to our next destination takes about six hours, four of which are on the windy dirt road out of the wetlands.  For our final activity we opted for another boat ride in hopes of seeing the giant otter family.  

By this point another guest had arrived, a photographer who went by the name Pualiño.  He didn't speak much English and we didn't speak much Portuguese, but Ming was able to communicate with him every once in a while with broken Spanish.  This morning he also chose to do the river, but there were two boats and he had his own native guide.  Thus, he went downstream and we went upstream (towards the bridge we had driven to the day before.)

Birdlife was pretty much a constant along the river banks.  Here's a Jacamar, which is supposedly related the bee-eater.

These guys scurry along the sand pestering other birds.

A Great Egret.

An Above-Average Egret.

It's hard to see in this shot, but the tail feathers of this bird have an interesting feature: the tips are shaped like tennis rackets.  It is a type of Motmot and it supposedly dwells in that hole in the river bank.

Unfortunately, we did not see the giant otter on this trip, but we did get one last surprise before heading home for lunch.  A tortoise was struggling to climb a steep section of river bank.   

There was no chance that the little guy was going to make it up the bank so Sam helped him out.

At lunch Pauliño told us that he saw the giant otters from the other boat.  Curses.  Well, he's undoubtedly a better photographer than us, so hopefully he snapped some good shots of them.

After lunch we packed our luggage into the car and started our long journey back to civilization.  On the trip back we saw cow after cow after cow.  I was keeping my eyes peeled and camera ready for something more interesting, but there wasn't much.  Until I put the camera away.  Then I saw a ring-tailed animal dart under a fence.  Ming saw it too, but the driver didn't so we couldn't really verify what it was despite Ming's valiant attempts to express the idea of a ringed-tail with a combination of pantomime and broken Spanish.  Thinking back on it, we're pretty sure it was a Coati, a raccoon-like animal that frequents the wetlands.  Hard to know for sure though.

When we got into Bonito we picked up our tickets for the next day's excursion and then got dropped off at the hotel for some much needed rest.