Today was a full day of looking for animals. We started by returning to Cocha Salavador early hoping to see the giant Otters and we were not disappointed, there were a group of maybe 7 of them frolicking in the lake and having breakfast on the local fish population. We spent a couple of hours following them around the lake hoping to get close but they kept us at a distance.

Later in the morning we went for a hike through a section of forest looking for monkeys and were rewarded by finding a group of woolly monkeys high in the trees. These critters apparently tend to show off and try to scare us humans away. They shook the branches of the trees to make debris fall on us and one of them even urinated on us. Unfortunately they were very hard to photograph.

After lunch we returned to Cocha Salvador to try for another look at the Otters. We saw a few more but no closer than the morning. What we did see however was a good selection of monkeys.

Red howler monkeys. We saw only a few of these. As you might guess they have red/brown fur. Their distinguishing feature is their howling. They do this every morning and night to warn other monkeys where they are. We heard them a lot during the trip. They sound like a jet engine.

Black spider monkeys. A group of these gave us a wonderful display of traveling through the tree tops. They ran along the branches and then jumped from one tree to another. We saw one group drop 20-30 ft from the branches of one tree to the branches of another. Even the mothers with babies on their backs made this leap.

A mixed group of squirrel monkeys and brown capuchin monkeys gave us another wonderful display of moving through the trees.

Perhaps the most unusual creature we saw that day was a bird called a Hoatzin. This bird eats vegetation, and digests it with a double stomach just like a cow. It eats a lot of leaves because vegetation is low in energy and as a result its stomach is always full and heavy and hence it cannot fly very well so often lands with a crashs.