Day 15: Caiman Hunting

We ended up staying out until 2:30 at the party last night and it was still going strong when we left! We can’t remember the last time we stayed up that late, which is pretty funny. We were awoken by the sunrise and all of the birds at 6:30 this morning though. Breakfast is at 7:30 every morning, so we headed down to eat despite getting far less sleep than we would have liked. The chef was with us last night, but he still managed to prepare everyone a huge delicious breakfast right on time.

After breakfast we had our first excursion, which was a boat ride in a dugout canoe down the river to see the pink dolphins. We only saw a few and the pink dolphins aren’t as playful as regular dolphins, but they were neat to see and I enjoyed just being on the water and enjoying the scenery.

When had lunch when we got back and after lunch we ended up taking a 3 hour nap because we were so tired from last night! We had another excursion at 4:00 and we took the boat to the local village. It was cool to see it in the day light, since we couldn’t really see much last night. There was a soccer tournament going on between some of the other nearby villages, so it was fun to watch some of that. Also, a friend of our guide has a friend who has two sloths as pets, so we went to his house and got to hold the sloths. They are so cute! I guess they were found abandoned as babies so that is why the family took them in as pets.

After the trip to the village, we came back to the lodge for dinner and to relax for a little while.  At 9:30 we then had our night excursion, which was caiman hunting! It was crazy! Jeff and I and two of the guides took the canoe to another area of the jungle and we literally were hiking through a swamp with only one flashlight looking for caimans!  We had large rubber boots on, but mine were shorter for some reason, so I kept getting water in them and getting stuck in the mud. Also, I couldn’t really think about what may be lurking in the muddy water and tall grass that we were wading through because I probably would have freaked out. The bugs were ridiculous as well! I regretted making fun of Jeff for ordering a bug net hat before we left and I was pretty jealous that I didn’t have one! After about 45 mins of this, our guide finally spotted one and grab it out of the water with his bare hands! We had no idea that we were going to actually catch the caimans and get to hold them! The one he got was a baby, but I guess they can grow to be 5’ long.  I’m glad we only ran into baby caimans! After the fact, the guides told us that they are always scared doing that because there is a chance that we could run into a large caiman or electric eels, which could both kill us. Thankful they told us that after we were already back to the lodge…This night is definitely on the list of the craziest things I have done.