Laguna Grande

Close by the lodge was Laguna Grande. In the dry season, it was a dry lake, with a small river running down the middle of it. But in the wet season, it was a large and stunningly beautiful lake. The trees lining the shores were able to live half submerged in water. All along the banks we would see a variety of birds up in the trees. Most were big enough to see and appreciate, but really too small to fully capture without some crazy telescopic lens, which we were not carrying.  Most of the larger birds would be sitting in the tops of the trees, like the one below, if you can see it. 

















Here is a picture of a typical tree that lined the edges of the laguna. We also spent a lot of time one day looking for anacondas, which apparently come out of the water and climb up into the trees to sun themselves. Unfortunately, we did not find any.
















Our first day to the laguna, we were able to see pink river dolphins, who swim upstream from the larger portions of the Amazon river during the rainy season to live in the laguna and the rivers. It was so crazy to see the dolphins in a river just off the Andes mountains, on the western side of the South American continent, and thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean, from where they had presumably migrated over the course of thousands of years.  We didn't get any good pictures of the dolphins, either in the laguna or the river, probably because it was me with the camera and not Amy.  After some dolphin watching, the kids and I jumped into the laguna for a swim. Our guide said that there were no piranhas this far from shore so we shouldn't worry. He failed to mention, however, that later that week we would come back to the laguna at night and see caimans right near the place we were swimming. Awesome!