It was a wonderful sight… giant otters in the Dorado River, at this time of the year… ! It was a wonderful surprise… not only for me… but for all those on board…! Steven one of our guests had just been asking about them the day before… and I told him that it was very difficult to get a sighting of them at this time of the year…!
We were spotting a group of macaws that were flying around us, they were coming out of huge tree making an enormous din, it was around 5:30pm., the sun was getting ready to set, the colors in the sky were starting to dance, it was that time of the day when you feel that the sky is starting to get ready for a wonderful party, all the colors beginning to change from a shinny turquoise, clouds changing from cotton wool white to a blush orange and getting stronger every minute… a wonderful palette of colors from yellow to purple developing under our eyes, and under this colorful awning we were silently looking at these eight macaws, who were noisily flying around.
I think they were searching for the right spot to spend the night, this majestic Lupuna tree, was spreading its arms letting them chat around, they were noisy, it was quite a concert... then Juan Luis distinguished a different sound, we all saw movement in the water… but thought the sound came from more pink river dolphins, we had been watching them feed at the point where this beautiful river merges with the Ucayali river, they had been quite active that afternoon, there must have been lots of fish.
Well, coming back to the movement in the water, we were in this small lagoon very near the giant water lilies, “Victorias Amazonicas” the biggest in the world! When suddenly we saw the master otter, he was with his family… there were 3 adult females and 3 pups, this group of 7 was a wonderful sight, the master otter saw us and was not that happy about it, he started to make loud noises to scare us showing his wonderful chest in a very male expression of strength, the rest of the family just curiously surfaced their head and steered towards us… freely… without shyness… they seemed to ask… Who are you guys? they are the noisiest specie in the Amazon waters and distinct vocalizations have been documented that indicate alarm, aggressiveness, and reassurance... They were heading back to some small underground den near to the river shore or creek where they can feel secure and their cubs safely away from predators... (humans) the male continued approaching us, in no uncertain terms trying to warn us to keep a distance, which we did... However we enjoyed the wonderful experience of this sighting, the giant otter family swimming free and happy back to their domain…
At this time of the year, with the water levels so high it is quite hard to spot these animals, they are usually sighted in the dry season, when the water level is low, and fishes are trapped in small creeks and lagoons, but at this time of the year we have never seen them before so it was a great gift from the Amazon to us…
Its distribution has been greatly reduced and is now discontinuous. Decades of poaching for its velvety pelt, peaking in the 1950s and 1960s, hugely diminished population numbers. The species was listed as endangered in 1999 and population estimates are typically below 5,000 in the wild. SO it great to look at them… just take a glimpse…
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