More from Manu — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

Of our two jungle trips, I enjoyed this one more, because of all the animals and birds we saw. I took so many bird pictures that Steve was beginning to wonder if I had gotten bit by the "birder" bug. No way am I as fanatical as they are, and I definitely wasn't checking off a list, but I sure appreciated the variety of colors, sizes and songs we were exposed to.

The 4 "weird" sisters (apologies to Shakespeare) - these are hoatzin (a "prehistoric" bird once thought to have been extinct)

As we went down (or up?) the rivers, we saw both white and black caimans.

Our first day walking in the jungle, we saw 5 of the 8 species of monkeys there:

And one of the big reasons we went to this portion of jungle... giant river otters! After we had been rowing around a lake for 2 hours and were about to quit, a family of 9 (!) swam right up to us to check us out. These 2 popped up right in front of the boat:

We got to watch them roll around and play together for over 15 minutes. They grow to be up to 6 feet long (half of which is tail), and several of these were full size (our guide compared them to "golden retriever" size).