In the Rainforest of Guyana ~ Another Adventure II

We returned to camp for  a lunch of roasted chicken and corn salad, tired but jubilant.  I have never been so hot.  Insect repellent mixed with sweat causes my fingers to stick to the binocular casing.  Our clothes are wet from the inside, glued to us in the stunning humidity.  As we shower in the tepid water heated by the sun, crested oropendolas gargle and whistle in the trees above the camp.  Their yellow and chestnut feathers flash as they swing upside down from the branches.  Their relatives, the yellow-rumped caciques, hop from tree to tree, endlessly repeating their mournful, wheedling call.

An afternoon siesta is in order.  A blue-gray tanager hunts insects in the palm thatch above our bed, rattling and scratching softly.  He occasionally peers down through the loose weave of the false ceiling to be sure the humans below are staying put.

Before dusk we walk to Pokerero Creek to watch the tiny fork-tailed palm swifts swoop and sail above the tea-colored water.  The dry tan fronds rattle in the evening breeze as the swifts dart up into the protection of the dead leaves to their roosts.  Long-legged wattled jacanas flash their yellow underwings and tiptoe daintily in the shallow of the stream.  A female white-chested emerald, a tiny hummingbird, perches on a limb over the water.  She hawks insects, sips nectar from the orange asclepias flowers, and chases butterflies from her territory.  The low sun flashes green jewel tones on her back as she pirouettes over the water and returns to her perch.  So her days passes. 

We walk back to the camp in full darkness.  The Captain, a wizened Arawak gentleman of more than seventy years, carries a lamp to light the torches lining the path.  He nods and shows brown teeth as he smiles.  We can see the dim light of the lamps he has lit and carried to each of the guest huts.
The night sky pulsates with stars and planets that burn in pale blues, reds and greens.  The Southern Cross leans halfway up the sky, pointing out north and south for wanderers in the southern hemisphere.  Meteors trace brief, fiery paths across the blackness.  The buzz and screech of the insects frogs and owls is turned to full volume.  Tiny fireflies wink on and off ahead of us on the trail.  We find our sleepy way to our hut, pull the mosquito netting around us, and fall asleep under the palm thatch and the turning stars.