We got into the oil concession (where the oil is extracted) and took a car through the oil station territory until we got to the Tiputini River. Only people with special access are allowed to pass through this roads due to the oil company restrictions. I slept the whole trip, about one hour and a half, and woke up just to see the Tiputini River and the start of our adventure. What a difference between the Tiputini River (part of the Yasuni region) and the Napo River were all of the farms oil stations are located. Yasuni has about 2,000 species of trees and has about 600 species of trees and 1500 species of plants per hectare. What’s actually even cooler is that Yasuni alone has more species of trees than the whole US and Canada together. In order to prove this, we bird watched through most of our second boat trip and found 10 different species, 8 birds, a famly of Capibaras and many Taricayas (turtles). The birds we saw were: Swallowed tailed kite, Lesser Kiskadee, White-Banded Swallow, Capped Heron, Striated Heron, Anhinga, Drab Water Tyrant, White-throated tuocan and a Black-fronted Nunbird.
We arrived at TBS at 4pm approx. and unpacked all of our stuff. We were given Puma 1 cabbin, this would be my new home for the rest of my trip. Wendy told me that we would be heading towards the Canopy Tower so we could keep on practicing our birds watching skills and do something fun at the same time. We got our boots, our long sleeved shirt and went to the tower. I spotted my first bird, a Common Piping Guan, black body and white head, this big bird, loves to be in the top parts of the Canopy and eats fruit. We also spotted a Many-Banded Aracari (from the same family of the Toucans), Barenecked fruit-Crow and twoScarlet Macaws. After seeing the beautiful view from the Canopy tower, I realized once again how lucky humans are to have such a biodiverse and amazing place like the Amazon Rainforest. Dinner was served at 7 and the electricity power generator is on from 6-9pm. It was 9pm and my first day at TBS had finished successfully, tomorrow I would start the fieldwork!