Text & Photos by Kateri Drexler

Once at the station, a visitor's day usually begins at dawn with an early morning canoe ride down the river to look at birds, monkeys, and maybe snakes,

such as the 25-foot anaconda sometimes seen lazing along the riverbank.

After breakfast comes a hike through the forest, and later, a well-earned hot lunch prepared by Joyce, who has earned quite a reputation in the region for her creative cooking. In the afternoon, visitors hike or get back in the canoes. There's always time before dinner for a quick swim in the river, and after dinner there's a night hike to look for the nocturnals.

A courious pigmy marmoset

Each trip to the station makes for an amazing adventure. One visitor sat in a flowering tree for hours with dozens of toucans at arm's length.

Another floated down the Tiputini River next to a giant otter.

Tiputini is different from other ecotourist trips available, just because of the sheer numbers of wildlife around and because of how easy it is for the amateur to spot them. At Tiputini, because people don't live or hunt in the area, the animals are right there, disinterested in the wide-eyed people clad in rubber wellies.

Even the elusive jaguar has left his tracks in the camp. Paddling in a dugout canoe into a small lake surrounded by moss covered trees, visitors spied hoatzin birds, with their punk hairdos and sleeping bats, while 10-foot arapaima, the largest freshwater fish in the new world, swam underneath. They were surprised by two pink dolphins that surfaced just front of the canoe and swam a few laps around the pond before heading back to the river. Paddling out in the canoe later that night, armed with flashlights, they saw the beady red eyes of the three kinds of caiman that live in the waters. On land, hikes along the many trails are a great opportunity to see the monkeys in the neighborhood: holwer, capuchin, wooley, golden-mantil tamarind, pigmy marmoset, dusky titi, equatorial saki, squirrel, spider and night.

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