Today I woke up early at 5:30 to go on a kayak tour to go track down the howler monkeys who live around the hotel. We got on our kayak and first kayaked through the river which was extremely still, whilst our guide played the theme music to Avatar. As we reached the other bank of the river, we started hearing all of the howler monkeys in the distance, getting louder and louder as we got closer. after reaching the other bank of the river, we entered a small creek and continued kayaking to get more inland towards where the noises were coming from. It was a bit difficult to see the monkeys as they are quite small, but we were surrounded by them and could hear them extremely loudly all around us, basically nature’s surround sound. from there we continued paddling through the creek dodging some fallen trees and foliage to try and see one up close, but as the sun finished rising the monkeys grew quieter and we turned around to go back to the hotel, encountering a boa climbing a tree on our way.
Back at the hotel, I went back to sleep for a while before going out to get breakfast with the others and chill around with the local cat before lunch and our afternoon activity. For lunch, I decided to do brunch so I got pancakes which were quite good.
At 2 pm we were picked up by a speedboat who sailed us about 45 mins to where we would be exploring, thankfully i was able to take a nap on the boat so time flew by. when we arrived at the shore, we were picked up by a pickup truck which drove us through a farm to a nearby creek where there was a waterfall. there we approached the waterfall, walking through the cold water until we stood underneath its stream which was very hot, like a hot shower. we spent the rest of the afternoon, jumping in between the hot water of the waterfall and the cold water of the lake the waterfall was emptying into, only stopping for a bit to cover ourselves in mud, to make our skins softer. It was quite a weird feeling at times as your whole body would be cold in the water of the lake whilst your head would be warm under the stream of the waterfall.
For dinner we took another boat from our hotel to the main city to go to a pizza place, and to go by snacks for our journey we would be going through the following day and then went to bed early for our 3:30 am start the following morning