One of the hallmark activities of field herping, driving on (preferably) lonely roads at night can be incredibly productive at times. In the United States there are some famous and infamous roads for road cruising; Mexico is chock full of them, and other countries have their share. I’m here to tell you about an unusual one, a singular road in a place more suitable for dugout canoes than tires on asphalt. Iquitos, former headquarters of Peru’s long-defunct rubber boom and home to nearly a half million humans, is a land-locked island on the Amazon River. There are no roads to Iquitos – one arrives there by boat, or by air. All things necessary for life in Iquitos arrive in the…
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The Madre Selva field station is on the banks of the Rio Orosa, and if you go out on that river at night, you can find Spectacled Caiman (Caiman crocodilus) in the quieter backwaters, their eyes glowing red when hit with a flashlight. Go up the shallow side creeks and tributaries and you have a shot at the smaller-sized Smooth-fronted Caiman (Paleosuchus trigonatus), lying under cut banks and in the deeper pools. But if you like your crocodilians enormous and elusive, you must push into the flooded varzea forest, away from the big rivers and the people who would hunt the Black Caiman. In 2011, the water was low enough that a group of us hazarded a slippery trail to…
