After enjoying an early and nutritious breakfast we boarded our skiffs for a short ride to a great place, Amazon Natural Park, located on the northern side of the Marañón River opposite to the Pacaya-Samiria Nature Reserve. The park is privately owned and dedicated to conservation. For more than twenty-five years its owners have been protecting and regenerating the area, and the results are quite amazing: huge trees and lush vegetation surround the lagoons where they also farm fish. This is where our morning adventure started by paddling across the largest of the lagoons for a hike through the jungle. We learned about the properties and uses by the local people of many interesting plants, like the güairuro, the cachapona, the kapoc tree and many, many more. 

Eventually we arrived at a series of elevated bridges and went exploring the heights for a different perspective of the rainforest; we experienced a sloth's or a bird's point of view from the mid-canopy level and actually looked down at some of the shorter trees and plants, while enjoying a mildly cooler temperature than the one at ground level. We also had the rare chance to watch a two-toed sloth on a tree very close to the bridge, the first one that I had seen in my life!

Once back on Delfín II we had a very interesting visit on board; Carola, a local shaman, talked to us about how she became one of the few women shamans in the region and how she uses a great variety of both wild and cultivated plants to treat numerous diseases and problems. She let us taste, smell and touch several of those plants and gave us a blessing in her native Cocama language.

During the afternoon some of us went kayaking on a small tributary of the Marañón River known as Nauta Caño, while the rest went looking for wildlife in the same place by skiff. We all had a great time watching a big number of birds and monkeys, particularly with a large troop of common squirrel monkeys that gave us a great show with their antics, finishing another great day in the Peruvian Amazon.