All members of the trip, assisted by hotel staff, pile a mountain of gear and ourselves into a small bus provided by Margarita Tours. I can't say enough about how well every detail of moving about is arranged by the Devon and the Margarita tour staff. A 5 minute ride among the speeding motor-bike carts bring us to the landing at which our boat, the M/V Tucanare (translates to Peacock Bass), is docked. As I board, feeling like an excited child at Christmas, we go below deck to choose our quarters.

I'm offered the upper bunk which features a thin (but surprisingly comfortable) mattress and a screened window that stretches the entire length and beyond of my quarters. Most nights, I spend a good deal of time peering out onto the river trying to discern what I can hear swimming by in the darkness, with the added luxury of benefiting from the occasional breeze (sorry Lee). There is a rolled up tarp that runs above the screens that would be dropped by untying a couple knots to protect the sleeping quarters from rain that only had to be utilized a couple of times.

We are only on the Amazon for a few minutes when we arrive at the Rio Nanay which is the tributary river we'll be collecting on. It's interesting to watch the meeting of white and black river water - the color differences seen where they mingle is quite a contrast.

A short trip up river brings us to the first of two spots at which we'll collect. I scramble to grab my collecting gear - and disembark onto a slippery clay bank (luckily no other spot on the trip has such conditions). Most of the other collectors are crowded along the nearest most accessible bank - so I decide to be different and swim across the little channel. It is MUCH deeper here than I'd thought, but being a good swimmer it's only a mild challenge to contain my 5 foot long handled net while swimming across (I left my small collecting bucket thinking it'd complicate swimming). Lee Harper captured this moment on film - and in the picture, practically all one sees is my hat and about a foot of the end of my net handle. I reached the other side collected a pike and 6 festivum in one swipe of the net under some submerged vegetation. Pretty exciting stuff! I chuckle as I remember swimming back across this channel, since I've got fish in the net which I'm trying to keep above the waterline. I was comfortably, but SLOWLY doing a one-handed doggie-paddle, when the boat's captain - probably thinking I must be drowning, cuts in front of me with the skiff. Since I don't speak Spanish well - and he certainly didn't speak English - I acquiesce to his good intentions of trying to ease my swimming, as he reaches for the net to unburden me. Unfortunately, since he's cut me off from reaching the other side, the net dips and my fish-bounty escaped. I grit my teeth, but not bothered too much since I realize if collecting fish was this easy here - there'll be more to come.

The second stop later that day was at a small cove and there we collected a bonanza of Apistogramma biteneata, tetras and corydoras of numerous "flavors". This was heaven! We walked a hundred or so yards along the stream and there among more of the same I caught Crenicara puntulatum.

We got back on the boat and went further up river and stopped at a sandy beach I'll call Belvin's noggin (inside joke) where we docked for the night. Many of us collected fish here and some caught Biotodoma cupido - this is the one fish I 'd planned to be sure to bring back. I did catch one - but others on the trip gave me a few more. I'm set! Luis Morales, Barry, Don , particularly would give away surplus they'd caught - and I did the same. Lee was probably more selective than anyone and never took more than he wanted to bring home.

Monday

I crashed to sleep early but was awakened to the sound of some large animals (I think river dolphin) swimming alongside the boat.

The boat engine fired up at 5 AM as we intended to go far up the Nanay - several on the boat intended to reach a spot where the red pencilfish have been collected.

There were two collecting trips this day. The first was about a 20 minute walk up a trail. This was fairly unproductive as all we caught were tetras. After discussing, the consensus was to take less collecting stops and try to get far up river. We stopped, got in a skiff (George Fear, Stephanie Adams and Lee Harper kayaked) to a nearby spot. After collecting here many decided to go down a trail Devon had scouted to a stream to try collecting in. I stayed behind at this spot to see what I could catch, but I'd grown selective in what I was keeping. I finally decided to walk down the trail by myself through the jungle to join the rest of the party. I kind of had to pinch myself as the revelation hit me that I was walking through the jungle rainforest by myself! I heard a few grunts and froze to try to identify the sound but couldn't identify the source. This walk was most enjoyable - as I could hear the sound of what I think were monkeys (never saw them). Finally, about a mile down the trail I met Scott Belvin who told me they had been collecting the same types of fish - but that the mosquitoes were terrible there. This convinced me to reverse and accompany Scott back to the skiff. Since we had to wait for the other collectors to return - and I already knew how zealous these collectors were. I figured they might take a while to return - and the mosquitoes were harassing me (not so much biting but buzzing in my ears - and also biting somewhat), I decided to take a swim and escape them and cool off. Scott didn't want to join me since the visibility in the water was low - this was definitely his loss. I grabbed the net from the boat and started lifting it under vegetation that hung into the water and got some festivum (mirificus), Another swipe trapped some apistos. The ease with which one can collect is fairly amazing to me. A couple of the crew returned and we decided to temporarily abandon the other collectors and return to the boat - escaping the infernal mosquitoes.

That evening, some of the crew trapped a large tarantula and brought it onto the boat. After Devon, holding it in a clear baggie flipped it over a few times to show us it's fangs - I expected it would be a little agitated - but it calmly posed for a photo-op on Don Atkinson's shoulder. After the picture was taken, Don asked Devon to remove it - and Devon declined. Don's reaction should've inspired another photo. Devon instructed Don to return it to a nearby tree - and Don nervously complied.

Tuesday

We slept until 6am as many of the party were out late into the night collecting. I run out of steam early so I had retired at about 9:30 PM. Last evening's collection efforts had captured Angelfish that were better than any I had ever seen. We ate breakfast while docked at Diamante Azul. I'm remiss in not previously describing our meals. The food is excellent - many meals of catfish and other fish cooked in various sauces and fashions - and side dishes like fried yucca and plantains, beets, rice with onions and peppers (mildly hot - but I'd brought along peppers of my own to the delight of a few), fried potato chunks, juices of many fruits including papaya, passion fruit and pineapple. No-one skips a meal.

Beverages that could be purchased on the boat included sodas and large bottles of beer. One simply marked a ledger when one extracted them from the freezer. I was a little worried about how high my tab would be at the end of the trip!

We made two collecting trips this day, the first being along an oxbow stream where we traveled by skiff. Using hand-held nets we were in very tight quarters and besides occasionally banging fellow fish-catchers with net handles, we caught various pencilfish, hatchetfish, and tetras. We came upon a bank of sand covered with vegetation, and having produced good numbers of apistos with a net scrape, we all hopped out of the skiff. This spot covered about 10 square feet but with each net scrape, everyone of us would come up with 5 or 10 apistos. It seemed that no matter how many times we scraped there were more to be caught.

We returned to the boat and were soon rewarded by the sight of dolphins around the boat. Many times on this trip we'd be entertained by both pink and grey dolphins. While here, Devon and the crew took the opportunity to use the seine net. I - somewhat jokingly suggested they catch me a B. cupido - and they caught one in the first sweep of the net. C. punctulatum were also caught here. We visited a small village and found the native people to be very friendly. One little girl was returning a smile from me and as I decided to take her picture, she kind of backed up into Don Atkinson for security. She was sort of cuddling against him when she realized it wasn't one of her people and I snapped a photo just before her shock. Cute.

Wednesday

Most of my fellow fishnuts went off on the skiff on a quest for the red pencilfish. Since I had no interest in this fish - and having been told it would be a two to three hour boat-ride (they found out it needed to be 3 hours more), followed by a 3 to 5 hour rugged climbing/hiking walk - I decided this didn't appeal to me. They stopped at a village and a guide took them on a circuitous trek and found killies (rivulatus ?) and some of the apistos (Peru Sp. or Masken) as we had collected earlier. But Lee was happy after getting to jump into his puddle and finally collect some of his beloved Killies.

Meanwhile Devon, Leon and I visited a hut along the river where we found a man cleaning a caiman he'd caught with a harpoon spear. Devon bartered for and purchased some of the caiman for our dinner. One of the villagers told us there was a trail with a half-hour walk to a stream where we might find some "pescaditos". This walk was a highlight of the trip for me since the man showed us his "plantation" consisting of a wild bunch of pineapple and yucca plants. Along the way Devon would stop here and there and wax eloquently about some of the flora we encountered. We visited two tiny streams which, being a cichlidiot, were unproductive as far as I was concerned. We caught various tetras, knifefish (banded), and wolfish and two green-spotted ancistrus types (one of which survives in my "Peruvian tank"). I had left my $149 net on the bow of the boat - and after leaving this spot it was nowhere to be found. I unhappily hoped that it had floated back to the hut and those people might get some use out of it.

We stopped and collected using a seine at a sandy beach and came away with some festivum, small but numerous corys, tetras and a B. cupido.

As we motored up river we met up with the skiff carrying the returning tired-looking group of "pencilfish/killifish" adventurers - and the Tucanare immediately turned back down river after they boarded.

As we came back to the hut at which we stopped earlier, Scott Belvin wanted to give the people some clothes he had brought - and the little girl came scurrying to the boat with my net - and asked if I had any cigarettes - I happily handed over two packs of Marlboros - and received the net I thought I'd never set eyes on again.

We made camp for the night and some gluttons went out and collected all kinds of things including some of the spectacular looking angelfish. But also a full mixture of everything we'd seen including the Peacock Bass.

One of the crewmembers climbed a tree to catch a tree-python someone had spotted - the snake was a little dinged up when both of them crashed to the ground I'm told. A native fisherman and his wife brought us a live 3-4 foot electric-eel which we kept overnight.

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