Contributed by:
Peter Dodson
Professor of Anatomy - School of Veterinary Medicine
Professor of Earth and Environmental Science - School of Arts and Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
Institute Advisory Committee Member
Institute Advisory Committee Member
In November I had the surpassing pleasure of participating in Penn Alumni Travel to the Peruvian Amazon, Machu Picchu and the Galapagos. Although I might otherwise been occupied in the classroom, I was unable to resist the allure of such exotic terrain. Dawn and I are both enthusiastic bird watchers and jumped at the chance to add colorful tropical birds to our life lists. Even at Iquitos, Peru the Amazon is an immense river, a highway in the jungle. Ensconced at Ceiba Tops Lodge 25 miles downstream we had a perfect venue for observing tapirs, pink river dolphins, saddle-back tamarins, tarantulas, neon blue morpho butterflies, etc. We fished for piranhas (which unfailingly clean hooks lowered into the murky water within 5 seconds). But truly it was the beautiful birds that engaged us like nothing else: bold black and yellow oropendolas, and cassiques, showy blue dacnis, the enigmatic great pitou, ubiquitous yellow-headed caracaras, and so on. We spent a day in the metropolis of Lima, where we saw the tombs of both St. Martin de Porres and St. Rose of Lima, the Mother Theresa of her day. Pressing deep into the Andes we spent several days admiring the Incas for their administrative and engineering prowess as they constructed their short-lived empire before crumbling before the might of the Spaniards. Machu Picchu is impressive beyond imagining, a city in the clouds, a Yosemite in the tropics. And great birds there too!
