Above the rainforest canopy

A series of 14 bridges carry you from big tree to big tree at the Explorama canopy walk just a short walk from Napo lodge on the Napo river, one of the Amazon tributaries.

Explorama canopy walk, Napo lodge, Peru

Successive walkways gain height until you reach a height of 117 feet above the forest floor.

Explorama canopy walk, Napo lodge, Peru

Netting strung between cables provides hand holds for a shaky bridge. The floor of the walkway is two side-by-side boards covering ladders laid horizontally end to end. Longer bridges shake noticeably, but are safe, and checked every day.

Few birds were active in the middle of the day when we did the canopy walk, but the views were magnificent.

Explorama canopy walk, Napo lodge, Peru

Bromeliads covered the top one third of the tree trunks. These “air plants” capture rainfall in the canopy and provide breeding sites for frogs, lizards, spiders, and insects, which the birds then feed upon.

Black-bellied Cuckoo, Amazon, Peru

A Black-bellied Cuckoo rested in the shade at tree top, escaping the mid-day heat.

White-tailed Trogon, Amazon, Peru

A White-tailed Trogon alternately panted and looked around from his high altitude perch in the canopy.

Canopy lizard, Amazon, Peru

This canopy lizard would have made a nice meal for the cuckoo, but the birds were too hot to hunt. And so were we!

1 thought on “Above the rainforest canopy

  1. NO WAY! I think I would call in sick for that one. We have bridges out to redwoods and firs to get to where people get onto the zip lines. I really dislike them. As an arborist, I work with big trees, and I work for the guys who climb them, but I stay on the ground.

Please Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.