Sunday 18th October after lunch, I accompanied our guest Richard Pay and our field guide Joelson to the river as they planned to try their luck fishing from the beach opposite our new hide. Fishing has not been very good this month because the caiman population migrated in great numbers to the river as their lake habitats dried up due to the severe drought we had in our region this year (this has not been seen for 40 years).
That afternoon, it was threatening to rain, so I decided to watch from the comfort of our riverside hide. I had left my binoculars and photo equipment at the Lodge as the light was not very good. Richard had little luck with his fishing, so my gaze wandered to the right, and to my amazement, I saw a large animal's silhouette crossing the river not more than 100 meters from where I sat. I quickly realized that it was a large male jaguar. Joelson and Richard also spotted him and quickly we dropped whatever we were doing and reunited in our flat boat propelled by an electric engine to where the jaguar was last seen.
We saw its foot prints but the jaguar disappeared into thin air. Joelson suggested we go up river to the other side of the peninsula, on the other side of the beach. And as we turned the corner after the beach, we saw the male jaguar walking along a beach towards us. It looked at us, paused and crossed the river to our reserve along the river.
We went to the beach were we had seen the jaguar and noted that there were other fresh jaguar footprints identified of a female and her cub. They could possibly have been the tracks of the collared (at Barranco Alto) "Barbie" and her cub. This female jaguar and her cub had crossed into our reserve before we viewed the male, and after following the foot prints in our reserve, we concluded that the three jaguars were "relaxing" somewhere in the forest behind behind the Lodge buildings. We left them alone. The next day the field guide of Barranco Alto namely Fernando called us by radio, asking if they drop in with a guest, as their radio seemed to indicate that Barbie (the female jaguar) was in our reserve. We were delighted and got to within 100 meters of her and her cub but the guest preferred to call it a day and return to base. So it appears that Barbie, her cub followed by "daddy" or an other interested male paid us a visit! Although it was quite frustrating not having the right photo equipment to take better pictures of the jaguar. All we had on us was Patrick's small pocket Olympus (used to record his fish catches) but we all walked away with a big smile on our faces as the jaguar was beautifully stored in our memory banks!
