We also saw a spider monkey, which was really cool.
 
The next day we went on a hike to see more animals in the forest. It was really fun because Mario found all kinds of cool stuff, like frogs and lizards. He showed us one tree, that when you cut a piece of the bark, there is this liquid the oozes out and the liquid tasted like marshmallows. We even tried it. Mario showed us a tree where these little bats had made a tent out of a big leaf. None of us had ever seen anything like that, so we were all excited to see them. There was this one spot during our walk where we were surrounded by spider monkeys swinging from tree to tree. Spider monkeys are the most acrobatic monkeys in the world and they were amazing to watch.
 
For some more adventure, we went zip-lining in the jungle. The zip line was so fun. I loved seeing the jungle from the tops of trees, not the ground. My dad also made video of us doing it, which we were calling the "canopy cam," so check out this video:



That night we went to see a "Caiman Catcher" named Josh. Josh is actually a scientist working at a research center and he goes out in the canals at night to count caimans, so they can tell how healthy the population is. Caimans are like little crocodiles. We went out on Josh's boat with Mario as a driver while Tyler and I helped Josh look for caimans. We found some right away and they were babies. Josh caught one of the baby caimans and he let me hold it. Later on, Josh caught another one that was a yard long, so that was awesome to see a bigger caiman. That one was too big for us to hold, but he let my dad help release it back into the water.  
 
Later Josh found a snake that he had been looking for for months, so he was really excited. It was so funny because before he caught the snake he said, "it's going to bite me."  When he caught it, the snake did not bite him because he knew exactly how to hold it and was really calm about handling the snake, so the snake didn't feel scared.
 
We spent most of the next day out on the lagoons and canals looking for more cool stuff. We saw a river otter in the water, swimming and playing. We really wanted to see an otter when we were in the Amazon, but didn't, so we were very happy to see one here. We then spent the afternoon canoeing and we saw white-faced capuchins. Monkeys are my favorite and they were so cute.
 
I loved Turtle Beach Lodge and our guide Mario.  

'Till the next post!