Ogden Sponsored Students return from Amazon

Scott Holloway and Nicola Bishop from Easington Community School were awarded Ogden Trust/British Schools Exploring Society joint bursaries of £1,000 for pupils at Specialist Schools sponsored by The Ogden Trust to join BSES expeditions.  They travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to help carry out field work and research.
 
"On Sunday 24 July we left the North East to travel to London to meet the rest of the BSES team.  Once there we all checked in and boarded our first flight which was to Madrid, lasting two hours.  Once there we had to quickly get to our gate and board the next flight to Lima which lasted 11 hours!  Once in Lima we had to wait several hours for our next flight which was to Iquitos.  As soon as the plane landed and we stepped off, the humidity was unbearable.  We then had a short bus ride to the hotel.

Once we finally arrived at Iquitos we stayed two nights in a local hotel.  We then got split into 4 groups (called 'fires') and found out who was sharing cabins and who was on what boat.  We then spent the rest of the time exploring the town and getting used to the drastic change in weather.

After our two days in Iquitos we were finally ready to begin the expedition.  We then started to travel up the Amazon River until we reached the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve.  After two days of boat journeys on our designated boats we reached the destination of Tacshacocha.  At this point one of the boats stayed there and the other boat travelled a further 4 hours up river to Huishto.

The following day we all started our designated activities which changed every few days; we spent a total of 10 days at each stop.  There was a total of six different activities - these were transects, canoing, dolphin and turtle surveys, macaw surveys, collecting turtle eggs and caiman surveys.
 
When taking part in these activities we saw an amazing selection of wildlife.  We also made a species list which included:

 
Tarantula, Paca, White Caiman, Capybara, Saddleback Tamarin, Titi Monkey, Pink Amazon River Dolphin, Grey River Dolphin, Southern Amazon Red Squirrel, Fer-de-lance, Common Woolly Monkey, Cara Cara, Red Piranha, Caracania, White Piranha, Gamitano, Common Squirrel Monkey, Blue and Yellow Macaw, Amazon Kingfisher, Whistling Heron, Yellow headed Cara Cara, Great black Hawk, Turkey Vulture, River Turtles, Giant Ant-eater, Tapir, Jaguar, Monk Saki Monkey, Brown Capuchin Monkey, Horned Screamer, Red Howler Monkey and many more.

We also set up a camp and stayed there for 3 nights, waking up to the monkeys' howls is an experience we both won't ever forget.  Ration packs were also a nice change at wild camp instead of the usual egg, rice and bread on the boat.  After the wonderful experience in the reserve we headed back to the town of Iquitos where we stayed a further 2 days to explore the slums and visit such features as the butterfly farm and the zoo.  At the point of the last day people were on a downer - nobody really wanted to go but everyone was missing their friends and family.  After the last night of sleep we packed up and there were two organised trips on the bus to get to Iquitos airport.  From there our two journeys home were just in reverse apart from the delays and one extra flight from Heathrow to Newcastle which completed our journey home.  After being home for a couple of days we settled quite easily back into life at home but we will never forget the experiences we had in the rainforest."