After our time in the Andes, we needed a change of pace so we headed to one of Peru’s other famous regions–the Amazon Rainforest. We stayed at a jungle lodge for four days and took wildlife-viewing excursions on foot and by boat everyday… it was an amazing experience!
Top Tips for Visiting the Amazon
– Weigh your options before choosing your rainforest excursion. There are lots of options, and you might be confronted with a lot of them while you’re walking around Cusco… but it will probably work out better if you choose where you want to go in advance, after some research. Two options I researched were the Tambopata Reserve or Manu National Park. Manu is more remote, which means it takes longer to get there but you may see more wildlife. Those excursions were also much more expensive, so to maximize out time and money we chose the Tambopata Reserve and have no regrets about it. Be sure to research the different lodges and tour companies as well. We were quite happy with our affordable, authentic Amazon tour through G Adventures. I definitely recommend the 5-day tour, because the 3-day only gives you one full day in the Amazon, and you’ll see so much more if you have three full days (plus two travel days)!
– The Amazon is a bit infamous for all of the things that can injure (or at least seriously harm) you, so be sure to put safety first by listening to your guide! Our guide told us a bit of a horror story about a tourist of his that decided to mess with a bullet ant… so we definitely listened when he told us not to touch any trees while walking around, just in case!
– You very likely we won’t have wi fi during your time on the Amazon–in fact, we didn’t even have electricity in our lodges. The bar had electricity for a few hours everyday, so charging camera batteries was about the extent of our connectivity. Prepare for this going into the trip, and enjoy the time disconnected; there aren’t too many places left in the world where you can be this off-the-grid. We filled our free time by reading books, relaxing in the hammock, watching the agutis around the lodge, and swimming in the nearby water pond.
– We didn’t notice that guidebooks explaining the local flora and fauna were available at the airport until we were flying out. Our guide was a really good resource, but it might have been fun to try to identify which type of macaw or monkey we were seeing in a book, too, so consider purchasing one!
– You’ll be able to get up close and personal with some of the animals, but others you’ll observe from afar (and some you may not want to get too close to). Binoculars or at least a zoom camera lens can really enhance your experience in those cases so be sure to pack accordingly.
Day 1: Bus ride and River Cruise to the Lodge & Night Walk
The first thing we noticed when we landed and got off the plane in Puerto Maldonado was how different the air was from Cusco’s–so thick, warm, and humid! It felt like we were finally getting full longs of oxygen when we breathed, which was awesome.
Leao, our guide for the whole trip, met us and the rest of our group at the airport and ushered us onto an air conditioned bus. There were five other tourists in our group, all younger people from Australia and the UK. We were taken to the lodge headquarters in Puerto Maldonado, where most of our luggage would stay during our time at the lodge. We had duffel bags and were able to repack the things we needed for the lodge portion of our stay in them. Then it was off on a 45 minute bus ride to the “hell community” (it was literally called “Infierno” or hell in Spanish). There we boarded the boat for the ride down the river to the lodge.
The lodge had packed us a picnic lunch for the ride–rice, chicken, etc.–so we ate that and then settled in for the rest of the two hour boat ride. It was warm but there was a pleasant breeze on the boat so it was an enjoyable ride. We also saw some wildlife on the ride too. Vultures flew overhead, howler monkeys swung through the trees, and a capybara came to the bank to drink water.
Finally we reached the lodge. After taking a long flight of stairs up from the river we were given a key to our bungalow. On the way to it we saw a few agutis and lizards running around, so we knew right away that we’d see a lot of wildlife there. The bungalows had no electricity, but the water was kept in solar-heated tanks on the roof and we had candles for lighting at night. There were also mosquito nets over our beds and a hammock hung out on the porch of the bungalow.
We had a bit of time to get settled into our bungalows before dinner in the dining hall. The food was pretty good and served buffet style at every meal. There was always rice, meat, vegetables or fruit, and a dessert like a rice pudding. There was also charcoal-filtered water to refill water bottles and a station to make tea or coffee.
After dinner we watched a short video about the history of the lodge and the Tambopata Reserve, then went out for a night walk. We all had flashlights and Leao warned us to be careful not to touch anything as we walked around, and right off the bat we saw a young wandering spider (one of the most venomous spiders on earth), so we took his warning seriously! We also saw a bamboo rat, a colorful bird (called something like a rufus mut mut), a giant owl moth, a pink-toed tarantula, and a bunch of giant grasshoppers or crickets. The most exciting animal we saw, however, was a rainbow boa constrictor that was sleeping in a muddy pocket of a tree. It was so colorful and its scales were iridescent… it was definitely cool to see!
After the night walk we went right to bed since we had to be up for breakfast at 6am the next day.
Day 2: Hike to Lago Condenado, Plantation Visit & Caiman Spotting
We had 6am breakfast and then a short boat ride to our hiking trail. On the way they pulled the boat over so we could see a really cute baby toucan that had fallen out of its nest and onto the beach.
Once off the boat we hiked the trail to Lago Condenado. On the way Leao showed us berries used as face paint, the “plastic plant” (which they use basically as we would plastic cling wrap), and the clearing in the rainforest floor that shows the tree in the middle is home to a colony of fire ants. Leao also coaxed a bird-eating tarantula (and a few of its babies!) out of its den in the ground using just a twig which was quite an experience! 🙂
Once we reached the lake we all got into a canoe and Leao paddled us around for a bit. We saw hoatzins or stink birds, which are really unique birds that might be the remaining link between birds and dinosaurs. We got off the boat for a bit on the other side of the lake to follow a short trail looking for monkeys we’d seen from the boat. We weren’t really able to find them, but we did see a giant capoc tree and were able to step inside a huge strangler fig (the original tree it strangled long gone).
Back on the boat we saw a swamp eel close to the water and Leao threw some cracker crumbs into the water so we could see how many piranhas were in the lake (they came up to snack on both the crackers and the little sardines or minnows that were trying to eat the crackers).
On the hike back to the river we saw a whole line of leaf cutter ants who were basically following the same trail we were, which was pretty cool to see. And then we found a really cute sloth hanging and sleeping in a tree, and I took a few dozen pictures of it. 🙂
Back at the lodge we had lunch and then a short break where Ryan took a nap and I read a book in the hammock, checking out the agutis occasionally wandering by. In the afternoon, Leao gave us a demonstration about Brazil nuts, which are one of the foods that can be sustainably grown in the rainforest and are good for the local industry. Then we took a short river cruise to the plantation that grows a lot of the food for the lodge. We got to meet and feed some chickens, sample different varieties of bananas (the lady finger ones were pretty good) and many other rainforest foods… papaya with lime on it was probably the winner. The farmer was really nice and showed us his crops (including yuca/manioc/cassava, which are all the same thing, apparently, and pineapples, which are actually bromeliads). The farmer also had a bunch of pigs that eat the leftovers from the lodge, so it was quite a symbiotic relationship.
We arrived back at the lodge a little before dinner, and afterward got a little demo to learn more about caimans (including alligators versus crocodiles). Then we headed out onto the river again in the boat for a night of caiman spotting. The stars were gorgeous in the night sky and they had us just enjoy them for a few minutes before we went back up the river to see the caimans. We saw several babies and got quite close to a large one… I could have reached out and touched it!
It was such an amazing day–we saw so much and learned a lot more about the Amazon and its wildlife, and couldn’t wait to spend three more days there!
Day 3: Hike to another lake, Swimming hole & Caiman Spotting
Three of our group were leaving in the morning, so it was just us with the two Australians–Lana and Ellen–and of course Leao. We had breakfast and then set off on the river again so we could take an even longer hike to a different lake than the day before.
We moved pretty fast through the hike, though we did spot a few things–Capuchin monkeys, a group of coatis, a tapir track, and a swampy part of the trail reminiscent of Dagobah. We reached the lake and all got into a large canoe. We circumnavigated maybe half the lake, seeing bats that blend right in with tree trunks, butterflies, lilypads and flowers, blue and gold macaws, and interesting birds like a kingfisher, a duck, and a snakebird. There were a few giant river otters on the other side of the lake at the end which was cool but they left the lake before we could get close enough to see them well. The most exciting animal we saw, however, had to be a young anaconda! He was just curled up on a branch off the shore and of course Leao’s sharp eyes spotted him. He said it wasn’t very common to see them at this lake (he also leads special jaguar-and-anaconda trips that involve going deeper into the forest and camping) so we felt really lucky!
There was a shelter at the lake so afterward we had our lunch there–it was the same kind of food we ate at the dining hall but wrapped up in banana leaves. Then we followed the trail back to the boats. On the way Leao showed us the “walking palm”, which puts down roots to move itself around the forest… very slowly of course, but he said that they studied them to decide how the trees in the Lord of the Rings movies would walk! He also showed us an ironwood tree that had fallen years ago and was still solid; he said it was the strongest wood in the rainforest.
After a quick break back at the lodge, Ryan and I met Ellen and Lana down at the swimming hole. It was a little pool in a stream, and Leao had assured us there were no piranhas in it. 🙂 The water was really cool and felt good on my sunburn (I hadn’t done a very good job applying sunscreen on the boat). It was really cool to be swimming and floating around in the water, surrounded by trees… quite the jungle paradise! We chatted with Ellen and Lana, and they even gave us some advice for our trip to Australia next year, which was cool.
We returned to the lodge bar and had a few drinks with them before dinner, and had a really interesting conversation about gun control and politics. After dinner Leao said that we could join the caiman boat going out (we just had to sit in the back since we’d technically had our turn) so of course we went again! The stars were amazing again, and we saw some more caimans. Then we went to bed, all ready for our last full day there.
Day 4: Rainy morning, Hike to Macaw Clay Lick, Caiman Spotting & Stargazing
The next morning at breakfast it had been raining for a while, and it continued throughout most of the morning. We sat in the bar for a while talking to Lana and Ellen, hoping that it would clear up so we could go to the macaw clay lick. Eventually it was apparent that we wouldn’t be able to go before lunch, so we went back to our bungalow until lunch, where I read a book in the hammock (on our covered porch) and waited for the rain to abate.
Around lunchtime it cleared up, so we were able to get on the boat and hike out to the macaw clay lick. The trail wasn’t long, but we did see a monkey and a wild turkey on the way. It was only later, at dinner, that we realized it was Thanksgiving! (Lana actually reminded us). We sat in a blind overlooking a bend in the river and a large clay lick across the river. No birds actually went to the clay lick, but we saw a large variety of macaws, parrots, and parakeets fly by, which was pretty cool.
On the hike back Leao showed us a vanilla vine and the tree that quinine (the stuff in tonic water and a malaria medicine) is made from. He had us taste a piece and it did taste like tonic water!
At dinner, after realizing that it was Thanksgiving, we had a nice conversation about holidays and different traditions between the USA, Australia, China and Peru. We got to go caiman spotting one last time. The guide on the boat actually grabbed one out of the water so we could see it up close! There were a lot of clouds so we couldn’t see the stars that night, but we noticed that as it was our third night we were getting a lot better at spotting the caimans on the shores ourselves!
Afterward, the four of us had some drinks at the bar to celebrate our last night in the Amazon. When the bar closed at 10pm, we stepped out and realized the clouds had cleared and that we could see so many stars again. We decided to go out to the soccer field behind the kitchen to stargaze and do a little astrophotography, which was really cool. Just wish I’d worn bugspray to do it. 🙂 Then we went back to our bungalows and packed up for the trip out tomorrow.
Day 5: to Lima
We took the boat back to the “hell community”, straining to see any animals we could on the way back. We only saw a few macaws and vultures, though. Then we took the bus back to the Puerto Maldonado headquarters to retrieve the rest of our luggage. There we said goodbye to Leao, Ellen and Lana. We’d had so much fun with all of them and such a great experience in the Amazon that it was hard to say goodbye and leave!
Then we flew to Cusco and, after a delayed flight, made it into Lima a bit later than expected, our trip nearly at an end!
Bonus: Here’s a short Youtube video of some of the amazing wildlife we saw!