Breathtaking Peruvian Wildlife

Departing Lima at 08:05 and arriving Puerto Maldonado at 10:45. You will be welcomed by your tour guides and transferred to our headquarters, where you will be asked to pack only the necessary gear for the next few days, the rest of your luggage will be kept safe in our storage room.

From Puerto Maldonado you’ll go to Tambopata River Port, 20 kilometers, into the Native Community of Infierno. The River Port is a community business. We’ll get on a boat and travel for 2 1/2hrs to Refugio Amazonas, past, Infierno and the Reserve checkpoint, into the buffer zone of this 1.3 million hectare conservation unit.

This evening Caiman searching will be our first Amazon adventure.

We will quietly walk on the edge of the Tambopata River, by the shores, attentive with our headlamps on, to catch the red gleams of reflection from caiman eyes.

Overnight at Refugio Amazonas Jungle Lodge.

We will walk from Refugio Amazonas for 30 minutes, arriving at the Canopy Tower scaffold with a banister staircase running through the middle providing safe access to the platforms above. All set to experience the Amazon Rainforest from the top of its vast trees (30 meters /100 ft.), incredible views of the splendid primary forest extending along the Tambopata National Reserve. Look up! And you’ll see a flock of toucans or macaws flying into the horizon or resting on the top of the trees close to you.

We will be travelling by boat for the next 4 ½ hrs from Refugio Amazonas to Tambopata Research Center into the heart of the Amazon jungle.

After about 3 hours travelling by boat, deep in the Amazon jungle, if the weather is favorable we will stop at the Chuncho Macaw clay lick. After a brief walk (5 min.) we will have the chance to see large macaws feeding on the special sodium rich clays on the riverbank. Watching them so closely is a remarkable experience.
One and half hours later we’ll cross the confluence with the Malinowski River, as we leave the last traces of human habitation behind us. Within the 700,000 hectare uninhabited center of the Reserve, sightings of capybara, caiman, geese, macaws and other large species will be more frequent and magical.

Upon arrival, the lodge manager will welcome you and share with you important navigation and security tips.

A wonderful trail of 3 to 5 km will take us to a lookout with stupendous views of the Amazon jungle into the lowlands. A Regenerated old Bamboo forest good for the Howler Monkey and the Dusky Titi Monkey.

After dinner Macaw experts will have a Macaw Project Lecture providing an in depth look at the biology of macaws, their feeding habits, the theories for clay lick use, their breeding and feeding ecology, population fluctuations and the threats to their conservation.

Overnight at Tambopata Research Center Jungle Lodge.

On a clear morning, at dawn, at Macaw Clay Lick (located at the Bahuaja Sonene National Park) we’ll discretely witness, fifty meters from a cliff; the Green-winged, Scarlet and Blue-and-gold Macaws and several species of smaller parrots descending to ingest clay.

Close to the TRC, we will follow a 5 kilometer Floodplain trail into a prototypical Rainforest of immense trees intersected by creeks and ponds. Figs trees, Ceibas and Shihuahuacos, while we are attentive for Brown Capuchin, and Spider Monkeys as well as Peccaries.

Ten minutes upriver from our Amazon lodge is a tiny pond with a platform in the middle. It is a great place to spot waterfowls such as Muscovy duck, a lovely Sunbittern and Hoatzin, some Woodpeckers, Oropendolas, Flycatchers and Parakeets.

Night Walk

After dinner, you can go for a night walk, an exciting option to spot mammals rarely seen during the day, also frogs with bizarre shapes and sounds.
Overnight at Tambopata Research Center Jungle Lodge.

You will take a boat TCR, back to Tambopata River Port and then to Puerto Maldonado headquarters. You will be transferred to the airport to take your flight to Lima (departing at 15:40hrs. and arriving at 18:30hrs).