Along with the Machu Picchu trek, our trip to the jungle was the only other organised activity for the trip, a compromise given just how far we are from lower parts of the Amazon.
Anyway, we learned a valuable lesson - if you book in advance you don´t always get the best price... especially here in Peru where once you hand over the money you will never see it again...
After returning from Machu Picchu we spent a day relaxing and organising ourselves in Cusco before heading off on the tour.
Manu Biosphere is a UNESCO World Heritage site and covers 18,811 km² which is divided into three areas, which are progressively harder to access (access to the deepest forest is limited to TV crews and researchers) - We only went into the outer area known as the Manu Cultural Zone.
After an early start we spent most of the day driving including the jungle road that rivaled the worlds most dangerous road at points... (we definitely would have felt safer on bikes than the bus, especially as we pulled to the edge for giant Volvo trucks to pass on the inside). We spent the last hour walking down the road and saw some Brown Capuchin Monkeys (like the one Ross had in Friends and the ones in Pirates of The Carribean) and Peru's national bird, the Cock of the Rock before arriving at our lodge for the evening. The lodge was fairly rustic and we spent the evening wondering what was under the floorboards only to find out in the morning there was a fairly large mouse nesting in the bedside drawers...
Day Two and we drove further stopping at a Coca plantation and getting a lesson in how to manufacture cocaine!!! Afterwards we rafted down a Grade 2 stretch of river for an hour and then meet up with the bus and boarded a boat for a further 20 minutes downstream where we found our second lodge. We spent the rest of the day relaxing (until we were awoken by a lady in our group as a monkey found its way into the lodge and climbed across the wall dividing our rooms...) and taking a walk around the jungle in the evening where we saw more monkeys, several birds, some serious ants, termites nests, wild pigs and some fairly decent spiders...
Day three we started early and headed downstream to a clay lick where Parrots and Macaws come to feed every morning. We watched patiently from the other side of the river for about an hour but unfortunately the birds didn´t land on the clay lick as they sensed a predator nearby. Next up was a series of five flying foxes through the canopy of the jungle reaching a maximum height of 70m which proved to much for Kims fear of heights and finally we walked around a lake which used to be part of the river where we saw some more birds....
The final day was the return journey we started with a hour long boat journey back upstream which included pushing the boat through two sets of rapids before hoping on the bus back up the road for a 10 hour return journey... we were blessed with another South American Travel moment as there was a protest in Cusco the following day so the roads were being closed. We found an alternative route only to find that a truck was dumping piles of dirt on the road for the grader that was three hours away to flatten... Fortunately this wasn´t going to stop us and we all got out of the van, leveled the thirteen piles slightly and then watched the driver drive over them in what was a very impressive display of driving bordering on insane...(videos soon)
Anyway we survived, and are booked for another four day trek from Huaraz tomorrow...
Until next time take care,
Dave & Kim
Anyway, we learned a valuable lesson - if you book in advance you don´t always get the best price... especially here in Peru where once you hand over the money you will never see it again...
After returning from Machu Picchu we spent a day relaxing and organising ourselves in Cusco before heading off on the tour.
Manu Biosphere is a UNESCO World Heritage site and covers 18,811 km² which is divided into three areas, which are progressively harder to access (access to the deepest forest is limited to TV crews and researchers) - We only went into the outer area known as the Manu Cultural Zone.
After an early start we spent most of the day driving including the jungle road that rivaled the worlds most dangerous road at points... (we definitely would have felt safer on bikes than the bus, especially as we pulled to the edge for giant Volvo trucks to pass on the inside). We spent the last hour walking down the road and saw some Brown Capuchin Monkeys (like the one Ross had in Friends and the ones in Pirates of The Carribean) and Peru's national bird, the Cock of the Rock before arriving at our lodge for the evening. The lodge was fairly rustic and we spent the evening wondering what was under the floorboards only to find out in the morning there was a fairly large mouse nesting in the bedside drawers...
Day Two and we drove further stopping at a Coca plantation and getting a lesson in how to manufacture cocaine!!! Afterwards we rafted down a Grade 2 stretch of river for an hour and then meet up with the bus and boarded a boat for a further 20 minutes downstream where we found our second lodge. We spent the rest of the day relaxing (until we were awoken by a lady in our group as a monkey found its way into the lodge and climbed across the wall dividing our rooms...) and taking a walk around the jungle in the evening where we saw more monkeys, several birds, some serious ants, termites nests, wild pigs and some fairly decent spiders...
Day three we started early and headed downstream to a clay lick where Parrots and Macaws come to feed every morning. We watched patiently from the other side of the river for about an hour but unfortunately the birds didn´t land on the clay lick as they sensed a predator nearby. Next up was a series of five flying foxes through the canopy of the jungle reaching a maximum height of 70m which proved to much for Kims fear of heights and finally we walked around a lake which used to be part of the river where we saw some more birds....
The final day was the return journey we started with a hour long boat journey back upstream which included pushing the boat through two sets of rapids before hoping on the bus back up the road for a 10 hour return journey... we were blessed with another South American Travel moment as there was a protest in Cusco the following day so the roads were being closed. We found an alternative route only to find that a truck was dumping piles of dirt on the road for the grader that was three hours away to flatten... Fortunately this wasn´t going to stop us and we all got out of the van, leveled the thirteen piles slightly and then watched the driver drive over them in what was a very impressive display of driving bordering on insane...(videos soon)
Anyway we survived, and are booked for another four day trek from Huaraz tomorrow...
Until next time take care,
Dave & Kim
1 comment:
Hi Dave & Kim! Missed you guys on the rest of our trip, our Colca trek just seemed a bit dull without you.
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