Tambopata National Reserve

Welcome to the Amazon

We are putting the Rain back in Rain Forest

We are leaving civilization behind!

22/10/2018: Day 1

We are heading into the rain forest for the next three nights, no coverage, no contact with the outside world, animals, hammocks, sunsets, it will be paradise. The only down side is the lack of hot showers but I am sure we will survive.

We met up with the tour at lunch time and got a boat up river for the next 2 hours. We arrived at the perfect Cayman Lodge where we spent the afternoon chilling out in hammocks, watching the sunset, and drinking Jungle themed Cocktails. Before dinner we headed into the forest for a Creepy Crawly walk. We saw a Tarantula, a Scorpion, accidentaly stepped in an Army Ant Nest (our knee high gaters were the best thing we ever bought for the Amazon). We also saw a Sloth and her two babies! It was amazing!

Time for bed, we have a 3am wake up to head to the Macaw Clay Licks tomorrow morning.

23/10/2018: Day 2

On day 2 we woke up very early in the morning (3am in fact) to go to the Clay Lick, a large clay portion of the bank upstream from the lodge, it was 2 hours away by boat which was the reason for the early wake up. The Clay Lick is where the Macaw feed on the salt in the clay to neutralise the acids in their stomach from their other food.

Unfortunately an hour into the boat ride it started to pour down with rain, and the thunder and lightening crept closer. Despite the fact that the rain had ceased by about 6am the Macaw are very fussy birds and will not feed unless the conditions are perfect. So they did not come down to feed. We still managed to see plenty of birds as our guide made a really big effort to ensure the trip up river was still a sucess.

Some of the ones we saw were;

It was a little disappointing to not see the Macaw feeding, but we saw heaps of other birds, so it was a little hard to be upset with how the morning ended up. Eventually we gave up on seeing the Macaw feed on the Clay Lick, and had to get back to the Lodge for lunch. On the way back to the Lodge we saw Capebara and Red Howler Monkey’s.

After having lunch, and a couple of hours of reading in the hammocks, we headed out on a walk through the secondary forrest that surrounds the Lodge and across the neighbouring farm. While on the walk we saw some more birds including;

24/10/2018: Day 3

Day 3 rained, and rained, and rained.

We started off a little later than day 2, only at 6am instead of 3am. After breakfast we started walking towards Sachavacayoc Lake, which is infested with piranah. There are giant otters who live by the lake, unfortunately we didn’t get to see a giant otter, because they’d had their babies recently and so were hiding in their burrows.

On the way to the lake we saw a Snake Necked Turtle, Saddle Backed Tamarins, and a few more species of birds. By the time we arrived at the lake it had started to rain really hard. After 20 minutes on the lake paddling in the canoe we were soaked through to the bone.

No Anacondas or Otters but we saw a Hoatzan bird, which the locals call a Stinky bird because it smells terrible, and got to fish for piranah. Louise actually managed to catch one! Though it was unintentional catch and release fishing because the Piranha fled before we could scoop it up. Before we left the lake area, Jose (our guide), found a tree top frog (called a Cruziohyla Frog) that he hadn’t found in 9 years of guiding! It really blended in so well that it took quite a while to see.

In the evening we got to go looking for Cayman. In this case the rain actually worked in our favour, because we got to see 4 baby Cayman and one which was 1.5 metres long. The guides said that it was only because of the rain that we were able to see so many as they were out of the river and on the banks.

The only issue was the fact that because it had rained so much, and there were no sealed rooms in the Lodge, everything that was wet remained wet and everything that was dry became damp. Though this was nothing a couple of cocktails couldn’t fix.

25/10/2018: Day 4

Today we must leave paradise and head back to civilization.

Unfortunately, even though our flught is not until 5pm this evening, we must head back into town with everyone else. The original plan had been to leave the lodge at 9am and get to the airport around lunch time, but due to some flight cancellations many people wanted to get to the airport as soon as possible to make sure they had flights to get onto. So we left the lodge at 7am and were at the airport my 9.30am, which meant we got to spend 8 hours in an airport waiting for our flight. At least we met some interesting people and had plenty of forms of entertainment. Nice to have a rest day as well before we get going in Lima.

We have had such a good time in the Amazon. Hopefully we will come back one day for longer, and probably in July/August time so that we might see the otters and have less rain!