Manu jungle tour, Peru

Welcome to the Jungle…Manu National Park

I was not sure what to think about the 7-day /6-night jungle tour. We booked our tour in July with SAS travel (South American Sites). The guide Fernando, the assistant guide Joel, the cook or should I say chef, Wilbert and Pastor the boat driver. They were awesome and let me say they give a whole new meaning to the word courtesy. I think as a whole Peruvians are very courteous but these young men were amazing. We are accustomed to doing everything for ourselves so it was a difficult at first to sit back and enjoy this luxury.

My first reaction to the jungle was not so great. It was hot, humid and buggy. I was really longing to return to the nice hotel with a bathtub in the cool crisp mountain town of Cusco. I wanted out badly. Sunday was much better because we spent 7 hours on the boat chilling out on the beautiful Manu River. The food was amazing. Wilbert was a superb chef. No chance of losing weight this week. They use a ham radio at all their base camps and solar panels to charge the radio batteries. We took a little hike when we arrived at the camp. Oh my goodness, we saw monkey’s as soon as we were in the woods. The coolest thing we saw was a mother spider monkey crossing a tree branch and she extended her tail out for her baby to walk across on. It was soooooo cool!

Monday we took a short boat ride to a nice hiking spot and a beautiful lake Otorongo.
We saw several black and white caimans on our way. Caimans are small alligator looking animals. We started our hike and saw so many different kinds of monkeys. I could not believe how many were playing and eating just above our heads, swinging from tree to tree. Then we went to the lookout tower so we were as high as the monkey’s in the tree branches and they came over so close you could almost touch them. I could have stayed there all day. Amazing! After lunch we took another boat trip to a local shaman village. On Tuesday we took another boat trip to the beautiful Salvador Lake. We saw tons of Giant River otters, we were watching from a wooden catamaran. We could have watched them for hours but when it warms up they go away.


Glenn’s notes:

The Manu River looks like the Wolf River in Memphis except its twice as big and has no trash. We saw lots of fallen trees in the river. Our dugout had to be maneuvered carefully to avoid the shallows and the floating logs. The trees along the shore were old growth and huge. We looked at one kapok tree that is thought to be over 600 years old. That would put it here before the Spanish. Then we saw an ironwood that was even older, but not as large since they grow slower- very hard wood.
Our tour boat is a 38ft. dugout with cedar side planks. It is equipped with 50hp outboard (and a spare), a 55gal drum of fuel and a row of nice comfortable bus seats down each side. The whole boat is only about 5 ft. wide in the middle where the seats are with a narrow isle up the middle. The isle was handy for Joel “the bow thruster” to run forward and pole us off the shallow spots. All in all it is an efficient way to travel the river with up to a dozen guests and 4 staff. Our tour was under booked and should have been canceled but the company honored our reservation and ran the tour just for the two of us. The seven-hour boat ride on day two was really very relaxing and fun. We were able to kick off our shoes and let the guys do the work. A full-on lunch was served underway- no sandwiches on this trip. We had stir-fried rice, salad and a yummy cold chicken/potato salad- and complimented by a few beers I bought before we left the settlement at Boca Manu. It was a great way to spend a day on the river.
Back tracking a bit; due to the under booking of our trip we were flown from Cusco to the Boca Manu airport instead of starting by van and riverboat. The flight was great! Flying out of Cusco, everything was brown and red when viewed from above. The town is way up in the Andes and there isn’t a lot growing in the red soil and rock around it. Most of the buildings are adobe walls with tile roofs, all red. Not far away we saw a lot of terraced farms on the hillsides. The Inca’s were experts at this, carving level spots into the hills and then bringing in the perfect mix of topsoil for farming. Once clear of the mountain peaks, we started descending to the Amazon basin. The Amazon River is not here, but this area all eventually drains into it. Suddenly, things got green, real green. We flew over miles of dense forest with occasional rivers snaking through. It looked like a great area to explore by canoe- if you could get there. As we flew lower in preparation for land we could tell the trees were huge! I know the pictures would not show the scale but I had to shoot a few anyway. We were the only passengers on the 12 seat Cessna plane so we could see the “Airport” in front af the plane as we landed. Grass. It felt like we were going way to fast to land, but they got us down with no problems. It was cool to land on grass and taxi to the thatch roof pavilion that served as the terminal. It had everything a modern airport needs: radio, scale to weigh passengers and cargo, wheel barrow for moving luggage and a guy with a baby howler monkey on his shoulder. (I guess it’s a great way to meet chicks). A path through the jungle took us from the airport to the cruise ship docks. The riverbank had steps cut into the dirt to walk down to the motorized dugouts that serve as tourist boats. The boats are made in Boca Manu, our first nights destination. There is an eight-hut lodge facility in the village that serves as a hotel for tour groups. The rooms were wooden platforms with thatch roofs and canvas and screen walls.

Fernando, our guide took us on an evening hike into the jungle to an oxbow lake to observe wildlife. On the way there we passed through a fairly primitive village (25 people, one last name) and Fernando paid their leader 20 Peruvian soles ($7) to use their lake. SAS travel keeps a catamaran on this arc of a lake. The lake was left behind when the Madre de Dios River changed course by cutting off a corner and leaving that curve landlocked. The catamaran is two dugout boats (like our tour boat but smaller) attached together by a wooden deck. Those who have been to the Phillips cabin in Arkansas and have enjoyed the “party barge” will recognize the design.

Michele again:
It is hard to remember the last few days of the jungle tour. I do remember the Madre de Dios River (The Mother of God River) I can see why they named it that. We traveled upstream for two full days. It was so tricky, I was glad I was not steering and I was happier that we had the 50hp engine and spare with us. I will also never forget our 9-hour truck ride back to Cusco. We thought we were going to return to Cusco by SAS van. Well, for some unknown reason we returned in a Toyota pickup truck and we shared the backseat with Wilbert our cook. Oh and one very important detail I almost forgot, the road was dirt and extremely bumpy.

For you bird lovers here is a list of all the birds we saw in the jungle: Neotropic cormorant, Anhinga, White necked heron, Fascinated tiger heron, Refuscent tiger heron, Agami heron, Great egret, Snowy egret, Jabiru, Wood stork, Roseated spoonbill, Horned screamer, Muscovy duck, Orinoco goose, Black skimmer, Yellow billed tern, Great billed tern, Yellow headed vulture, King vulture, Osprey, Roadside hawk, Barred hawk, Spotted sandpiper, Sand colored nighthawk, Amazon kingfisher, Ringed kingfisher, White winged swallow, Giant cowbird, Grey tinamou, Blue and yellow macaw, Chestnut fronted macaw, Scarlet macaw, Blue headed parrot, Tui parakeet, Pale vented pigeon, Russet-backed oropendola and the national bird of Peru, the Cock of the Rock. Wow that was a lot of birds.
For you Monkey lovers or Monos in Spanish we saw 8 different species: Saddleback tamarin, Night monkey, Dusky titi monkey, Squirrel monkey, Brown capuchin monkey, Black spider, Red howler monkey and the Common woolly monkey.

a great trip!