Daily departures from Lima or
Cuzco
Day 1: .... / Puerto Maldonado
/
Refugio Amazonas (L-D)
- Arrival & Reception by Guide. Our guides are biologists, tourism
professionals, or community members. Unless noted otherwise, our guides
speak English. We assign guides at 10:1 ratio. This means groups smaller
than 10 people will be merged with other groups under one guide. If you
would like a private guide or a guide in a language other than English
please let us know.
- Transfer Airport to Puerto Maldonado Headquarters. Upon arrival from
Lima or Cusco, we will welcome you at the airport and drive you ten minutes
to our Puerto Maldonado headquarters. While enjoying your first taste of the
forest in our gardens we will ask you to pack only the necessary gear for
your next few days, and leave the rest at our safe deposit. This helps us
keep the boats and cargo light.
- Puerto Maldonado to Tambopata River Port. Skirting Puerto Maldonado, we
drive 20 kilometers to the Tambopata River Port, entering the Native
Community of Infierno. The port is a communal business.
- Tambopata River Port to
Refugio Amazonas. The two and a half hour boat ride from the Tambopata
Port to Refugio Amazonas will take us past the Community of Infierno and the
Tambopata National
Reserve' checkpoint and into the buffer zone of this 1.3 million hectare
conservation unit.
- Boxed Lunch.
- Orientation. Upon arrival, the lodge manager will welcome you and brief
you with important navigation and security tips.
- Dinner.
- Caiman searches. We will be out at the river's edge at night, scanning
the shores with headlamps and flashlights to catch the red gleams of
reflection from caiman eyes.
- Overnight in Refugio Amazonas.
Day 2:
Refugio Amazonas (B-L-D)
- Canopy tower: A thirty minute walk from Refugio Amazonas leads to the 25
meter scaffolding canopy tower. A bannistered staircase running through the
middle provides safe access to the platforms above. The tower has been built
upon high ground, therefore increasing your horizon of the continuous
primary forest extending out towards the Tambopata National Reserve. From
here views of mixed species canopy flocks as well as toucans, macaws and
raptors are likely.
- Breakfast.
- Farm Visit and Ethnobotanical Garden: Five minutes downriver from the
lodge lies a farm owned and managed by charismatic Don Manuel from the
neighboring community of Condenado. He grows a variety of popular and
unknown Amazon crops - just about every plant and tree you see serves a
purpose. He has also identified and cultivated many of the medicinal plants
used in the region in a little backyard garden.
- Brazil nut trail and camp: A few minutes hike from the lodge is a
beautiful old growth patch of Brazil Nut forest that has been harvested for
decades (if not centuries) where the precarious remains of a camp used two
months a year by Brazil Nut gatherers can still be experienced. We will be
demonstrating the whole process of the rain forest's only sustainable
harvested product from collection through transportation to drying.
- Lunch.
- Condenado Oxbow Lake: A forty minute hike takes you Condenado Lake. You
paddle canoes around the lake looking for lakeside wildlife such as hoatzin
and caiman, hoping to see the otters which are infrequently seen here. You
will also be rewarded with overhead sightings of macaws.
- Dinner.
- Night walk. You will have the option of hiking out at night, when most
of the mammals are active but rarely seen. Much easier to find are frogs
with shapes and sounds as bizarre as their natural histories.
- Overnight in Refugio Amazonas
Day 3: Refugio Amazonas / Puerto Maldonado /
..... (Cuzco or Lima) (B)
- Breakfast.
- Transfer Boat - Refugio Amazonas to Tambopata River Port.
- Transfer Tambopata River Port to Puerto Maldonado Headquarters.
- Transfer Pto Maldonado Headquarters - Airport. We retrace our river and
road journey back to Puerto Maldonado, our office and the airport. Depending
on airline schedules, this may require dawn departures.
NOTES
Boat Transportation
All our boats are 20 foot long, roofed canoes with 55 hp outboard motors. Daily
arrivals and departures from every port are scheduled to meet every airline´s
arrival and departure with a maximum two hour wait.
We reserve the right to change the order of activities.
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