Manu National Park Amazon Rainforest

Arrival day in Lima, Peru. Stay overnight in Lima, get a group dinner, and go over goals and itinerary of the trip. We strongly suggest you arrive a day earlier (April 30) to avoid travel delays.

After an early breakfast we will return to the Lima airport to catch our flight to Cusco. Located at 11,000 feet, the mountainous city was once the capital of the Inca Empire. We will spend the day exploring the UNESCO World Heritage City of Old Cusco and the Incan site of Sacsayhuaman located just outside the city. In the late afternoon we will drive into the Sacred Valley to our hotel, a villa in the town of Calca.

Early this morning we will drive to Ollantaytambo and board the Vistadome train to Aguas Calientes. From here we will take a bus up to the sanctuary of Machu Picchu and have a guided tour of this iconic archaeological site. After a few hours in the site we will return to Aguas Calientes for lunch before boarding the train to return to Ollantaytambo and eventually our villa in Calca.

Bidding farewell to the Sacred Valley, we will begin our journey towards the Amazon Basin. Over the course of four to five hours we will drive over the top of the Andes Mountains and into the cloud forest of the Cosnipata Valley. Shortly after entering Manu National Park we will stop for lunch at the Wayqecha Biological Station and spend a few hours exploring their trails and canopy bridge while keeping an eye out for over seventy species of tanagers, dozens of hummingbirds, and several primates. After a spectacular introduction to the rainforest we will continue down the valley to the Manu Paradise Lodge which will be our home for the next few nights.

Cosnipata is widely considered to be one of the most biodiverse locations on the planet. Our base at Manu Paradise is located on a steep forested hillside overlooking the Cosnipata River which flows into the Amazon Basin. Wildlife is everywhere, including the garden of our hotel which attracts several dozen species of hummingbirds, parakeets, quetzals, trogans, toucans, capuchin monkeys, woolly monkeys, and more. During our first full day in the valley we will explore along the road in search of birds, amphibians and reptiles, and mammals. On one 100m stretch we will find more butterfly species than the entirety of North America. After happy hour and dinner we’ll have an opportunity to venture along the road at night in search of nocturnal species.

After a very early wakeup we will drive a short distance up the valley to a lek for Andean Cock of the Rock. We will be here during mating season and will have the opportunity to witness up to 20-30 males performing their courtship display (much like the birds of paradise…expect an amazing and somewhat ridiculous show). We’ll have a rest in the afternoon at the lodge before exploring more of the forest and going on another night hike after dinner.

Following breakfast we will depart from Manu Paradise to head down the valley and into the Amazon Basin. After a two hour drive through the rainforest to the native community of Shipitari we will board a motorized canoe (very comfortable with reclining airplane seats) to head down the Madre de Dios River. The riverboat journey is simply magical as we will pass through some of the Amazon’s most pristine rainforest and the highest concentration of isolated tribes in the world (who can occasionally be spotted along the shore). After a full day of travel we will arrive to our jungle outpost of Tambo Blanquillo featuring individual suites and a thatch lodge along the banks of the river.

This morning we will wake up before the sun and travel a short distance by boat to a nearby claylick. Situated in a large and luxurious blind, we’ll sip coffee and have breakfast as the sun rises and the show prepares to begin. Each morning thousands of parrots and macaws visit the lick to get much needed nutrients from the clay soil. We’ll watch as the incredible number of birds situate themselves in the canopy and then descend once they have, hopefully, determined no jaguars or ocelots are waiting nearby. After lunch back at the lodge we will walk to a nearby oxbow lake that is home to a healthy population of giant river otters, hoatzins, caimen, and kingfishers. If we’re extremely lucky we might spot a resident anaconda or jaguar. For those who are interested, we may have an opportunity to fish for piranhas which we can fry up for dinner. After dinner we’ll venture out into the dense rainforest in search of an incredible array of nocturnal animals.

After a leisurely breakfast at Tambo Blanquillo we will explore the surrounding forest with opportunities to raft on another oxbow lake looking for otters, visiting a canopy tower perched 300 feet in the canopy of a ceiba tree, and venturing out into the rainforest for one final night hike.

In the morning we will begin our journey back up the Madre de Dios River to meet our cars at the tribal town of Shipitiari. From here we’ll wind our way back up the Cosnipata Valley to reach the Manu Paradise Lodge in time for dinner.

We will have a full day to spend around Manu Paradise and Cosnipata Valley. Depending on people’s interests we could return to the Cock of the Rock lek, search for quetzals, or walk the road looking for monkeys.

After an early breakfast we will drive to Cusco to catch an afternoon flight back to Lima and late night flights to the US.