After our trip into the jungle in Madidi National Park in Bolivia we both agreed that we didn’t want to head home without getting back into the rainforest one more time. And so we headed to Cusco a little earlier than we needed to for our date with Machu Picchu so that we could head into the Peruvian Amazon for a few days.
Having had such a great tour in Madidi we knew that it was going to be hard to match, but having done a bit of research we plumped for a tour into Manu National Park.
And so it was that we were picked up at 4.15am for a long drive over the Andes, through the cloud forest and down into the rainforest. After a 7-8 hour drive (with a few of stops along the way, including one where we saw our second favourite bird – a Potoo, which is sort like a strange looking owl (although it’s not actually an owl)), we then had two hours by boat to reach our lodge for the next 4 nights.
It turns out that this dry season has been particularly dry, so much so that even the small Peke Peke boat that we used for the last hour or so of our journey was too big for the volume of water left in the river, to the point where our guide, the chef and the boats pilot all had to get out of the boat at least 5 or 6 times to physically push it (and us still in the boat) through the shallowest sections.
Eventually though, we reached our lodge and got settled into our ‘treehouse’, which did indeed have a tree growing through the middle of it (Admin – I think she probably means that they built the cabin around the tree, rather than the tree grew through the cabin!)
First impressions of Manu were that it was a lot more hot and humid than Madidi. More like what you’d expect the jungle to feel like!
It was also a bit less lush, reflecting no doubt the extra month of the dry season since we’d visited Madidi. Our guide said it hadn’t rained there for at least a month.
However, that was about to change!
That evening we headed out for a night walk. One of the two American girls also on the trip said she thought she’d just heard some thunder, but obviously, what with it not having rained for a month we assumed she was mistaken. However, not 20 minutes into the walk our guide stopped us, said he could hear rain in the distance and asked if we had rain jackets with us. Of course we hadn’t! And so we started a quick march back to camp, trying to stay ahead of the rain. Needless to say we did not manage it! Thankfully the thick tree canopy saved us from the worst of it – although we still got pretty sodden in the last few metres where the trees had been thinned to make way for the lodge. At least our guide was happy to see some rain at last.
The rain was also accompanied by some amazing thunder and lightning. I was just commenting to Richard as we got ready for bed that I liked a good thunderstorm, when the loudest clap of thunder and brightest flash of lightning I’ve ever heard or seen in my life made me almost literally sh*t myself!! Turned out in the morning the strike hit only a very short distance along from the lodge’s dining room.
Whilst we weren’t out for long on our first night walk due to the rain, it did set the tone for this trip into the jungle. Not so much about birds and mammals, but lots of creepy crawlies and small critters everywhere, including in our treehouse.
Thankfully, all the spiders I saw were outside, although Richard did come across one big one on the toilet one night, before it scuttled out of sight. I’m sure it obviously ran outside never to come back in, and that it didn’t just go back to hiding behind the loo the whole time…!
Whilst I didn’t see any 8 legged beasts in our cabin, I still saw plenty of other inside wildlife including several different types of giant cricket/grasshopper, several cicadas (including one that decided to snuggle up with us inside the mozzie net in bed!), a sweet little frog and a nightly visit by a little mouse that kept helping itself to our biscuits and bananas!!
Whilst I said this trip was more about the critters, we did see a few monkeys, including the ‘night monkey‘ (you’ll not be surprised to find this is a mostly nocturnal monkey!) which we’d not previously seen, as well as enjoying several minutes following a herd (Admin – not sure that’s quite the right term?) of Paled Winged Trumpeters, a type of exotic chicken or turkey if you will, that were bimbling along the quiet forest path ahead of us, almost oblivious to us.
Other slightly strange highlights included hunting for a stinky mushroom that apparently only blooms for a single night (we eventually found it after sniffing around (literally!) in the dark for about 10 minutes), finding a pretty little stink bug (we didn’t get a whiff but we’re told they can create a pretty noxious smell to deter predators) and seeing loads of fireflies up close.
Oh, and the lodge has a couple of macaws that they’d rescued from a market, which were very funny to watch at dinner times!
Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed our second foray into the jungle, although, I don’t think either of us are quite cut out for the heat and humidity and by the final day I was starting to get a bit jittery about all the creepy crawlies, so it was probably time to head back into the Andes to Cusco for the last few days of our trip.
Sloth Journeys 