The Amazon River Basin

Our first visit was to the Amazon River basin and Tambopata National Reserve. We flew from Lima and then took a bus to Puerto Maldonado. We stopped at an outdoor market to pick up some last minute supplies. A little boy, Miguel, asked for a “foto” and he enjoyed seeing himself in the camera. But hey, where are his teeth? We were told by our guides several times to not give children candy as they have a real problem with dental care in Peru.














I had fun snacking on hardboiled quail eggs. Yummy!











Next we boarded our boat and traveled up stream for 3 hours on a large river. The recent three day rain flooded the area and we shared the river with large logs which made for a bit of an obstacle course at times.






The lodge was nice but simple. We had no warm water, lights or power in our rooms and our beds were covered by mosquito nets. We were soon greeted by the resident Howler monkey who was quite friendly and eventually acquired a diaper/”nappy” which we were quite happy about.




On the second day we hiked 3 hours into the jungle to a large lake. The path was flooded in many areas – so were lucky that the lodge supplied us with “wellies”/rainboots.

We were hoping to see monkeys, caiman, and otters but we had no luck. Instead we saw tarantulas (yikes!), a fleur de lance snake (very dangerous), and lots of scarlet macaws. We took a canoe ride around the lake and when we got back to land we were so hot that we all decided to take a quick dip in the lake…but for not too long! There were caiman lurking in there…somewhere.

After our long day of hiking, we acquired some yummy fruit punch and lounged in the hammocks. A perfect way to end the day.