Sept 11 - Sept 14
Elevation 869 ft

Houston to Lima

Continental 590
Departs Friday, Sep. 10 - 3:55 PM
Arrives Friday, Sep 10 - 10:25 PM
Overnite at Airport Ramada

Lima to Puerto Maldonado

LAN 71
Departs Saturday, Sep. 11 - 9:25 AM
Arrives Saturday, Sep. 11 - 12:15 PM
Airport Pickup - Transfer to Inkaterra
Butterfly House to check-in
Transfer vai 45 minute canoe ride to km 15 of Madre de Dios River
Hotel - Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica

Saturday, September 11

Some of the subtitles for this leg of the trip could include:

1. Spiders and caimans and monkeys – Oh my!

2. You never quite get used to the smell of Deep Woods Off.

3. We lived a National Geographic show.

4. Clothes that are damp usually smell too.

We started off our journey on Friday afternoon from Houston. We arrived in Lima about 10:30 pm and by the time we got our bags and got through customs and immigration, it was nearly midnight. We found a cellular phone booth (that was surprisingly still manned) and bought a pre-paid SIM card (a trick we learned in Australia) so that we could have some cheap local cellphone service. When we say a cellular phone booth, it was literally the size of a phone booth. Doug will never complain about the size of his cubicle at work again. We stayed at the Ramada at the airport, which is the ONLY hotel at the airport. It wasn’t bad, but rather basic and pretty expensive.

The next morning we got up early and caught a flight to Puerto Maldonado, stopping briefly in Cusco. We learned that when departing from an airport, any airport taxes that are due are not already included in the tickets. The taxes have to be paid separately at a separate counter (of course!) before you can go through security. We flew over the Andes and saw many snow peaked caps. The stop in Cusco was quite interesting, because the flight attendants kept counting over and over and over again the number of passengers that were left on the plane and finally broke out the flight manifest and started checking off names. We were there a while.

We arrive at Puerto Maldonado. It’s very much a river port, being on the Madre de Dios (Mother of God) River. Just to have full disclosure, we are in the Amazon Basin. We are not actually going to the Amazon itself. We’re still a ways away, but it should be an extremely similar experience. The hotel that we’re staying at specializes in all sorts of nature tours. Their slogan is “Authentic Nature Travel” and we have to say that it’s pretty accurate. They pick us up from the airport and transport us through the actual town to the boat dock. The hotel is a 45 minute motorized canoe (BIG canoe) ride from Puerto Maldonado out in the middle of nowhere. There are no roads. All of the transportation is by boat. The hotel rate includes all of the food (where else would we eat?) and our choice of a full range of nature related activities. The hotel is comprised of about 30 cabins and one main room with the restaurant and a couple of other utilitarian buildings. In each of the cabins, there is limited electricity with just two outlets and two very weak lights in the bathroom and a ceiling fan in the main room. Usually in the afternoon, there’s a scheduled power outage and another one in the middle of the night. There is no A/C anywhere so it makes for some slightly miserable afternoons. The cabin has screens on all sides and light canvas cloth that can be lowered for privacy. They set up lanterns in the evening so that you do have a little bit more light. Luckily there is running hot and cold water. Think of it as very expensive camping.

All around the river, the air is very hazy and there is a slight smell of smoke. It’s spring here in the Amazon Basin, and the farmers are all burning their crop left-overs so they can clear the land and plant new crops. You’ll notice that some of the pictures show that hazy atmosphere. It was that way the entire time while we were here as there is not much air movement – there is hardly any wind at all.

We disembark, have lunch, change clothes (long pants and long-sleeved shirt) and then we’re off to our first nature walk. Our tour guide is Marco and as it turns out, he’s our tour guide for all of our tours. The hotel tries to have groups of six people (the four others are Brits who we had a great time with) and then assign a tour guide to that group to go do whatever the group and the guide decide. On our walk, we learn various things about ants and various trees and plants and birds. There’s a tree here that they call a Punishment Tree because it’s usually littered with fire ants, and from best we can tell, these are even slightly meaner than the fire ants we have back in Texas. They are very sensitive to movement. Just one slight tap on the tree gets the ants to start looking for the tapee and then they get busy with the biting. In folklore the story goes that if someone deserved severe punishment, they would be tied to the tree and left there overnight for the ants to do their thing. The immunity system of the locals is such that the fire ants wouldn’t kill them, but it would hurt really bad.

After a short break, we did our next tour which was an evening boat tour of the river looking for various wildlife. We only saw caimans (and LOTS of them), which are very closely related to the alligator. They’re not as big or as aggressive as an alligator, fairly shy and you hardly see one in the daytime. Marco was really good seeing when their eyes were lit with the spotlight. It was a good trip and we have no interest in getting close to that water!!!

After very long showers and dinner, we hit the sack at 9:00.

Sunday, September 12

The next morning we get up at 5:00 am to eat a quick breakfast and then do a tree-top canopy tour. The hotel has their own 30 meter tall (90 odd ft for all of you non-metrics) observation towers where you can walk up and see what's happening above the trees. They have suspension bridges that connect the towers. All-in-all, it's pretty cool and we got to see and hear some pretty neat birds. Between their two towers up at the canopy level, they have what they call the "bird house." It's a small tree house built way up that guests can actually rent for $1200 a night. They bring up a bed and furnishings, all of the meals, and even a toilet so you can get a real up-close look at what goes on up at the treetops. It was not something that we rented – we both prefer our beds a little closer to the ground. On the walk back from the canopy tour to the lodge, we see about 30 or 40 squirrel monkeys and a few brown monkeys crossing over our trail. It looked like they were on their morning commute. Apparently the squirrel monkeys (which are quite small) travel with the big brown monkeys. The squirrel monkeys hear and feel things approaching better than the brown monkeys and make a lot of noise so the brown monkeys know to protect their own young and the squirrel monkeys.


After a break and maybe a nap before it gets too terribly hot, we eat lunch and then go on our afternoon tour of Lake Sandoval. It's good they keep us busy because by now, we've been "off the grid" for more than 24 hours and both of use would likely be getting a bit antsy if we weren't so busy and/or tired. Now the Lake tour is a little bit of work. We took about a 20 minute boat ride, got out, and went on a 2 mile hike to Lake Sandoval where Marco paddled us around in a smaller boat looking for more wildlife. We saw tree turkeys (the locals call them Wheezers or Asthmatic birds because of the awful wheez-like sound that they make). They're not the most graceful birds, but for turkeys, they're kinda pretty. We saw lots of birds, tree bats, piranhas, and even a few caimans (who told us that they were shy and usually didn't come out during the day???). We stayed on the lake until sunset and then hiked back two miles using flashlights. We get back pretty late, have dinner, and then go to bed very tired and worn out.

Monday, September 13

We started the third day with a trip to Hacienda Concepcion. This was about 10-15 minutes up river to a location the lodge is expanding too. They are building 10 cabins and a large main house and plan to be open by Christmas. That seems optimistic given where they were now, but Marco seemed to think they'd make it with now problem. The craftsmen even build all of the furniture.

The new location is set along the Gamitana creek Our canoe had a bit of water in it, but after Marco did a quick bailing, we were off. This creek has tons of "Tree Turkeys" on it which can fly and generally live in trees. The turkeys have no natural predators as adults as they have a bad odor which permeates their meat so they taste bad.

We saw a number of other birds, turtles on the short canoe ride.

After that, we walked through the jungle to a small garden which was planted with all kinds of plants. Marco had us chew just slightly on one twig that immediately numbed our tongue. He had another plant where we rubbed the green leaves in our hands and they quickly turned purple. The leaves contain and a pigment locals use for dye. He also cut into a tree which produced a purple sap the locals call dragon's blood. He had Travis hold out his hand and wiped in on the back of it. So far the hand hasn't shriveled up and fallen off. Marco indicates that there is at least one guy who would drink the sap and claims to have been cured of stomach cancer as a result.

It appears that ever plant can be used for some type of illness. It's just not clear how anyone keeps track of what cures what!

We went back to the resort for a quick rest and some lunch until our next outing.

Marco then took us on a really interesting adventure. We went downriver to a fairly shallow creek where we had to transfer to a shallow canoe with an outboard motor with a really long shaft that could be raised out of the water and operate in shallow water and over logs and whatnot. With the shallow boat we get a new pilot, Wilson, and his helper, Wilson. We're also pulling a small paddle-type canoe that we're bringing up the creek (but it has a paddle) to drop off at a pre-determined location for some hikers who are in the area. It's a medium width creek, but the water is flowing pretty at a pretty good pace and there are LOTS of obstacles, mainly fallen down trees and an occasional logger brining timber down. Apparently there is a saw mill somewhere in the forest and after they cut the trees into various planks, they tie up the timbers into rafts and then float them down the river. It seems to be a fairly slow process because we encounter several rafts that are are left farther downstream waiting for more rafts to come.

We see some birds and a duck and then Wilson pulls us off to the side and Marco breaks out fishing poles and we fish. The creek has bass, catfish, and some others that we don't remember the name of. After about 2 minutes, Travis actually catches a fish. It's a variety of Bass called a Lisa. We're not sure who's happier, Travis who caught the fish, or Wilson who is probably going to be eating the fish for dinner. We have a picture of the fish with Wilson holding it (Doug was too busy not catching anything to bother getting his camera out while Travis was in action). We fish for a while longer, and get many bites and stolen bait, but none of the fish decided to be caught that day.

We navigate back downstream though all of the obstacles and head back to the hotel for a quick rest.

Our final nature encounter (be honest - you're really getting tired of reading all of this, aren't you?) is a night walk in the rainforest near the hotel. Marco takes us into the forest and we start looking for critters! This could probably be alternately called a "Tarantula Walk" because we saw a bunch!! It's amazing what's out in the forest at night. We saw bats (actually on one of the hotel structures which freaked us out a little) and more tarantulas than we could keep track of. There was a multitude of other spiders of various types, including a jumping spider and one that was wrapping up a firefly in a web to feast on later. Marco spotted that one by seeing the firefly's lights - we didn't expect there to be a spider to go along with it. It's was like being in a National Geographic special. We also saw a locust, a walking stick, a stink bug, a dung beetle and probably some others that we don't remember.

Like we explained before, the tarantulas are very sensitive to vibration and can pick up on people walking. When they sense this, they run, rather quickly, into their somewhat big hidey-hole. Marco saw one that was a pretty interesting size that ran into his hole and he decided to coax him out with a stick (we think he's done this before).

If you want to see a tarantula in action, here you go:

We finish the walk, learning that we should never go into the forest at night alone, go back to our cabin and check all of the nearby trees for other critters. Luckily the one closest to our cabin is dead and doesn't appear to have anything live (other than maybe termites and ants). We don't find any bats in the room either, but we do have a slight case of the heebie-jeebies.

We have dinner, pack up and go to bed pretty much exhausted.

We get up the next morning to eat breakfast and catch the boat back to Puerto Maldonaldo. The hotel operates a "Butterfly House" near the airport where people can store extra luggage and whatnot. We stop there after taking a very interesting drive back through town in a very interesting (shall we saw "custom" bus?). It appears that national elections are in progress and the campaigning stops just slightly short of what we experience in the USA. There are campaign signs everywhere and we even see a campaign truck with loudspeakers on it broadcasting candidate propaganda.

We arrive at the airport and catch our fight to Cusco. Stay tuned for additional trip segments!

We had quite a few wildlife photos so put them on a gallery page: