Amazon for Explorers (4 days)

Upon arrival, you will be met at Puerto Maldonado airport and driven ten minutes to the lodge’s Puerto Maldonado headquarters. While enjoying your first taste of the rain forest in our gardens you will need to pack only the necessary gear for your next few days and leave the rest at the office safe deposit. This helps keep the boats and cargo light.

Your guides are biologists, tourism professionals, or community members. Unless noted otherwise, your guides speak English and are assigned at a six to one ratio. This means groups smaller than 6 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.

The two and a half hour boat ride from the Tambopata Port to the Amazon lodge will take you past the Community of Infierno, the Tambopata National Reserve´s checkpoint and into the buffer zone of this 1.3 million hectare conservation unit. En route you will enjoy a box lunch.

Upon arrival, the lodge manager will welcome you and brief you with important navigation and security tips.

Tonight you can enjoy an optional trip to spot caiman, which entails travelling to the river’s edge at night and scanning the shores with headlamps and flashlights to catch the red gleams of reflection from caiman eyes. 

Wake up early and enjoy breakfast before going on a trip to the Macaw claylick where dozens of large macaws and hundreds of parrots congregate near the river bank in a raucous and colourful spectacle which inspired a National Geographic cover story. Discreetly located fifty meters from the cliff, we will observe green-winged, scarlet and blue-and-gold macaws and several species of smaller parrots that descend to ingest clay.

In the morning you can enjoy the Floodplain Trail: this five kilometre trail covers the prototypical rain forest with immense trees criss-crossed by creeks and ponds. Amongst the figs, ceibas and shihuahuacos we will look for squirrel, brown capuchin, and spider monkeys, as well as peccaries. 

After Lunch, Ten minutes upriver from the lodge explore the island where there is a tiny pond with a platform in the middle. It is a great place to spot waterfowl such as Muscovy duck, sunbittern and hoatzin along with the woodpeckers, oropendolas, flycatchers, and parakeets that call this pond their home.

After dinner you can enjoy a night walk, 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.

• Stepping carefully over the winding “highways” of peaceful leaf-cutter ants, the Rainforest Master Hike will leave you with unforgettable memories and a profound sense of accomplishment. Due to their years of local experience, our guides know everything about the forest. They’ll spot the tiniest bird hiding in the canopy, the most elusive monkey, and the most spectacular plant life.
• Twilight descends early in the jungle. Under the thick tree cover of the rainforest, darkness falls quickly, when the light cannot slip through the foliage any longer. Now, as afternoon slips into evening, you’re about to see one of the world’s most spectacular sunsets. The Sunset Cruise floats down the wide river, countless oranges and pinks reflecting off the water in lovely patterns.

It is time to say goodbye, as the expedition comes to an end. Your visit will make a direct contribution to help preservation efforts in the National Reserve of Tambopata.

Later in the day depending on your flights. You will take the journey back to the city to the airport for your onward travels.