Since I’m so incredibly behind on these blog posts this tour may not get quite as much attention as deserved.  However, Justin has already put up our wildlife report and I’ll sketch out a few of the tour details.

Firstly, we went to the Manu National Park Cultural Zone with Amazon Trails Peru and would absolutely recommend this company.  Since we only had a short time in Peru we did the shortest tour that got us close to the wildlife reserve.  We had been a little concerned that if we didn’t make it all the way into the reserve we wouldn’t see very much.  This turned out to not be a problem though and for the short amount of time we had we saw so, so much.

We also need to give a lot of credit to our guide, Carlos.  He was excellent – knew all the birds, found us all kinds of things to look at that we would have missed, and could tell us all about the plants and how they are used by the people who live in the jungle.  He also carried about 80 pounds of wildlife reference books (including one he had put together with his friends) and spent lots of time helping us record what we saw.  Awesome!

The tour was 4 days and 3 nights.  We started in Cusco and had a very long van ride out to the jungle.  On the way we stopped at some pre-Incan burial ruins.

Pre-Incan burial towers

We also stopped in a beautiful river town,  and wandered around for a while.  Every year they have a big festival in this town and people have traditional costumes depending on thier background.  These statues show the costumes.

Statues of the different costumes

Along the way we stopped to look at wildlife and plant life.  The road took us through a cloud forest and then down into the rainforest.  Oh, and just a note – these roads were ROUGH.  Dirt roads clinging to the edges of cliffs.  There had clearly been many landslides (this was the end of the rainy season after all) and it was most definitely not a boring ride.  If this doesn’t appeal you would need to fly into the jungle, since there are not any paved routes to this area.

Jungle Flowers

Great views of monkeys - this one has a baby

At the end of the road we caught a boat to the lodge which was about 15 minutes down the river.  They had told us it would be basic, so we were pleasantly surprised to find that it had flushing toilets, hot water for showers (this was a huge surprise since many hotels in Cusco don’t even have reliable hot water!), and comfy beds with mosquito nets.

Rainbow over the rainforest from the boat

Over the next two days we hiked, fished, went on night walks, tried to sleep through the craziest thunderstorm I’ve ever heard, went on more boat rides, and saw tons of wildlife.

Hiking in the jungle!

Jungle waterfall

There were TONS of butterflies

It was so GREEN

More incredible flowers

Tree huggers

On our way back to Cusco we stopped at an orchid garden and saw some absolutely incredible flowers!

Huge Orchid

More orchids

All in all, we can’t recommend this experience enough.  The guide was awesome, we saw so much for such a short amount of time, and this is a very, very, very special place on earth.  There are lots more pictures, including larger views of the ones Justin used in his wildlife post.  Click here for our favorites from the trip and here for all the rest!