Manu Jungle Tour (June 26 to 29, 2006)

We met up with our guide (Shirley) and group at 7:30 at the Manu Adventures office, and started for the jungle in a mini-van. Two flat tires, one broken shock, and two broken rows of seats later we finally made it to our first lodge, only four hours behind schedule! What was supposed to take eight hours of driving took twelve, and by the time we arrived at the lodge we were hungry, dusty and well shaken from the bumpy road (often with sheer cliffs off the edge and no railings) and our seats that were hanging on by only one bolt in the floor. On the way we had stopped at some pre-Incan ruins of funeral towers, which conveniently were close to our shock-busting incident. While our driver fixed the shock we went to visit the ruins. Our next stop was lunch in a small town called Paucartambo. The lunch wasn’t very good and the toilet flushed directly into the river, but there were some good statues in the main plaza that looked just like the characters we have seen in the parades in Cuzco.

At the highest point of the road (3530m), we reached the southern entrance to Manu National Park, which stretches for 1.5 million hectares to the north and east. The section of the park that we were visiting is called the “Cultural Zone”, where local communities are allowed to farm and live much as they had before the park was created. The “Reserved Zone” allows tourists to visit and scientists to perform studies, but nobody is allowed to live there. The third zone is the “Restricted Zone”, which nobody is allowed to enter; this zone has tribes living in it that do not want contact with the outside world. We opted for the cultural zone because it was cheaper to visit; the reserved zone has more animals but requires a flight to get to.

The cooks were waiting for us to arrive before they started making dinner, so we didn’t end up eating until around 8:30. The lodge was quite nice and had comfortable couches and chairs set up on the decks so we lounged before dinner. There were surprisingly few bugs, which would continue to amaze us for the remainder of our stay in the jungle. We had been warned about all the mosquitoes and black flies, but they were not nearly as bad as in an Ottawa backyard in the spring! They must spray the cabins or something because there weren’t even any ants in our room, despite the food we had hanging from the doorknob.

:: June 27 ::

The next morning we woke up at 5:30am to go and see the “cock of the rock”, which is Peru’s national bird. It is a red bird with a funny bump on his head, yellow eyes, and black wings. At a spot near the lodge there is a blind set up for tourists to watch the morning ritual of the males showing off and trying to prove they are worthy of the females’ attention. Unfortunately the morning we were there no females showed up, so the males didn’t put on much of a show. We saw about six of them doing some squawking and wing-flapping. The sun was barely coming up and the birds were a bit too far away for me to get a good picture, even though I was using my tripod. Back at the lodge, we had breakfast and then got ready for our mountain biking adventure. In our group Lincoln and I were the only ones going (Phil wimped out when he heard it was muddy) and we had an really enjoyable ride through the jungle, downhill most of the way. The weather was sunny and hot, which was a wonderful change from Cuzco. The others in the group were going to walk down the road for around 1 ½ hours, and then drive to the bottom of the valley. They rode the bikes along the flat part (no mud) and met up with Lincoln and I, as well as some others who had left earlier than us, in a town called Patria, from which we all rode together to the lunch spot and also the place where we started rafting from.

Rafting was loads of fun! The river rapids were only class 2 & 3, but we still got an adrenaline rush on some of them. It was wonderful to just be floating along the river, and some people got out to swim down with the current for part of the way. We also stopped at a big rock that was about 20 feet high, and we took turns jumping off of it into the river. Scary, but fun! I hurt my back a little when I landed though, and it was sore for the rest of the day. It’s too bad we couldn’t bring a camera with us on the raft, because we would have had some good pictures. Soaked and happy, we arrived at Atalaya around 3:00. Some of us chose to continue rafting to get to Erika Lodge (only accessible by boat) and some of the others took a motorized longboat to get there. Lincoln and I chose to keep rafting, but our arms were sore by the time we arrived.

We had to wait until 7:30 for dinner, which is quite late considering we were going to bed at 9:00 because that’s when they turn off the electricity and we have to get up at 5:30 every morning. It was nice to have some time to lounge around, read and play cards. Today was my birthday, and Jessica surprised me by pulling out some gifts she had brought from Kym and Kendra back home (thanks so much!!!). After dinner, I had another surprise when our guide Shirley carried out a cake that the cook, Ernesto, had made for me. What a treat! There was also wine given out to everyone for us to celebrate. After dinner we put on our rubber boots and went for a night walk through the jungle in search of animals and little critters. The group that had gone out before us had seen some colourful frogs and big spiders, but we weren’t as lucky and only saw one tiny little white frog and a few small spiders. At one point we heard something in the bushes but we never saw what it was.

:: June 28 ::

We woke up early again today (5:20am) in the hopes that we were going to go to the parrot and macaw clay lick. Despite the fact that it had fallen down in March, the guides thought that we might still see some, and that at some point over the next month the parrots would start visiting it again. However, when we awoke it had recently been raining and Shirley said that the birds don’t come in the rain or when it was cloudy, so we went back to bed until breakfast at 7:00. I can’t get back to sleep after I’m awake though, so it was still an early morning.

After breakfast was the highlight that we had all been waiting for – the canopy zip lines. We walked for around half an hour until we arrived at the first tower. We put on harnesses and helmets and climbed up for a demonstration on how to slow down and stop on the lines. There were five towers and four zip lines between them, each one getting progressively faster. It was tons of fun zooming over the trees and plants below, and we all enjoyed it immensely. At the last tower, we had to rapel down which was also great.

Back at the lodge we had lunch and had some more time off before we left at 3:00 to take the boat across the river and go for another walk through the jungle to get to a small lake that had lots of birds. There were reportedly caimans around the edges of the lake sometimes, but again we were unlucky and didn’t see any. The other group had seen monkeys around here earlier in the day, but alas, no monkeys for us. As far as wildlife goes, it was a disappointing trip overall, but it was really nice just to be in the jungle for the noises, smells, and the heat and humidity.

:: June 29 ::

Since we had missed the clay lick yesterday, we tried again this morning. It was raining again when we woke up at 5:15 so they told us to go back to bed again. Then at 5:45 they changed their minds and came around waking us up, so we all piled into to the boat. The parrots and macaws never actually licked any clay, but we did see quite a few of them flying into and around the trees above the cliff. We couldn’t get very close though, so it was a rather disappointing venture.

Back at the lodge, we had breakfast and left immediately to head back to Cuzco. It started raining again, and Lincoln and I were stuck in the front seat of the boat with Vincente and we got pretty wet. Part way into the ride Shirley gave us a tarp to cover ourselves with, which helped a lot. By the time we arrived at Atalaya, where we to get back on the bus, we were happy to be going to the desert shortly! We switched to a much larger and comfortable bus at the same place we had eaten lunch before the rafting on the second day. There were only 11 of us on the big bus, so we each had two seats to ourselves, which was nice. No flat tires or mechanical incidents happened on the way back to Cuzco, and we even arrived earlier than expected (7:00pm instead of 8:00). The bus did drop us off just outside the city centre though, so we had to take a taxi to the hostel. We were sure happy to see Maria again, and have hot showers again!

Since tonight was our last dinner with Phil & Kat, we splurged on a nice dinner at a restaurant in San Blas Plaza called Greens (apparently that was the last night it was at that location – it is moving to the Plaza de Armas). Our food was delicious and well worth the extra money, although still very cheap by North American standards.