Manú Jungle Trip

May 30 - June 2

I decided that my trip to the jungle would be to Manú which is suppose to be full of amazing wildlife. (It's also a World Heritage Site)   The SAE club arranges the trip through Fredy who grewup in the jungle near Manú and runs his own tour company. (http://greenlandperu.com/)  Fredy proved to be well in-tuned to nature and was able to see birds everywhere as well as identify them all for us.

There were 6 of us total from the club that went with Fredy.  They were a great bunch of people to share the jungle trip with. Iain and Steph are from Scotland and the UK and have been traveling South America for 8 months.  Joost and Reem are from Holland and are just here for a few weeks.  Yoann is from France and has been in Perú for 3 months.

The group

Joost

Yann

Reem

Steph

Iain

Fredy

The 1st day was mostly in the van as we traveled from Cusco through the cloud forest down to the jungle.  We stopped at 2 places that were interesting.  The first was the preinca Tombs of Ninamarca.  There are about 30 tombs there and a handful of village girls trying to sell bracelets.  I had to tell them that my hair bracelet was all that I needed.  I did take some pictures of them while they were unaware. haha!

The other stop was where we saw Cock of the Rock bird.  This is the Peruvian national bird and is very beautiful.  How I wished for my bigger telephoto lens as the pictures I got are not that great.

Just a beautiful Jungle flower

The next day we stopped at an animal refuge where we saw the Spider monkey walking up the road.  He then jumped on just about everyone including a motorcycle with 2 people.  That was the most comical as he just wanted to sit on top of the woman's head.  I couldn't help but laugh and take the pictures. ;)  We saw a Tapir, Pecari (wild pig), and some smaller monkeys along with an injured Macaw that pretty much fell out of the tree and grazed Reem's nose on its way down.

When we got to Atalaya, we transferred all our stuff to a long motorized boat and headed down the swift flowing Alto Madre de Dios River.  The lodge we stayed at the next 2 days was right above the river and 30 minutes downstream from Atalaya.  We did an afternoon hike to a lagoon where we took Tom Sawyer type log raft (partly submerged with our weight) across the lagoon.  We did see a small Caimans before it slipped underwater.  We saw heaps of Hoatzin which looks like a punk bird. haha!

My name for Reem is "The Little General"

Hoatzin

The 3rd day we did 2 jungle walks which were great as you get to really see the plant diversity.  We really enjoyed seeing all the busy ants hauling bits of plant leaves back to their home.  Such industrious creatures.  When we returned to the lodge that evening, we saw how industrious the army ants are.  They setup home in a giant hanging cluster in Iaian and Steph's room.  They ended moving rooms as its a bit disconcerting having a huge ant colony hanging above your head in the bathroom.

The real monkey in the jungle...;)

Termites

Busy ants

Fredy getting Cocoa

The last morning we woke up early to go see the Parrots at the clay lick.  Unfortunately it rained again the previous night and so we only saw some flying but not landing on the clay.  In all the trip was great for the diversity we were able to experience down in the jungle.  I was surprised by how few mosquito's there were, but also very thankful as I had my share of bites from Choquequirao.