Message Stick

We took two more days in Cusco to recover from all the early mornings before flying out to the jungle town of Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon Basin. After a brief visit to a local market to stock up on some essentials we travelled down the Madre de Dios river to the Tambo Lodge leaving the town far behind us. The next 4 days were spent exploring the jungle by foot and boat, both day and night in search of animals, birds and insects. During the nights we saw capybaras, caiman, plenty of spiders, frogs, caterpillars and even a tarantula. In the days we saw a lots of different monkeys, some turtles, snakes, macaws, cormorants, piranha, birds of prey and enough parrots at a clay lick to last a life time. As usual the mosquitoes were out in force so we we drenched ourselves in DEET to keep them at bay.

Our third day was spent visiting a eco-project with an amazing canopy walk 45m up to the top of the jungle. Unlike similar canopy walks we’ve been on in Malaysia this one felt like it was held together by the sheer will of the brave souls using it and due to a sharp incline it gave us a massive dose of vertigo on the way down. The views at the top of the tree however were awesome and whilst we ate our picnics up there a group of vultures came to perch on the adjacent branches.

Back on the ground we looked in on the project’s animal rehabilitation centre where we saw a jaguar, tapirs, toucans and lots of other weird and wonderful jungle creatures that are usually too timid to be easily seen in the wild. After a long and sweaty day we took a dip in the murky brown river. Despite assurances from our guide that the water was piranha free after 15 minutes everyone seemed pretty relieved to get back in the boat.

When we weren’t out in the jungle or stuffing ourselves stupid on the delicious food they served we relaxed in our cabin until we fell asleep to the sounds of the jungle.