We headed out on a 4 day/3 night tour. Our first stop was in Paucartambo again actually as it was on the way to the national park. We walked around the town a bit and our guide actually was the one who informed us about all the dances we saw at the festival some days earlier.
Bronze statues of all the different costumes we had seen at the Virgen Del Carmen festival.
We continued onto the border of the park where we checked out the view and were informed about the park. Manu National Park is one of the most biodiverse parks it in the world. Currently recorded there are: 1025 types of birds, 1307 types of butterflies, 8 different types of cat, 15 types of primates (monkeys,etc), 155 kinds of reptile, 300 kinds of ants, and tons of other stuff including thousands and thousands species of plant. Just unbelievable! We were hoping to see a few of these species as you can imagine.
The park itself is divided into three zones: cultural, reserved, and the restricted zone.
The cultural zone is where many people still live continuing to do some farming with certain restrictions.
The reserved zone which is really only accessible by boat is where a few retreats are located and where a lot of research is done.
The restricted zone is inaccessible by the general public. Only a few researchers and some people with high clearance are allowed. It is in this zone where many of the uncontacted tribes live. Before coming on this trip, I watched a documentary on Netflix called "First Contact: Lost Tribes of the Amazon" about these people. If you are interested, you should check it out. It is like looking at what the human race was like thousands of years ago. It's crazy to think that people still live like that.
The road was rough, windy, and very narrow with huge drop offs at some points as we went through what is called the "cloud forest."
We stopped every once in a while to go for a short hike to either see waterfalls or check out the flora and fauna.
We also came across this large green snake sunning itself on the road.
One of our stops later in the afternoon was to try and see The Cock of the Rock. It is the national bird of Peru and is one of the birds known as "Birds of paradise." The male is bright orange and performs a dance to try and entice a female to mate with him. After some relaxation just listening to the sounds of the jungle, our guide pointed one out for us. We ended up seeing a couple of them.
This my poor attempt at taking a picture of the cock of the rock.
And this is what it actually looked like.
After this we continued on in the van to the place we were staying. We had ourselves a tasty supper cooked for us and then headed out for a short night walk. We were able to spot a few different insects and a cool little tree frog. I was glad we had a roof over our heads that night as the rain really came down hard.
After some breakfast in the morning, we headed out on a short walk. We could hear what sounded like a young child yelling at his father saying, " Papa, donde estas?" In Spanish meaning, " Dad, where are you?" But this didn't turn out to be a child, but a wild parrot in the top of a tree. I don't know how many times the young child had yelled this at his dad, but enough times for the parrot to learn the words! Pretty crazy.
After a short van ride, we went for a hike around a small lake. We were almost immediately greeted by some spider monkeys and brown capuchin monkeys which was cool.
A 20 min walk down brought us down to the shallow lake that was teaming with bird life.
These crazy looking birds called Hoatzin were everywhere. They are very old in the evolution of birds and it shows.
We took a raft and floated around the lake a bit looking at all the bird life.
We stopped at the far end and went for a hike. This is when my obsession for Amazon bugs returned and I started taking pictures. We were able to spot all kinds of birds and bugs. Bugs just happen to be easier to take pictures of without all the fancy camera stuff.
After having some lunch, we jumped into the van again and headed to the end of the road. Here we jumped on a boat and headed deeper into the jungle.
Once we were getting close to where the jungle lodge was, we jumped in for a dip. Carolyn and our guide floated downriver the rest of the way.
The lodge was very basic without any power or anything, but it had a big net and provided a roof over our heads which was all we needed. Before dark we headed on another jungle walk. Again we saw many birds and bugs. As it became dark, we jumped on a raft to find some small caimans which we were successful at.
That night our guide told us some stories that she had been told or witnessed herself of the noncontacted tribes. When she was young she was visiting her grandfather, there was a group of 5 or so "naked people" bathing themselves in blood of a fresh kill on the banks of the river as they passed. Another story she told was around 4 years ago when one of her friends was working at a jungle lodge much deeper in the reserve zone. The clients had gone out for a night walk to see caiman and a whole bunch of tribal women broke into the kitchen and took all the food. She heard them but she was scared for her life so she hid and let them leave. Once everyone else came back they left as it was not safe. These tribal people have never returned to that area though as after this they put up cameras. Crazy stuff.
The next morning we got up and went for a hike through the bush for a couple hours.
Then after lunch we headed back up river to our camp spot for the night.
We did some line fishing while there. As you can see, I caught a huge one....
Our camp spot on the beach.
We got up early the next morning to head to a parrot clay lick. It's basically a place where the parrots come most mornings to eat some clay as it acts to buffer a lot of the poisonous fruits they eat in the jungle. Unfortunately for us, they didn't show up that morning as there was some rain showers.
After this we headed back up river. Our boat started to sputter a bit and then quit. Luckily for us it was right beside a hot spring. We soaked in the hot springs for over an hour while they were fixing the boat. I have definitely been stranded at worse places...
We made it back to the van and started the long drive back to Cusco. Along the way we stopped for some monkeys and unique birds as well.
We made it back to Cusco to find the room we had booked was given away. The owners were gone so the guy there put us in a dorm. When the owners got back, they were really rude and I had some choice words with them. When all was said and done, we stayed in a different hostel... Just keeping it interesting for Carolyn 😉
Here is a collection of the best butterfly picks I got.
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