The Chuntachacka Reserve, Manu National Park

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Throughout the last 8 and a bit months we have done, day by day, exactly what we wanted to do. If we fancied visiting a temple we could, if we fancied a beer at 12pm we could and if we wanted to do nothing more than spend all day in bed we could (although we didn't). It has been incredible to do that but for us we decided we needed to do something productive and a little more structures for a while and so when the opportunity to work in the Manu Reserve came up we jumped at the chance. We saw the opportunity in in the most bizarre of locations, a local pub in Toogoolawa, Australia whilst visiting Laura's uncle. 5 months later and on a whole different continent we were boarding a tourist bus at 5amabout to head once more into the jungle.

We'd waited especially to set off on the Monday morning with the promise that the bus would be more comfortable than the usual local van that takes you in. We had to sit in the non touristy seats, which were right at the back on top of the wheels, but we had more room than you could throw a stick at and a guide who would stop at certain points to show us birds and point other things out. Definitely better than a local bus. Throughout the 11 hour bus ride we made a handful of stops, as promised, and saw the peruvian national bird, the cock if the rock. A bright red bird with a great big lump on its forehead. Hard to miss but also hard to see.

11 hours later, with a massive change in scenery, going from the arid and dry cusco over't hill to a jungle like climate, and we had arrived in Chuntachacka which was our home for the next 8 days. And we weren't alone in our journey, Rich, who we met for a couple of hours in Patagonia was coming along for the ride as well.

We were met by a host of the other volunteers at the reserve, all coming up to the van to help unload the goods and also to see who their new volunteers were going to be for the next while. Everyone of them had a big smile on their face, maybe because they had food coming in or maybe it was us!! We will never know.

The first task was getting into camp. Its not the easiest of tasks as it sits on the opposite side of a rather quick river and so the only way to get in and out is via a zipline, which is one of the main reasons we came. I'm joking. But it was cool, 2 persons in the basket and then you have to pull yourselves across to the others little with a little help from another volunteer. Once we made it successfully to the otherside it was time to find a bed, get to know the people in the camp and to orientate ourselves.

The camp consisted of two main buildings, the sleeping lodge and the common area/kitchen. The sleeping lodge was big enough to hold around 16 people, all with single beds and a mosquito net. If you were lucky enough you could get a small partition wall to give you a bit of privacy but unfortunately for us we were down the far end with the flies and rain. The common area was simple yet had everything you needed to be entertained for hours. It consisted of a big dining table, chairs, a hammock or two, guitars and a load of board games that were about to get some use in the week to come.

As we got all our things unpacked and we settled in we noticed a monkey in the dorm. It turned out that it was a pet monkey that had been taken off its previous owner because he lived in the middle of cusco. So Paula, the howler monkey, had been sent to the reserve to cause as much trouble as she could. But for Laura and I it was novel to see a monkey so close and so tame. She would crawl into different people's beds on a night, spend a few hours there, or the night if you were lucky and then move onto the next person. At first we weren't sure as to how tame she was and didn't go straight in for a petting but after a while she warmed to us, and from that moment on she would barely leave you alone.

We'd met the monkey, experienced the zipline, settled in and now it was food time. We'd heard a lot about Gloria and the amazing food that she provides. We knew beforehand that we wouldn't be having any meat as its impossible to store it, so we were to be vegetarians for the next 8 days. To us that was like a lifetime sentence in prison but Gloria was about to prove that you don't necessarily need meat. Evening meals mainly revolved around rice, as did all the meals, but tea was by no means the best meal of the day. Lunch was the main meal which was always an awesome soup to start and then rice with different vegetables and sauce. The food on the whole wasn't the best I'd ever had, mainly because of the lack of meat but it was by no means the worst. I'll stick t being a meat eater.

We spent the rest of the night getting to know the other volunteers, taking a briefing about safety around camp but mainly tried to learn some names. But by 9.30ish the numbers started to dwindle, as jungle life starts early and finishes early, and so we too were in bed by 10pm. However as we entered the dorm we had a surprise guest, a Brazilian porcupine which was a good 3 foot long from head to tail and covered in spines, which underneath glowed yellow and tipped in black. He wasn't happy to see us and so puffed himself up and made very low hissing noises. We grabbed a load of photos and left him to his business, hoping that he wouldn't be hopping into bed with us.

The first night was the most sleep deprived of them all, for a couple of reasons. One, the bed was thinner than a roll mat (which the other guys knew about and so doubled up on the mattresses) and two, because of the constant fear of spiders. The second point was dismissed after that night, nothing made its way in and the first point was quickly rectified the next day with a thick cushioned mat placed under my mattress. From that night on, all was good.

It was the morning of our first day of work. A 7am breakfast of cereal, porridge and bread quickly took us to 8.30am when we are suppose to start. It wasn't short after when we met Augusto, the bossman, who was to give us our daily work. Our first days work was going to be reforestation in another reserve 30 minutes away. We grabbed a machete, pulled ourselves over the river and headed to the other reserve. The other reserve turned out to be an iowaska retreat where it appeared that our hard efforts were going into making a hallucinogenics haven. Besides that though the work was short and intense, hacking our way through some dense bush in order to plant more butterfly friendly Laurel plants. It didn't take long for the unworried hands to blister and by the end of our one hour work stint I had 7 blisters which I tried to prevent getting worse by wrapping plastic bags and leaves around them. It turned out an hour was enough otherwise my hands would be permanently scarred. The work was sweaty and so once we had finished it was back past Augusto's house for a cool beer and a chocolate bar. Day ones work was over.

That days afternoon was one of the more productive ones; we took a walk up a river to a waterfall which reminded me of the gauge walking in the lake districts, the only difference brings the water here was warm. It took up the majority of the afternoon and doubled as a shower to for that night. Once we'd got back it wasn't long until it was dinner time, followed by an early night after a hard days work.

Day two's work in the jungle followed on from the previous day. Only this time instead of cutting out more paths we were digging holes for the laurels to go in, and once we had done that the other guys would come and plant them. The blisters were soothed by a lot of strapping and a good pair of gloves, but the work was less labouring on them than the first day. Time for them to toughen up a little. Again we worked for no more than an hour, planting around 70 trees before heading back along the road to Augusto's house and then onto the camp. The afternoon of day two was a slower one, I had found a blade and so sculpted a handle and a sheath for it, which if I may say so, I am very proud of. That took up the whole afternoon and in the mean while Laura was cracking on with her book. It was more games that evening before and after tea and again another 9.30 bed.

Day 3 was a change, instead of more manual labour we headed out on a nature hunt, trying to see what wildlife was knocking around in the fairly new part of the jungle. We took the monkey trail, hoping to see.....monkeys but it wasn't to be our day. Maybe a group of 5 is too big and we were too loud going through or there may not actually be that much in the area, either one is a plausible possibility. We did hear one and Augusto tried his hardest to lure it in with some imitation calls, again unsuccessfully. Now we may not have seen a monkey but we did see one hell of a butterfly, it was a nocturnal one and so when we saw it it was asleep. It was laying flat against a tree, wings fully opened which gave it the perfect camouflage and making it incredibly hard for us to spot, even when it was pointed out. As we headed back to camp we took a detour via another waterfall, named creatively the small waterfall. The name may not be all that stunning but the falls themselves were pretty epic. As the name suggests they weren't all that big but the pools they created at the bottom were perfect for having a wash and a swim in. It gave Rich and I a good excuse to pull some moves whilst jumping off the lip of the fall (only a meter high, nothing fancy). This was where a disaster happened, Rich left his camera and didn't find out until 3 days later. More info to come.

Whilst bored that afternoon we decided we needed a project and so operation Dam was born. 5 of us set to to make a massive dam down in the river, reliving our childhood dreams only with more strength, to build a small swimming hole/snake trap in the frog season. When we'd started it was already 5pm and so the in the following hour we put in all our effort to throw up a pretty decent wall. We'd secured the lower side of the dam but the sides were still weak, giving us a task for the next few days.

Once we'd had dinner that night we set off back towards the river to have a send off fire for one of the other volunteers. We'd made the fire and collected the wood before dam building started that day s we were ready to go. We had a few bottles of rum and soon the fire was in full swing. Even though it had rained that day we still managed to get a massive blaze going, to the extent that you couldn't stand within 3m of it. All in all a good days work.

The following few days were when things took a small turn for the worst. The weather which had been good apparently for months turned on us, and so day 4 in the jungle was a no work day, as was day 5, and as was day 6 because it was a Sunday! In order to fill the time whilst it was raining we played chess and a lot of it. In the first day of rain we organised a little tournament, in which Laura and I were knocked out in the first round. In between playing chess we were building dams, making up indoor workouts that included the use of some whopping stones and bamboo pull up bars. It was safe to say that boredom started to affect our day to day mental health.

With no work and only dam building/chess to occupy us over the next few days, when Sunday came around it gave us the opportunity to venture out into on of the other jungle towns. This meant to many that they could use the Internet, eat meat, have a beer and also see some civilisation. However before we headed there we had a task to do, try and find Rich's camera. Although we thought he may have left it at the waterfall another option transpired; the monkey has a tendency to steal things, take them out of the camp and then leave them. Either options though meant that the camera was probably somewhere outside and with the recent storms, some of the worst in the last 6 months, finding it was a slim chance. Still we gave the river a thorough walk down, all the rooms a proper scan and all the bags were checked, but the camera didn't turn up. He still had a couple of days left to find it though.

After the scan of the river though we were on our way to the next town, Pilcapata. The towns are no where near as big as the small ones at home, such as Holmfirth or Honley, they are more like the size if Holme with just a few more shops and a central market. Neither Laura or I had a need for the Internet so we set of in search of chocolate and ingredients for tea that night (every Sunday Gloria has a day off and we all have to cook for ourselves). The town was deserted, the market was baron and the only thin we managed to buy were some chocolate bars. This wasn't really our main reason for coming to the town though, our main reason was to eat some meat. Once all the guys had finished on the Internet we wandered out to a local spot that was a hub of local activity. When we arrived we were the only ones there but by the time we left it was full. We got our fill of Jungle Rat and Pork, swilled down with some beer and all for the sterling price of £3 each. The meat, albeit Jungle Rat, hit the spot and the beer made it all the better. A top Sunday lunch.

On the way back we stopped off at another town to get the stuff for tea and to also book a bus ride back out of there on the Tuesday. We quickly got all the chores sorted and then it was back in a taxi and back to the reserve, where we fancied a pre dinner making swim.

We had a quick swim, built up the dam a little more and then went back to the common area. What we found though was Gloria in the kitchen on her day off, she was cooking for a group of tourist, which meant that we couldn't be in there until after 7 to start cooking. We played some chess and a few card games before we finally got in there. When we did we found it to be infested with red ants, wellies were a necessity, but all we had on were shoes. Tea was therefore prolonged by constant swearing and jumping around everytime we were bitten but an hour and a half later we had made on hell of a Spag Bol and pancakes to finish/eat if people didn't want Bolognese. It was a late one when we finally got to bed, maybe touching 11pm! Shocking.

We were into our penultimate day. We had been joined that night by Paula, the monkey in bed, waking us up as she tried and successfully wedged her way in between Laura and I. I woke up to the sight of her playing with Laura's hair and at one point trying to eat it. Its not every day when you say can you slept with a monkey! The work that morning was easy, with no reforestation left to do it was a bit of reserve maintenance. I grabbed a hammer and set too fixing some steps and then once id finished that i then took a machete into the forest to get some bamboo for path lining. The bamboo rips your hands to shreds which I didn't think initially it would, on all of the branches are inch long thorns that will do some damage if they get you. I got away almost unscathed, a few cuts here and there but nothing major. We then had to get the wood down to the bottom of the hill and the easiest way to do that is to slide/throw it. We should have known at the time it wasn't a good idea because right before the bottom is the main water piping leading to the only water store of the camp. And guess what happened?! I smashed it to pieces. This gave us another job for the morning.

By the time I'd finished it and got back into the camp, Rich had left and cameraless too. I quickly nipped onto the bus stop to say bye before heading back to camp for a refreshing little swim. After the rainfall over the last few days none of us were sure if we would get back easily to Cusco. All the buses had apparently been cancelled until the Wednesday because of a fallen bridge higher up the road. However Rich had managed to get out that day and so we were going to the next day. Hopefully.

It was our last afternoon and a plague of tiredness came over the camp. We had planned to do a big walk to the top of a nearby hill that overlooked the owns and jungle, but in the end we stayed at the camp. Laura cracked on with her book, I had a nap and was awoken by Paula trying to nibble on my arm. She continued to play fight with me for a good 10 minutes, just as a dog would do, grabbing and biting my hand. All the better I had a rabies jab! In the end Laura came and made me get up, only to go into the common room and swing in a hammock until tea. A very lazy day indeed.

The final day in the camp and all we had to do was pack our bags and wait for the bus to come at 10am. With the usual get up time of 7am this gave us plenty of time to sort out those few things. We weren't going to get out of there without a last little bit of work; getting the bananas out of the tree. It sounds like a very straight forward job, but when you can't climb them because of the leaves the only way they saw to get them down was to lop down the whole tree. So we got a bit of rope to guide the trees fall once it was chopped, and marginally missed the roof of the dorm. We got two massive bunches of bananas and that was our final bit of work at the reserve. We said goodbye to all the guys and then headed up to the road to wait for the van.

We knew it wasn't going to be on time as we had been told they very often turn up 1,2,5 hours late. Ours was slap bang in the middle of that, rocking up at 11.30am. 8 hours later and a much more comfortable journey later we arrived back into Cusco. It was straight out for tea at the little Australian place we had been the first night in Cusco and then back to the first hostel for a cheap and cold nights sleep.

The next day we were up early, breakfasted at Jacks and at the bus station by 10am hoping to get out of there and in our way to Huaraz, our next stop. If only it was that smooth. The next bus was 4 hours away, so we saw nothing better to do than get in touch with home and have a good old Skype sash. 4 hours easily filled.

By 2pm we were sat on the most luxurious bus we had been on to date, a full cama bus with onboard wifi, individual screens and some great food. Remember the name, Cruz del Sur.

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