Blogs from Manu National Park, Cusco, Peru, South America - page 4

Hey everyone, We just got back from Manu, which was fantastic. We will look more in depth later on in the blog. Here’s a recap of the past week: TUESDAY: We continued our last week of Spanish classes, while we were both sick. Elena had to get some shots, and Tom had to take lots of medication, but everything is fine now. WEDNESDAY: classes again THURSDAY: more classes, Elena went to play soccer, scored three goals and totally kicked ass again (I’m not really that conceited). FRIDAY: Last day of Spanish classes, Elena had to give a speech in front of everyone, we all cried. That night our guide came and briefed us on our trip to Manu. SATURDAY: We woke up at 6 and our guide picked us up at 6:30. We picked up the ... read more

I´ll try and pick up from roughly where Jac left off. We arrived in the town of Atalaya as the sun had disappeared down the Madre de Dios River. Weary arms and even wearier bikes were rested as we tucked into two dinners each at a shack to at the end of town where we had hoped to find a sauna and cocktail bar. Despite being everyone´s starting point into the jungle it transpired that a maximum of 15 minutes was spent there before being shipped off to the private lodges in the jungle downstream. There was however a healthy selection of boats that held the only promise for our continued journey. After such big day it would have seemed odd to be dropped into the lap of luxury so we were happy with our cold ... read more

Had a brilliant 7 days in the jungle - far too much to write about now. Highlights: white water rafting, mountain biking in the cloud forest, swimming in the river at sunset, zipping across the canopy from platform to platform high above the forest floor, abseiling, seeing a sloth, 7 giant otters, caimans, 5 species of monkeys, turtles, capybara, possum, macaws, herons, kingfisher, a fresh puma footprint, rescuing a red howler monkey from the Manu river, playing pool with a talking parrot, drinking pisco sour in our lodge while playing jungle games, cards and a dice game taught to us by three lovely French guys, taking it in turns to share my room with 3 really cool girls from New Zealand and England, narrowly avoiding a 2.5m branch an angry monkey hurled at our heads and ... read more

We survived! I´d better start from the beginning. Before heading to the jungle we spent a day seeing more of Cuzco and taking in more of the Inca archetecture that stands in stark contrast to the Spanish stonework. Whilst the latter is quite quaint and adds to teh character of the place, it is laughably poor by comparison. One local told me that the good walls were made by the Incas whereas the bad ones were made by the Incapables. It sums it up nicely and makes you wonder which civilisation was really the more advanced. Its turns out that the wily Spaniards only succeeded in overthrowing the Incas due to the fact the latter were in the throes of a civil war at the time. Apparently, on his deathbed, the previous Inca had split his ... read more

We left Cusco after an amazing stay and boarded a 12 seater Cessna for Manu Wildlife Center, which is located 45 minutes east of Cusco by air in the Peruvian Amazon. The landing strip was a patch of grass...that´s when we knew we weren´t in Kansas anymore. The ¨airport¨ was an open air thatched building near the runway and the baggage claim was a wheel barrel. We were welcomed by a pale winged trumpeter, one of the many hundreds of birds we would see in the days ahead. Our bungalow was located 2 hours away from the airport by boat. It was a beautiful place, however no electricity, which meant we were eating, brushing our teeth and showering by candlelight...very romantic! The walls of the bungalow were screened so at night as we lay in bed ... read more