Amazon Rainforest and Explorer's Inn Jungle Lodge and Research Center

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We spent 4 days and nights at a jungle lodge 2 hours up the Madre De Dios River from Puerto Maldonado. We spent 3 nights at the lodge and 1 night 3 hours further up river at a camp site.

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Photos

The Tambopata River
The Explorers Inn is in the Tambopata Rainforest Reserve. Puerto Maldonado is where the Tambopata and Madre de Dios rivers converge.

Cutter Ants
These little guys are amazing. They carry bits of leaf that are 10 times their size and their weight up to 400 meters in order to build their homes. They create a long pathway of moving bits of green. It almost looks like the jungle floor is moving when you see thousands of them lined up.

Snack Time
We took a 10 kilometer hike from the lodge to a lake in search for the giant otter. No otter, but tasty snack time.

Penis Palm
The actual root of tree. Tree roots tend to be above ground in the Amazon because the ground is flooded for half the year. The white web to the left of the phallace is actually a tarantula nest.

Male Tarantula
It resides on the outskirts of the lodge

Female Tarantula
The females are apparently much larger, and hairier, than the males. This one also lived near the lodge, about 30 feet from where the male lives.

Brown Tamarind Monkey
There was a bunch of them playing and trying to steal bananas near the lodge.

Ata
One of the lodge's two semi-domesticated Macaws.

Macaws
Near our Campsite.

Macaw
Howling at the moon

Macaws and Parrots at the Clay Lick
When we camped, we were near a clay lick where Macaws and Parrots congregate to eat chunks of clay for their minerals. We got up at 4:30 in the morning to beat the birds to the clay lick. Hundreds of birds wait in the trees above the clay wall. Slowly, they make their way lower and lower on the tree branches towards the clay. If anything spooks them, the birds erupt in a thunder of squawking and retreat to the trees above. Many times the birds creeped lower and lower on the branches only to fly off in an apparent panic, which is what this picture captures. I was beginning to wonder if they would ever fullfil their mission of entertaining two tourists and eat some damn clay! Finally, a few parrots land on the clay, then a few more, then some macaws, and more macaws! Soon enough, hundreds of birds covered the clay face in a sea of colors - and an awesome wave of relief washed over me. I could now go home and tell EVERYBODY that I saw birds eat clay.

Comments

[Blanca Rooks]

Amazing!
I loved to be in contact with nature. The long hikes early in the morning and the ones after dark. The crew gives you a 5 star treatment and makes you feel you are part of a big family.