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Published: August 23rd 2010
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Parque Nacional Manu Entrance
Manoli and I posing with sign at entrance to Manu National Park AMAZON - DAY 1
Thursday, August 19th
After abour 4 hours of sleep, I woke uo at 4am to do our final packing for our trip to the Manu Reserve in the Amazon jungle. We c hecked our extra luggage with the hostal folks, having to wake up the night clerk, the headed down the steps to meet our guide. The evening before, a guide/representative from Vilca Expeditions (I guess subcontracted by All Trek Cusco), named Jamie, told us he probably wouldn't be our guide, but he wasn't sure who it would be. We had decided to bring Manoli's smaller backpack as a daypack and use my smaller luggage for all the stuff we might need for the 4 day/3 night trip. We reached the bottom of the stairs below the hostal to wait for our pickup, and lo and behold, it turned out that Jamie was to be our guide after all. Again, we just happened to be getting a private tour of Manoli, myself, Jamie the guide, and a cook. Two other couples were going to Manu also, but they were doing a 7-day expedition, so we would only be with them until we reached our main site. In
Breakfast stop at Huacarin
Manoli outside the little restaurant we stopped at for breakfast in Huacarin just a few minutes, Jamie showed up in a taxi and took us to Vilca's house/office to await the arrival of the other tourists. We all loaded up in a minivan and headed out of Cusco around 5:30am. We made one brief stop a ways out of town to pick up some fresh bread. Apparently, this town was known for their bread which they distribute in Cusco and the surrounding area, including folks that stop on the highway. Our cooks negociated for what bread they wanted while we all sat in the van by the side of the road. Our first actual stop was in the town of Huacarin to have some breakfast. We just had coffee with milk and some toast with jam. I should mentioin that the road to get there was horrendous, not paved, sometimes wide and sometimes very narrow, and often with considerable dropoffs along the side. At one point, we were waved back by a construction worker walking down the raod and we had to back up and eventually pull up very close to the dropoff so soem heavy equipment could pass more safely to our right near the mountainside. After breakfast, we continued on
Our Ride to the Amazon
Our minivan for the trip to the Amazon the same road for about an hour until we reached the pre-Incan ruins of Ninamarca (or fire place in quechua), where we got our and waleked around while the guide explained what was know of the ruins. Another 30 minutes and we where back on the same old scarey road.
Our next stop was Puacartambo where we visited the market (and restroooms), then walked thru the town with the guide explaining various aspectis of the town's history and culture as a Andes-Amazon trading center. We crossed the only bridge over the river dividing the high Andes from the Cloud Forest and eventually reboarded the bus and ate a light bag lunch. Unbelievable as it seemed, the road actually got worse, and it seemd like it would never end. We stopped several times when one of the guides spotted something. At least twice, we were fortunate enough to spot the national bird of Peru, the Cock of the Rock. Finally, around 5pm we were out of the mountains and on a level, although still rough road. We started to pass small villages until around 6pm we reached our first night's layover at the Little Cock of the Rock Hostal
Huacarin Main Street
The main street of Huacarin in Pilcopata. The guides told us dinner would be served at 7:30pm, so we put our bags in our room, then I went looking for a cold soda. The "hostal" was actually quite nice for being in the middle of nowhere. The room was neat and clean with electricity, there were several bathrooms, some private with hot showers, and they had WiFi, althought it was a bit slow and didn't reach our room. For the life of me, I can't remember what we had for dinner, but it was very good. Afterwards, I stayed up to post another day of the Inca Trail on Travelblog, then hit the hay.
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Susana
non-member comment
quiero alojar en el hostal
me pueden dar teléfono o mail para hacer una reserva para 3 personas el día 12 de abril?