Flying into Puerto Maldonado you can see the Madre de Dios river far below: a great, wide, swirling brown mass of water pouring away towards the mighty Amazon. We reached our lodge after an exhilarating boat ride followed by a 20 minute hike through dense jungle. Although midday, hot and sunny, it was half-twilight under the tree canopy and wet and muddy underfoot - conditions that barely changed for the next 4 days. When it rained (which was often) it came down in buckets. We became accustomed to being wet - or at best damp - the whole time, but the lodge was comfortable, with rooms open on one side to the jungle, candles & kerosene lanterns for light, effective mosquito nets and many bats roosting up in the rafters. There were lots of birds: macaws,
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