Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Bi1FjpXMXGXxbZoN6
India always goes by quickly for me, and this ~5 week stretch was no exception. Headed back home for a few days before going back to South America, where I caught a ~200 USD one way flight with Spirit (including baggage fees!) from JFK to Lima. Got to go to the city a couple of times to see my sister while in NY, but my stay was too short to reach out to any friends. We went to this ridiculously hyped Italian restaurant called Carbone, which my sister got lunch reservations for as she knew over a month in advance when I’d be back from India. It’s a Michelin star place that literally everyone raves about and goes to “be seen”, and honestly, while the food was good, it was absolutely overhyped and overpriced. The spicy rigatoni was genuinely a delicious dish, and their free bread and cheese and pruscuitto in the beginning was pretty good too. And while the meatballs and ceaser salad (and carrot cake!) were all great, it was more “forgettable” great than “WOW” great. Not to mention, as is per par in the US, the grossly overpriced bottles of wine. Still a very good meal but had I not known about the hype of the place beforehand, it’s the sort of good meal I would forget about a few months down the line and only remember as “the place where I had a really good rigatoni”. In terms of fine dining, nothing has yet to come close to the dinner we had in Spiaggia in Chicago, which has since been closed. The second time I went in was also for a quick lunch, where we went to this Indian chicken fast food spot called Rowdy Rooster which had what is probably the spiciest food I have ever had in the US. Genuienly incredible fried chicken sandwich.
Anyways, I flew into Lima to restart my South American leg. I had one night where I spent at a hostel by the airport before flying out the next morning to the Amazon Jungle town of Puerto Maldonado. In a weird way, Puerto Maldonado reminded me a lot of Livingstone, Zambia – the town just outside Victoria Falls. Very similar geographic layout and small, tin-roofed buildings, similar tropical climate, and just sort of similar vibe. Spent a day here before heading into la jungla for a few days.
I splurged out some cash and stayed at this really cool lodge called the Tambopata Research Center. It’s the only lodge that is located *in* the Tambopata National Reserve, which is this slice of the Amazon Rainforest in southeastern Peru. While I would say that this was most definitely overpriced, I am still very glad I went. I wouldn’t say that any particular component of this experience was the “best” I have seen in a jungle, but it was overall a fantastic time. In terms of monkeys, Guatemala blew this out of the water…there were howler and spider monkeys galore on the El Mirador trek compared to the sporadic monkey sightings we saw here. And the constant roaring of the howler monkeys in the night in Guatemala will be impossible to top…the howlers out here were quite timid in comparision. Likewise, there were also a ton more monkeys in Kalinzu, the forest where I tracked Chimpanzees in Uganda. And in terms of macaws…to be honest, they were breathtaking here, and the main reason I wanted to visit, as it is Tambopata is arguably the best place in the world to see wild macaws. I would argue that Copan in Honduras, while not better overall, was definitely better for up close views of these magnificent birds. Here, my 230mm zoom lens was barely enough to snap the macaws and I had to rely a lot on my guide’s binoculars and telescope…needed like a legit professional camera lens to fully capture them. Copan is interesting, because while you got to see scarlet macaws mere feet away, and these were wild and not in a sanctuary, they were only released into the wild in the past decade so they haven’t fully left the initial area, leading to almost an artificial close quarters to spot wildlife. Still amazing out there, but I would argue that Tambopata was a bit more “pure”, if that makes sense. Overall, I think El Mirador is still the holy grail of jungle experiences for me, but this was, again, still a worthwile venture.
As mentioned above, the absolute highlight here were the macaws. I swear I saw 1000s of macaws in the few days I was here, it was outrageous how many they were. They’re quite obnoxiously loud (not as cool as a hower monkey roar obviously, but it was a nice replacement sound to have constantly echoing across the jungle), and are relatively easy to spot from 100+ meters away. Taking a good photo, on the other hand…probably the toughest photos I have ever taken, and really the first time where my 230mm zoom lens felt woefully weak. The star was obviously the gorgeous scarlet macaw, with its’ bright red countenance and beautiful yellow and blue pattern on its wings. There was also the red and green macaw, which looks identical to the scarlet macaw except it has a bright green plumage in place of the yellow of the scarlet macaw, and of course, the blue and yellow macaw which is shockingly difficult to spot while perched in a tree a football field away, but is just as beautiful while flying around. I do have to say, the whole element of birding and looking for macaws had an almost hunt-like quality to it which made it even more enjoyable. Tambopata definitely hit a happy medium of having tons and tons of macaws, but you still had to work to see them.
Beyond the macaws, the best part of my time here was just taking guided walks through the untouched jungle. It wasn’t quite like the gorilla trek in Bwindi where the guides were machete-ing the path in front of you, as this is a bit more tourist friendly and had actual walking paths, but it was still neat. Just amazing to walk in lush greenery surrounded by bird and monkey noises, with the odd macaw screech piercing through the serene environment. One interesting thing I got to see while walking was the shallowness of the roots. Unlike Guatemala, where the roots stretch horizontally beacuse of all the hidden Mayan buildings under the ground leaving no room for roots to push down, here the reason is because of the lack of nutrients in the soil. Beyond a few feet, it’s all clay, so the roots all grow horizontally. The clay is actually a big reason why Tambopata is a macaw hotspot…the powerful rivers that flow here – Tambopata and Madre de Dio, both Amazon river tributaries – regularly carve out new paths as they barrel forwards. These new paths are created as the river erodes the embankment on either side. Because the soil is shallow and it is primarily clay below it, these new embankment walls are 95% clay, and this attracts hordes of macaws (and other birds!) every morning as they come over to the clay licks to get nutrients from there.
Speaking of walks, the night walks here were absolutely insane. It’s so cool to walk in the pitch black jungle, with ominous sounds all around you. If we had our flashlights off, the visibiity was quite literally zero at some points where the tree cover was thickest and blocking the moon light. And the heavy cloud cover made it even darker – on the flipside, this heavy cloud cover meant that in the stretches of clear sky, like at the lodge itself, there was no awesome night sky display. On the night walks, the highlight was probably the two caiman (alligator cousin) that we saw. One was lurking in the water, and I managed to get a great photo of him glaring at us with his face sticking out…honestly no idea how our guide even saw him. The other scurried across the path like 10 feet ahead of us before jumping into the water. In general, night photos were also incredibly difficult – had to have someone shine a light on what you wanted to shoot but even then it was super tough. There were spiders galore at night time – everywhere you looked with your flashlight, you would see what appeared to be glitter all around. Turns out that each “glitter” was actually the eyes of a spider. Obviously the vast majority of these spiders were tiny but ocassionaly you got to see some massive spider that was as big as your face. And with these spiders came these incredible, massive, spider web nets that were everywhere – even more so at night time than day time. The other star of the night walks was of course the frogs. While I didn’t see any of those amazingly cool colorful/transparent frogs, we did see 3, including one translucent, green, jelly-like frog that was almost impossible to make out as he blended in on a leaf, the size of a nail. Was basically an impossible photo to take but was such a cool frog – all 3 that we saw were no bigger than a thumb nail.
The big wildlife spotting that I unfortunately did miss, was of course the ever elusive jaguar. Would have been awesome to see obviously, but I was happy enough with this trip purely due to the night walks in the thick of the jungle and the tons and tons of macaws that we saw. Also saw toucans, but they were much farther away than the ones I saw in Guatemala (perched on top of the Mirador pyramid above the jungle canopy), but that was honestly luck of the draw…could have easily been the other way around, which you can’t really say about Copan vs. here where the macaws are guaranteed to be close proximity in Copan.
For my entire time there, I was in a group with 3 other couples. The lodge was filled with older couples (late 50s/early 60s, basically my parents’ age/generation), with the ocassional couple in their early to mid 30s that was splurging on this trip. My group was this group of 2 couples in their early 60s from Vancouver, and a couple in their early 30s from San Diego. Over the past couple of years, I have often found that I tend to get along well with older folk while travelling – arguably more so than even people my age. I genuinely think it’s because I really do have “old white man” interests – wildlife and cultural history tends to bring out the dads and their ilk, while people my age are more into beaches (ugh), clubs (eh), nightlife (to be honest, at this point I’d rather stay at a quieter bar and drink with people), and cities for the livlieness as opposed to the history. Of the things that I *love* to do, I would really only say that diving and outdoors/hiking also have a ton of travellers my age there, but even then you get a healthy dose of older people, especially for places that require more time and money. Backpackers tend to be incredibly stingy when it comes to doing activities, yet will easily spend 100 USD in a weekend on drinks.
One thing that was lowkey hilarious was how everyone at this lodge was dressed like they were cosplaying Indiana Jones, with the long sleeve travel shirt and travel pants. To be fair, I myself had those same Columbia travel pants, which are great! They are good for humid jungles, for mountain hikes and treks, for city walking anywhere from ~10 degrees Celsius to heatstroke levels of heat. If it gets closer to freezing I need to slip on a pair of thermal underwear and am then fine, but these are just crazy versatile pants. And weather wise, we actually got hit with an unexpected “cold front” because of the constantly cloudy weather, so I actually never broke a sweat my entire time here, which is wild because this is, you know, the Amazon. The lodge itself was super nice. All the rooms only had 3 walls so you are literally facing into the jungle. And the reason it’s called the Tambopata Research Center is because it started off as a research center and only then expanded to have tourists. Even now, a good chunk of the people staying there are permanent researchers. Every evening before dinner, there was a lecture given to the guests by a researcher as they went into their field of study…the three I saw were on tiger moths, brazilian nut trees, and the clay licks.
After this, I got back to Puerto Maldonado – the Research Center is so deep in the reserve that it took almost 4 hours from Puerto Maldonado, while every other jungle lodge for an Amazon stay here is <2 hours from the town. From the lodge, it’s a 2.5 hour boat ride up the river until you hit a “port” (just a dock, nothing else) named, of all things, Filadelphia. From here, it’s a 90 minute drive until you hit Puerto Maldonado. Spent a day just chilling here and finalizing some travel stuff (Burning Man flights, Galapagos flights, looking more into Ecuador, etc.) – I am only half joking when I say that I am busier while travelling than I was in my old job. Heading to Lima from here for a day (not really doing much, just another lowkey chill day) before I meet my parents and sister at the Lima airport and we do the Cusco area and Lima for two weeks for my dad’s 60th birthday. They’ll then head back to NY and I’ll go on to Quito from there, where the plan is to hike/climb for 2+ weeks on the mainland before heading to the Galapagos for my liveaboard from June 21-28.