Manu Trek Day 1:
Got picked up around 5.45 for the trip to Manu. Jose is our guide, and seems to know tons about the area. A biologist who studied birds and animals. Fellow travellers are a Swedish couple, Linda and Johanne, and a couple from Portland, Margarite and David.
First stop at a pre-Incan ruin of a people from the Puna area, Lupakas. They moved many times to different places so they could grow a variety of crops. The place that we saw was called Ninamarka, because they saw fire from gold in the ground. They built round, straw-covered structures and tombs for the important dead - round towers with a door for removing the bodies. Apparently the Incas thought so highly of their culture that they let them retain an intact culture. Breakfast was in a little town called Paucartambo, on the Paucar river. We tried the drink chicha and followed the sound of singing to a gorgeous church where the alter was surrounded by paintings, children played in the aisles and there was a large litter, ornately carved, which we assumed was for the parading of idols.
Ate scrambled eggs with ahi, a green chile sause. After town, we crossed a mountain pass on a narrow, muddy, rocky road, nevertheless called the carraterra (highway). Had to back up many times because of traffic coming uphill. After quite a few hours, when one tour bus refused to back up the 20 feet or so do get to a place to pass (we had to go at least 4 or 5 times that distance), we decided to get out and walk the rest of the way. Took our time unloading. Walked a ways and David spotted the Cock of the Rock, a beautiful orange bird and black bird, the national bird of Peru. Kept walking till we got to the viewpoint for these birds, where we watched several, all male. Gutteral, coughing call. Kept walking, passed the cock of the rock lodge and after about an hour reached our lodge in the cloud forest. It was getting dark by then. Down a path of slippery stones to the buildings that comprised our lodge. The lodge had a generator we could use for three hours in the evening. It also had hot water and flush toilets. We were told to brush our teeth with the water they provided in big plastic containers, and we could see why: the water in the taps was river water, which got muddier the farther we went into the reserve. Lovely rectangular wooden structures topped with screen contained the separate living quarters, the bathrooms, the kitchen/dining room. We dropped our things in our separate houses (my parents shared a room and I had my own room in the other half of the house) and went to the meeting/eating room for dinner. Dinner was a carrot tortilla and rice. Slept soundly for waking up at 4.40.
Birds we saw this first day:
Andean cock of the rock
Blue necked tanager
Hooded Mountain Tanager
Cinnamon Flycatcher
Andean Flicker
Crimson-mantled woodpecker, male and female
Blue banded toucanet
Unidentified parrots
Highland motmot
White collared jay
Manu Trek Day 2:
Woke up at 4.40 this morning for hike. I slept very soundly. We went for a hike back up the road the way we had come and saw more birds. It started raining about three-quarters of the way into the walk. Despite our ponchos, our knees still got soaked.
Breakfast was bread and elderberry jam (very tasty) and french fries, at 6.30. After breakfast we had a half an hour to get our stuff together. We took our sheets with us, and they were one big connected thing and very difficult to fold. Our rain ponchos were also very hard to fold and we ended up rolling them more than anything else.
While we were in the lodge waiting for Linda and Johanne we saw a brilliant green hummingbird by the bushes right outside the window, and it was there for some time, almost posing for us. It was maybe the size of half my fist, and it stayed perched on the branches for us to look at it. It was probably the best look I've ever gotten at a hummingbird.
The ride to the town where we took a boat took about three hours. At one point on the trip we stopped at a coca farm, that doubled as a refuge for animals.
We got out twice to lighten the load of the car, and on the second time there were almost rapids going off the road, and as I stepped across my foot got stuck in the mud and floated off. I'm sure that it was the only flip-flop from my cousin's wedding to float of in a tributary of the Rio de la Madre de Dios.
Soon after this we stopped at an observation point to look at the same river. There was also a small town that we stopped in with a very old bridge that was falling apart, next to a newer bridge that three pigs walked across. The first river that we got out for was an uneventful crossing, and there was a river that the driver needed to get out and toss some larger rocks aside from and and the last one, entering the final town, that he needed to build up a bridge of stones for the car to cross. The driver said that the "carretera" (did NOT seem like a highway) would be impassable in a few days to a week, so I guess we were lucky to get through as easily as we did.
When we got to the last town we put on lots of sunscreen and deet (the deet opened in the plastic bag at one point and took the label of the sunscreen, but we figured that we werre only using it for about a week). There were some bathrooms, and we stopped in a store to look for flip-flops but found none that suited. We also found rubber boots from the storehouse there.
To get on the boat there was a plank of wood that we needed to walk up, and then three benches in the front followed by the luggage followed by another bench for people helping out then the driver and the motor. Twice big waves came over the sides of the boats and soaked us, the first time when we had our food. For lunch there was bread and a sort of boiled-vegetable salad. For us vegetarians there was no protein, as we got the same food as the meat-eaters only without the hunk of meat that added the protein. The ride took about five hours, and we made a couple of stops to drop of supplies and--once--pick up a passenger (and later drop her off again).
When we got to the shore we had the plank of wood again, but were led straight into a bunch of wet sand.
We got to the lodge a little after five, and were shown the two different rooms for bathrooms, the dining room, and the bedrooms. I had my own room with two beds in it, and two chairs and two desks that fold out of the wall. The rooms have a thatched roof and screens for most of the walls. Now it is six and the power is on, and we are going for a night-hike in a few minutes.
Walked with flashlights around the lodge, approaching and passing the noisy
generator. On that hike, we saw three tarantulas under a piece of i-beam, a click beetle, which has two green lights that look like eyes when it is still and a red light when it is flying, a firefly that stayed illuminated, did not blink, some frogs, stick bugs, grasshoppers, crickets, a lobster grasshopper, a giant spider web. Jose told us always to carry a flashlight with us so we could run if chased by a bushmaster, a snake which the native people say chases you.
Birds we saw on the second day:
Hummingbird
Blue-necked tanagers
A bunch of russet-backed oropendala
Sunbittern
Violacious jay
Sparkling violetear hummingbird
Silver-beaked tanager
Swallow tanager
Great egret
Cow egret
Snowy egret
Cocoi heron
Black vulture
Turkey vulture
Umbrella bird (exciting!)
Chestnut-faced macaw
Giant cowbird
Blue-black grassquit
Scarlet macaws
Plum-throated cotinga
Nonbirds:
Cows
Four peckaries
Swimming giant-anteater (we only caught a glimpse of his nose--really rare)
...And, at the refuge:
Capybara (world's largest rodent)
Spider monkey
Agouti
Warthog
White-faced capuchin monkey
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