Weekend in Tambopata

On Friday evening, my night bus left Cusco for Puerto Maldonado at 7:00 pm. The bus company was called Civa. I chose the "Incaclass" for the outbound journey to save some money. Never again! 😂

The bus was exclusively Peruvian and me. The seats were ridiculously narrow, no air conditioning, and there was a stop every two hours. At each stop, Peruvians in their typical robes came on the bus to sell bread, cow heart, drinks, etc. At first, it was funny, but after the second stop, it became annoying. I also think that there were some blind passengers on the bus because some of them were sitting on the stairs with hoods.

After finally overcoming the terrible journey, I was picked up in Puerto Maldonado at 7:00 am and taken to a tourist office. All visitors gathered there, the program was discussed again, and then we drove another 5 minutes with a small van to a river. A tour guide, whose English was incredibly bad, so some things he said were not understood, took us by boat to a lodge. We traveled by boat for about 1 hour. The lodge was beautiful. I had my own room with a bathroom. Of course, we also used the pool, as we had temperatures of 33 degrees in Tambopata over the weekend.

Initially, we hiked for an hour through the jungle behind the lodge. Unfortunately, we didn't see any animals, which was also expected because it was too close to the lodge. Nevertheless, it was very interesting because the tour guide could tell us a lot about the plants, termites, etc. Then there was lunch. In the afternoon, we took the boat to "Monkey Island". We were able to observe two different species of monkeys and even feed them. After returning to the lodge, we had some free time, for example, to go to the pool. It was already pitch dark at 6:30 pm. We went out on the boat again to see caimans. Our tour guide shone a flashlight, we were not allowed to use lights and had to be quiet. We could actually see four different species of caimans. However, I didn't see any difference, just a difference in size, but that was more due to the age of the caimans. After dinner, we all went to bed early because breakfast was served at 4:30 am on Sunday morning. At 5:00 am, we took the boat to the Tambopata Reserve. We then walked 3 km into the jungle. There were many smaller paddle boats. We then took the boat on Lake Sandoval. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful places in the world. We were able to observe incredible bird species, otters playing in the water, several caimans, and monkeys. No houses. No internet. No motorboats. Incredibly beautiful. Pure nature. After the poor tour guide paddled for us for four hours, we returned to the lodge. After lunch and some free time, we took the boat back to the tourist office and then back to Cusco by night bus. But this time I had a 180-degree seat, so I could sleep well. Around 1:30 am, the bus stopped for a police check. Everyone had to show their ID, which were even taken away.

Unfortunately, I had a slightly stronger cold with a fever over the weekend, so the weekend was quite exhausting. It was also a bit of a shame that there were about 6 French people in my group, but they could hardly speak any English and were only interested in talking to the other French people. So I spent most of the weekend with four very nice Italian girls, whose opinion of the French was rather modest 😄. The English of the Italian girls wasn't that good either, so sometimes we just spoke Spanish.

I was incredibly excited about the 33 degrees because it is quite cold here in Cusco. After doing this jungle tour, I am even more excited about the jungle in the north of Peru.