Explorer's Inn Puerto Maldonado

From our comfy hotel surroundings in Lima we took a short hop on a flight to Puerto Maldonado. At the airport we met the other 18 people on our tour, all are lovely most are from New Zealand but there´s Brits, Ozzies and a fair few Irish for good measure. Ages from 19 to 73- good on ya Sheila. The temperature was the first big change. Over 30 with 79% humidity so as you can imagine as soon as we stepped off the plane we were dripping - very pleasant!! We were transferred by minbus to the town...

Hhmmm…..I really wasn’t convinced about the Amazon experience, I guess like most arachnophobes this a bit like throwing yourself to the lions but Sam was keen so I grit my teeth and went along.

Our plane was delayed so by the time we had taken the 3 and half hour journey down the river to the lodge it was dark - maybe that helped because when the paths are lit by nothing more than fire touches and your lodge room by only three pretty pathetic candles you really can...

Hey guys, just back from THE AMAZON JUNGLE! Firstly the change in humidity from Cusco took us all a bit by suprise. We left Cusco that morning in fleeces and when we arrived at Puerto Maldonado the sweat immediately started to drip off us! From the airport we got a motorised canoe to our jungle lodge carefully studying the muddy waters for pirhanas, anacondas and what like. That night we had a night walk and came across a tarantula feasting on a cockroach. Awesome! The video to be downloaded ...

Okay, here's the deal with going to Amazon from Puerto Maldonado. So you have to fly from Cusco to get there. Yeah, there is a bus, but the road is terrible and unpredictable and can take days. One traveler I spoke with took that way, but the van got stuck in the mud and everyone had to get out in the mud and rain and push it. He loved it, but at this point in the trip, I was not feeling very well. I was getting over motion sickness, flu-like cramping, and lack of sleep. So we flew. We paid ...

*** Jen´version follows *** Nous arriverons à Lima un samedi matin vers les 10:30. Nous sommes un peu inquiet car on s´est fait compter quelques d´histoires de touristes qui se sont fait attaquer à Lima. De plus Jim (notre britannique de l´Amazone) s´est fait arnaquer à "gun point". Nous avions donc décidé d´habiter dans un quartier cosue (et en théorie plus sécure) de Lima appellé Miraflores et de prendre un autobus pour s´y rendre. Première surprise, il fait beaucoup plus froid à Lima; mais...

So after four awesome, busy days hiking and enjoying Machu Picchu, Meghan, Yvonne & I headed off early the morning of July 6 to go to the jungle. While I have spent my first two months all in the Andean highlands around Cusco and the Sacred Valley, Peru has extremely diverse (and difficult) terrain. There is jungle basically all along the eastern portion of the country. The entire area is considered part of the Amazon Basin, while actual Amazon is in the nothern part of the country. We we...

After a week or so of climbing up the endless stairs of the Incan ruins, we left Cusco and Machu Picchu for the Amazon. We took a 28 minute flight to the town of Puerto Maldonado (it would have been a 15 hour bus ride down from the Andes and along dusty roads through the jungle) and drove down to the banks of the Rio Tambopata at the border of the Tambopata Amazon Jungle Reserve. From here we took a boat along the river about 1.5 hours to reach our ecotourism lodge, the Explorer's Inn. The wo...

After a brief sojourn in the deep, dark jungles of Peru, I have made it up to the dizzying heights of Cusco, at 3200m above sea level. We flew from Lima to Puerto Maldonado, a town in the Amazon Basin where the humidity was immediately apparent, and the sense of distance from the ´world´ increasing steadily. (I´ve decided this would be good place to go into hiding) From there we drove for an hour out to the ´port´ on the river Tambopata, where we got in to a long boat and headed off down the ...