Casa de Hospedaje de Baltimore Tambopata National Reserve

We took a 30 minute flight from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado and than a 3 hour boat trip on a little motorized canoe to the lodge.
Finally arrived on the lodge "Yana" the spider monkey jump on the boat and greeted us, well I think she was looking more for food :-)
The lodge was nice & very relaxing. We did not had eletricity in our bedrooms and only cold water but it ...

... in cold water!

The time just went too fast though and I didnt manage to do all the things I wanted to before I left although I feel this gives me a very good reason to go back. The place definately seems to have a wierd hold over people as many people return and I think I will too. I would like to do some research in the area one day.

In my last couple of weeks I was kept busy out working on the trails as usual. We also inherited 6 baby ...

... was to bathe his head in urine. Poor George, what with being **** on by a monkey and a guy offering to **** on his head we have had a few laughs at his expense recently! Eventually George turned to more conventional medicine in Puerto and had some blood tests done. Luckily it was nothing serious and a course of antibiotic have sorted him out much better than the potato face mask.

I have been saying for the last 2 weeks that I am dying to see an amardillo, I have ...

... firing. We really must have just missed him by the shortest margin. Not that we could have done anything, it is certainly not wise as a foreigner to try and lecture a local with a shotgun on the rights and wrongs of hunting in a reserve. We followed blood drips down the trail as we carried on trail clearing to the next 2 colpas. The highlight of the last couple of weeks was going back to the lake to spend a night there to carry out a caiman search and walk to the mammal colpas in the ...

... the lodge and I have now walked all of them. When I first arrived I have to say that I was a bit intimidated by the trails. There are 2 main trails which the guides walk guests down to the lake so they are very clear (and also welly high in mud which makes for slow walking!) but the rest of the trails are rarely walked by guests, they are mainly maintained by the RNs. So they often get overgrown or there are tree falls and it can be easy to lose the trail. I am not scared by ...

... out the noise, and have no ceiling so what ever the neighbours do you can hear it. They are quite spectacular. At 6.30 we had a slide show about the area and 7 was a night walk to see the bugs and insects around the place. There was a Tarantula is the roof of one of the bungalows, we saw Peru´s most deadly spider and the worlds biggest ant. After the walk we had dinner....anticucho!! During dinner daniel told me about the program for the next couple of days and no mention of ...

... the jungle. There is no electricity in the bedrooms; instead, the rooms are "powered" at night by several kerosene lanterns and a few candles. The lodge may not be for everyone. We saw a few big bugs (yes, cockroaches -but we are in the jungle) coming after the remains of our toothpaste in the sink, and bats, birds and mosquitoes can enter the rooms freely. We were also advised not to leave food in the room, lest something bigger decide to ...

... so well as it was overcast, getting dark and under the canopy of the trees. After our first amazon sunset on the island we returned home to relax in the hammocks until supper. Early to bed as it was early to rise for the Lost Lake in the morning. Dad if you think the birds outside your window at home are bad, you would lose your mind with the amount of birds that serenade you in the wee hours of the morning. Quite ...

... was absolutely breathtaking. It was made almost entirely from wood, elevated on stilts about a metre above the ground. It had no hot water, electricity for 3 hours a day and no windows, so our room literally backed right out into the jungle itself. The light we had came from two small candles in the room and some kerosone lamps dotted around the walkways, so it was hard to do anything major at the Lodge past about 4pm when it started to get a bit dark. After lunch ...

... I knew all our activities were lead by the guide, but I didn't realize that our itinerary would have us on-the-go from 5am to 9pm every day! We did have a couple hours of free time sprinkled in here and there, but we definitely were getting our money's worth. Meals were buffet style, and the dishes were all fairly similar to the cuisine we had gotten used to up to this point. In a word, incredible! In addition, there were baskets of fresh fruit ...