Our guides are tourism professionals, or community members. Unless noted otherwise, our guides speak English. We assign guides at 10:1 ratio in Refugio Amazonas. This means groups smaller than 10 people will be merged with other groups under one guide. If you would like a private guide or a guide in a language other than English please let us know.
Upon arrival from Lima or Cusco, we will welcome you at the airport and drive you ten minutes to our Puerto Maldonado headquarters. While enjoying your first taste of the forest we will ask you to pack only the most necessary gear for the next few days, and leave the rest in our deposit safe. This helps us keep the boats and cargo light.
Along the Puerto Maldonado, we will drive 20 kilometers to the Tambopata River Port, entering the native community of Infierno. The port is a communal business. Here we will eat a packed lunch.
The two-and-a-half-hour boat ride from the Tambopata Port to Refugio Amazonas will take us past the Community of Infierno and the Tambopata National Reserve’s checkpoint, and into the buffer zone with a 1.3-million-hectare conservation unit.
Upon arrival, the lodge manager will welcome you and brief you with important navigation and security tips. We will eat dinner.
You will have the option of hiking at night, when most of the mammals are active but difficult to see. This is a fabulous time to find frogs by using their strange shapes and sounds.
Start the day with breakfast.
We will paddle around the lake in a canoe or a catamaran, looking for lakeside wildlife such as hoatzin, caiman and horned screamers. We hope to see the otters, although normally infrequently seen here. You may also have the opportunity to see macaws overhead.
A thirty minute walk from Refugio Amazonas leads to the 25 meter scaffolding canopy tower. A banister staircase running through the middle provides safe access to the platforms above. The tower has been built upon high ground, therefore increasing your horizon of the continuous primary forest extending out towards the Tambopata National Reserve. From here, we will see mixed species around the canopy passing in flocks; toucans, macaws and raptors are likely seen.
We will eat lunch.
Five minutes downriver from the lodge lies a farm owned and managed by charismatic Don Manuel from the neighboring community of Condenado. He grows a variety of popular and unknown Amazon crops – just about every plant and tree you see serves a purpose.
On this tour, along the trail, we will find a variety of plants and trees that are used by the local population for a myriad of purposes. We will learn about the medicinal (and other) uses of Ajo-Sacha, Yuca de Venado, Uña de Gato, Charcot-Sacha, Para-Para, among several others.
We will eat a delicious dinner.
Nightly lectures are prepared by the staff of Refugio Amazonas. These talks cover conservation threats, opportunities and projects in the Tambopata National Reserve.
We will begin the day with breakfast. We will then travel to airport:
We will retrace our river and road journey back to Puerto Maldonado, where our office is located and then to the airport. Depending on airline schedules, this may require dawn departures.
All prices listed below are per passenger and cover only the land-based portion of the trip. Flights are not included.
CATEGORY | PRICE |
| Confort Single | USD $ 993.00 /person |
| Confort Double | USD $ 790.00 /person |
| Suite Single | USD $ 1180.00 /person |
| Suite Double | USD $ 1740.00 /person |
The boats are 20-foot long, roofed canoes. Outboard boat engines go 60 mph, equipped with 4 cycles, and are eco-friendly, low emission motors.
For other schedule possibilities, please consult with our team.
Note: we reserve the right to change the order of activities.
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