Manu Wildlife Safari Overland Adventure: Andes & Amazon

Day 1: Arrival In Lima

Arrive in Lima. Be met upon arrival and transfer to your hotel.

Day 2: Cusco

Assistance with early morning check-in for one-hour flight to Cusco. Airport reception and transfer to your hotel. Afternoon half-day guided orientation of ancient Inca temples, Spanish churches, the artisan San Blas neighborhood and the surrounding hilltop ruins of Sacsayhuaman which offer a panoramic view of Cusco. Your guide will also direct you to shops, museums, markets, and restaurants where you can shop, dine and explore on your own.

Accommodations: Palacio Manco Capac

Meals Included: Breakfast

Day 3: Sacred Valley - Mara Moray, Pisac

Full day private guided exploration through the Sacred Valley of the Incas visiting Quechua villages where highland Indians tend their fields and sell their food products and handcrafts in outdoor markets. Begin your exploration of the Sacred Valley with a visit to the town of Chinchero, believed to be the mythical birthplace of the rainbow and sacred to the Incas. The main plaza at the top of the town offers beautiful views; on a clear day the Cordillera Vilcabamba and the snow-capped peak of Salkantay dominate the western horizon. Visit the marketplace, (busiest on a Sunday and one of the best in the Andes) and a women’s weaving co-op where you can observe traditional dying techniques and possibly taste cuy, the regional specialty! Enjoy a picnic lunch then continue on to archaeological site of Moray, believed to be an experimental greenhouse for the Incas, and the colorful salt pools at Maras. There is an optional easy but scenic hike down through the salt pools that will take you to the valley floor.

Accommodations: Hotel Sol y Luna

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch

Day 4: Sacred Valley - Patacancha Valley Hike

Drive through the Urubamba Valley past the town of Ollantaytambo to a narrow dirt road leading up the Patacancha Valley (1 hour) until reaching the community of Pallata (12,000’ elevation). Here you can observe the native Quechua way of life in the high Andes where crops are sown and textiles woven with simple hand tools that have been in use for centuries. A short, steep ascent to the road head brings you to the small archaeological complex at Pumamarca, a former Inca settlement that managed the irrigation system of the Inca terracing below.

After visiting this site, you will begin hiking down through the ancient Inca terracing complex of Choquecancha, still used today by local Quechua farmers, overlooking spectacular views of the surrounding peaks and Urubamba Valley below. A three-hour descent through these farmed terraced areas will bring us to the outskirts of Ollantaytambo Village. You will have free time to explore the pueblito of Ollantaytambo. Walk through the narrow streets of one of the few Inca towns that has survived much as the Incas designed it hundreds of years ago. Here you can see Inca canchas (stone corals), enclosures of multi-family living quarters that share just one exit to the street, ingenious stonework, original cobblestone streets, and an extensive communal water system that survives to this day.

Accommodations: Hotel Sol y Luna

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch

Day 5: Machu Picchu

Transfer to the Ollantaytambo station and ride the train to Machu Picchu. Your guide will assist you with hotel check-in then accompany you on a private, guided tour of the ruins before returning to Cusco, leaving you free to photograph and explore on your own time.

Accommodations: Hotel Machu Picchu Pueblo

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch

Day 6: Cusco

Take the early shuttle bus to be among the first to enter Machu Picchu this day. Enjoy the morning on your own to wander, contemplate, and photograph the mysterious maze of streets and stone buildings of this magnificent citadel. Optional hike up the precipitous Wayna Picchu peak (permits must be booked in advance for $15 per person), or back up the Inca Trail to the Intipunku. Leisurely mid-afternoon return on the train back to Cusco, arrive by evening.

Accommodations: Palacio Manco Capac

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch

Day 7: Cloud Forest Overland

Early breakfast, then set off for the Manu cloud forest passing over two Andean ranges of almost 13,000 feet elevation through high grassland puna and mountain wetland habitat teeming with migrant and local waterfowl. On the way pass stone chullpas, or burial chambers, of the Pre-Inca Lupaca people, and will hope to catch site of some of the bird species of the high Andes, including the Giant Hummingbird and Mountain Caracara.

Enjoy a picnic lunch at the Ajanaco pass affording a spectacular view on a clear day over the vast expanse of lowland Amazon rain forest. The road plunges down the eastern slope of the Andes, past remnant patches of elfin forest, through swirling mist and cloud, to emerge in a forest of stunted evergreen trees, festooned with mosses, lichens, bromeliads, and other epiphytes. You’ll make frequent, spontaneous stops to look for wildlife, perhaps spotting a brilliantly feathered quetzal or trogon. In the late afternoon, arrive at the Cock of the Rock lodge, nestled within the cloud forest next to a rushing mountain stream. You’ll have the opportunity to visit the lek to hopefully view Peru’s national bird, the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, displaying in all of its glory.

Accommodations: Cock of the Rock Lodge

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 8: Manu Wildlife Center

Rise before dawn to for another visit to the display ground (lek) of the Andean cock-of-the-rock. From the observation blind watch the blazing orange males just feet in front of the blind strut and dip their crested heads screeching in the hope of attracting a mate. Optionally you can hike along the sinuous jungle road looking at orchids, flowers, and cloud forest birds such as the golden-headed trogon, as well as numerous brightly colored tanagers and hummingbirds. You may see a troop of muscular-limbed woolly monkeys or brown capuchin monkeys. After breakfast depart by road (3-4 hours) and descend into the jungle as mountains give way to low rolling hills and farmland. At Patria you visit a plantation of coca grown legitimately for the Peruvian coca leaf market. At midday you reach Atalaya, leaving the van to motor in a dugout canoe down the Upper Madre de Dios River to the Amazonia Lodge or Pantiacolla Lodge in the foothills of Manu where you spend your second night (shared bath). These lodges are ideally situated for wildlife observation with some of the best bird watching in the world. Colorful tanager flocks skim through the trees and clearings around the lodge offering superb birding from your porch, including toucans, kingfishers, and a rare endemic hummingbird. As many as seven species of monkeys reside in the area, and collared peccaries are also commonly seen.

Accommodations: Amazonia Lodge, Pantiacolla Lodge

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 9: Manu Wildlife Center

Rising early you have time for another short morning hike along the lodge trails before you continue by boat (approximately 6 hours) down the Madre de Dios River to spend the next three nights at the remote Manu Wildlife Center [MWC]. Along the way, stop for a visit at Boca Manu where local indigenous people make their living building the dugout canoes essential to river travel. Midday arrival at the Manu Wildlife Center where you’ll be welcomed, shown to your private bungalow and given time to relax from the morning’s long journey.

In the afternoon, delve into the lowland rainforest and explore some of the 30 miles of specially designed trails through the private rain forest reserve in search of 10 species of resident monkeys, including the Red Howler and Black Spider Monkey and many other species of flora and fauna. Take a nocturnal foray through the forest to the tapir clay lick blind where you can observe and photograph these 500 pound beasts, the largest land animal in South America. You paddle around oxbow lakes in-habituated by giant river otters, piranhas, anaconda, and black caimans, the largest crocodilians in the Amazon.

Accommodations: Manu Wildlife Center

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Days 10-11: Manu Wildlife Exploration

Many activities at MWC take place early in the morning, at dusk and at night when wildlife is most active. Arise early your first morning to visit the macaw lick of the MWC to photograph and observe macaws eating mineral-rich clay on the bank of the river. Throughout your stay join guided walks or venture on your own around the lodge on the extensive trail system to search for some of the 12 species of monkeys. Hikes through diverse habitats include bamboo forests, forest stream riparian vegetation, and large strangler figs and other fruiting trees that attract monkeys and birds. A sturdy steel circular staircase 115 ft. up to a platform built into the crown of a huge Kapok tree affords endless hours observing the rainforest canopy from above with chances of seeing passing troops of monkeys, many birds and a view over the Madre de Dios River.

In the evenings, guides organize nocturnal forays into the forest to the tapir clay lick. The elevated, screened platform structure is equipped with simple mattresses so that you can relax comfortably in wait for the first tapirs to arrive typically between 5:30 and 8:00 p.m. Sometimes deer and peccaries also come in.

On one of the mornings you visit an oxbow lake to see waterfowl, the prehistoric-like hoatzin bird, and to search for a family of giant otters. This two-meter-long, 70-pound predators are the only social mustelids (family of weasels, minks, badgers, wolverines, skunks, otters) in the world.

Accommodations: Manu Wildlife Center

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 12: Return to Cusco

Depart from the lodge very early for the return boat trip downstream to the gold-mining town of Colorado Village (2.5 hrs). Enjoy breakfast on the way while watching early morning wildlife activity and miners who pan for gold along the Madre de Dios River. Drive 45 minutes to Puerto Carlo where you’ll cross the Inambari River for a 15-minute boat trip to Santa Rosa. In Santa Rosa a vehicle awaits for the two and a half hour drive to Puerto Maldonado. Catch a flight to Cusco and return to the Palacio Manco Capac where additional luggage has been stored for collection upon arrival.

Accommodations: Palacio Manco Capac

Meals Included: Breakfast

Day 13: Lima - Departure

Transfer to the airport for your flight to Lima. Depending on timing and flight schedules, a day room will be reserved for you either at the Ramada del Sol Airport Hotel if you only have a few hours to spare, or in the Miraflores district of Lima if you have time to venture into town. Evening international departure.

Meals Included: Breakfast