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Thursday, December 12, 2002
Unlocking The Rainforest
By Joe Kane, Conde Nast Traveler Magazine
Below is an excerpt from Unlocking The Rainforest (written by Joe Kane) that pertains mostly to the Manu Wildlife Center, one of three lodges surveyed by the author. For the full article see their web site.
Some 100 lodges in the Amazon the planet's richest natural wonderland now trumpet their ecotourism credentials. Where in this jungle should you hang your hat? Leaving no leaf unturned, Joe Kane checks into three winners in Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru and identifies five more of the finest. Rain forest rookie or regular, here's everything you need to know to savor the Big Green safely, happily, and responsibly.
Peru alone boasts some sixty rain forest lodges, and the Amazon as a whole probably has twice that. Some are quick-buck operations riding a wave of green sentiment, some employ what amounts to slave labor, and some don't even exist such as the lodge certain taxi drivers in Manaus hustle to newly arrived tourists, who are then abducted and robbed. But reliable access, comfortable quarters, good food, and English-speaking staff are now more the norm than the exception. The best lodges, of which there are perhaps a dozen, deliver something extra, such as wildlife viewing or close interaction with indigenous cultures, and make conservation part of their mission.
''the center offered what is, hands down, the most intense wildlife experience I've had in Amazonia.''
Manu Wildlife Center [MWC] opened in 1996 under the direction of Dr. Charlie Munn to marry commercial tourism with conservation and indigenous-rights work. The center sits just outside the park, amid eight thousand square miles of forest inhabited by only two thousand people, half of whom have no contact with cultures beyond their own. I spent four days there. Tucked up against the foothills of the Andes, in a species-rich combination of primary forest and mature floodplain, the center offered what is, hands down, the most intense wildlife experience I've had in Amazonia
What Munn and his staff have done, mainly, is to adapt his scientific techniques for observing macaws for commercial use. I followed Munn up a fixed, seventy-five-foot-high, circular steel staircase that delivered us to a wooden platform in the canopy of a ceiba tree, where six scarlet macaws birds so spectacular Munn calls them "honorary mammals"raced screaming through the treetops and landed on a railing within pecking distance of my shirt. Hidden in a thatch-covered catamaran blind on the Madre de Dios, I floated within twenty feet of a clay lick so vibrant with blue-headed parrots, green-winged macaws, and red howler monkeys that it looked like a television screen whose color needed adjusting. One night I hiked deep into the forest, to a platform raised high on stilts over what looked like a huge pig wallow, where I spent two hours watching tapirs, the largest yet most elusive animals in all of Amazonia. The next morning I drifted through a lagoon on a kind of raft, following a family of giant river otters, whose jaws are so powerful even jaguars fear them. Two hundred fifty acres of the MWC grounds are laid out in a grid of well-marked, self-guiding trails cut at regular intervals; the morning I walked the grid I spotted so many bird species I stopped taking notes. Much like Kapawi [in Ecuador], MWC felt like a college seminar. The staff is a mix of Machiguengas, Peruvian scientists and guides, and foreign researchers. It has become a base of choice for elite bird-watching tours and wildlife-documentary crews people willing to spend good money to be treated well.
Each of the twenty bungalows, the recently expanded bar, and the dining hall are built of driftwood mahogany; they have a soothing reddish glow, especially when lit by candles (though MWC also has electric lights, I heard its small generator only once, for about an hour). The bungalows have private baths with hot showers (heated by propane) and flush toilets, and each night the staff sets up mosquito nets something, Munn realized, that guests often won't bother to do correctly. ("Of course," he said, "we haven't had malaria here in twenty-five years.") Attention to detail is his signature: The night I went to view tapirs, for example, the lodge sent dinner ahead by runner, and when I arrived at the clay lick I found a row of mattresses, each with sheets, pillow, and net. I dozed off; my guide woke me when the tapirs appeared. But the killer detail was the blind set thirty yards back from the first: It's for people who snore.
One feature I didn't find at MWC was direct interaction with the Machiguenga. (Munn has underwritten the Machiguenga Community Center, a lodge the Indians own outright, and he has helped several Machiguenga villages gain legal title to their lands.) Wildlife has made MWC's reputation, and Munn continues to push the envelope. One night we trolled the Madre de Dios by canoe, Munn honking into the snout of an aluminum teapot, trying to lure a jaguar with what was supposed to sound like a mating call. (Based on the lack of response, it sounded like a guy honking through a teapot.) Another night, we sat in a clearing where the local Machiguenga told Munn they'd seen an ocelot. We hid behind a curtain of green fabric, on the other side of which rested a piece of meat attached to a string staked to the ground, and waited for an hour, in darkness and silence only to find the meat gone. "Give me three weeks," Munn said. "I'll have an ocelot set piece, guaranteed. In a year, I'll have a jaguar." Then he added, "So far I can only show ten percent of what the forest really is. But everyone else is showing one percent. We're just getting started."
As a rule, in the rain forest, you get what you pay for. To experience the Amazon intensely in a short time requires more infrastructure than you might think: small planes to take you deep into the forest, boats for river touring, well laid-out trails, radio networks, systems for delivering equipment and supplies far from roads and distribution centers, towers and platforms for canopy access, sophisticated blinds for viewing game. Some lodges, such as the Aria Amazon Towers Hotel, even have helicopters for emergency medical evacuation.
What kind of trip are you looking for? From the cities of Manaus, Iquitos, Quito, and Cuzco, you can make one-night visits, with daily departures, to Amazonian lodges that tend to emphasize food and creature comforts and offer a basic but limited taste of the rain forest: rivers, trees, the more common birds. To really see wildlife, or to meet indigenous people in an authentic way, you have to go deeper and spend more. Plan for fixed departures, multi-leg connections, and a minimum three-night stay.
Most lodges will give you a packing list, and many publish them on their Web sites. In any case, the rain forest is for active travelers. If you expect to spend your days reading on the beach, you're headed to the wrong place.
