Manu National Park is regarded as one of the worlds hot spots for biodiversity. Which apparently means that if you visit the Amazon in Manu, youre probably going to see some cool stuff.
Getting to Manu is a bit of a mission. From Cusco, you wind your way up over a 4000m pass, peering intently at the single carrige dirt road and hoping for the best. Then its an urelenting descent to from the Puna (high grass lands) through the Cloud Forest to the Jungles start at about 500m above sea level. 9 hours of sheer drop offs and having to play ´biggest car wins´on the frequent sections of road not wide enough to pass on coming traffic. Essentially the little car has to reverse to the next available bit of slightly wider road, and hope that there´s enough space to pass. Paint usually gets scraped off. Its pretty close…
From the sleepy town of Atalya, you board a motorised canoe (about 15m long..) and make your way for 5 hours down the fast white water of the Rio Madre de Dios (Mother of Gods River). Along the way there are plenty of birds to spot, but the real sightings begin on the journey up the Rio Manu´s more relaxed brown meanders into the reserved zone. Takes 3 days at a moderate pace to make it up there, but once there you´re in a wild life bonanza.
Daily activities included walks through the flat terrain, trips on paddle catamarans on oxbow lakes, ascents of viewing platforms and observing birds in camoflagued hides. Often we´d take a night walk, seeing all manner of insect plus plenty of frogs.
Our guide was named Darwin (excellent name for a nature guide) and he was extremely knowledgeable, spoke good english and was the source of much amusement through the trip. His favourite saying was “ Es un Disastre!” (its a disaster) when remarking on a bad photo you took, your failed pass when playing soccer or when the engine on our boat chose to stop working..
We had a good bunch of people on our group, which was handy as there was lots of down time getting between the places on the motor canoe and the bus.
It was pretty hot during the day, mid 30´s, but the humidity was the real killer. You´d just sweat standing there, so the cold showers at the lodge got plenty of use (up to 3 times a day). The photos i managed to get really didn´t do our sightings justice. A little compact camera is no good for monkeys in a tree 30m high, so the ones shown were when we could get pretty close to the wild life, which was generally pretty un fased by our presence.
An amazing experience indeed..
High quality bridge at Atalaya
The crew on the Motor Canoe
The Motor Canoe
Aeroplane Grasshopper
Some sort of tree snake
Out gunned by the professional wildlife photographer
Engine troubles...
Dozens of pirched birds on Rio Manu
Black Caiman 
Darwin leads us through the Rain Forest
This tree developed 2cm long spines to protect it from the 
Dan and friends on Lake Salvador
Cocha Salvador 
Giant River Otter
Wooley Monkey
A column of Leaf Cutter Ants
Blue Pirana
Aint called the Rain Forest for nothing...
Tarantula at our Campsite
Red and Green Macaws at a Clay Lick
Long nose Bats in our accomodation
Photographing a column of Leaf cutter Ants
Upper Rio Madre de Dios
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