Tambopata, Part II
by Jack Devine

After eight and a half years I was well overdue for a return visit to TRC, the Tambopata Research Center for Macaws, in Peru. The owners of TRC Rainforest Expeditions have a new lodge located about a two-hour canoe ride from Puerto Maldonado.

"Posada Amazonas", a 24-bedroom lodge, is located just a short distance from the Ese'eja Native Community. This indigenous village is adjacent to the Tambopata-Candamo Reserve. The short canoe ride to Posada was a welcome last segment of our trip as we had grown weary from lack of sleep. We had gotten up at 5a.m. for our 7 o'clock flight from Portland, Oregon to the Dallas/FortWorth airport. We departed Dallas/Fort Worth at 4:30 after a three-hour layover and arrived in Lima, Peru at 11:30 that night, a few minutes ahead of schedule. With our flight leaving at 6 a.m. for Puerto Maldonado, we decided to just spend the night in the airport. The flight takes about an hour to Cusco and then another 30 minutes to Puerto Maldonado.

Here's a little tip if you decide to go this route: stay in the arrival area because they have nice comfortable sofas that you can nap on, while in the departure area all they have are the hard, single airport chairs. Even better, I found out on our way back to the States that there is a reasonably priced hotel near the airport, Hotel Manhatten.

This avoids the round-trip taxi charge to Lima of $50 plus another $75-100 for a decent hotel, all for just several hours of sleep. So, the local hotel is recommended--for both your budget and mental health.

Posada Amazonas is built with traditional materials of the rainforest. The large rooms not only have private bathroom facilities but are built to provide you with a true rainforest experience. The outside walls of your room facing the rainforest are large and although they have no screening, not to worry--the area is relatively insect-free and at night mosquito netting is pulled down over your double-size bed.

Posada, like all the other ecolodges that I have visited, go out of their way to provide you with a pleasant dining experience with buffet meals. Posada includes local cuisine as well as what their brochure calls "international" cuisine. As for me I always seem to enjoy the local foods much more than the international foods; eating the local menu makes for a more rewarding travel experience.

And speaking of what some "locals" are fond of consuming, there is a great clay lick located close by. It's not large, but it's not the size of the lick that matters, it is the visitors who come daily. In this case the smaller parrots, as usual, show up in the early morning, and the green-winged macaws later on.

When you walk through the rainforest you always wonder what it would be like to be up in the canopy. Posada, not to be outdone by any of the other six lodges up-river from Puerto Maldonado, has a 35-meter-high observation tower, that gives you a breathtaking view over the top of the canopy of the rainforest. From here you can see many species of birds as they fly over the trees and the beautiful flowers that seasonally bloom, and you can marvel at how far you can see. It never ceases to amaze me how flat the rainforest is. It is over 4000 miles to the Atlantic Ocean as the macaw flies and the elevation is only about 400 meters. It is no wonder that the rivers are always changing their courses and creating oxbow lakes like the one near the lodge. The lodge has a catamaran (two canoes with a platform between them) on the lake so that they can take you not only bird watching around the edges of the lake, but also for an opportunity to see a family of giant river otters. Keeping in mind that this is a ecotourism adventure (meaning that we want to do as little as possible to disturb the wildlife), you may not always get to see them close-up as Rainforest Expeditions has chosen to leave half of the lake completely undisturbed and for this I commend them, as these otters are, unfortunately, highly endangered.

After three days of hiking the many trails around the lodge, time on the oxbow lake, as well as magnificent sunsets from the tower and of course a trip each morning to see the macaws at the clay lick, we were off on our next adventure, the TRC itself.

After returning from a final trip to the lake, we headed again up-river. It seemed as if time had stood still in the rainforest since my last visit. Blackhead vultures still flew off in the distance, with the Tambopata River running hard as the rainy season hadn't quite ended (usually in May). We moved up the active river, seeing an occasional caiman or great blue heron along the river bank or turtles with butterflies on them. As we rounded some of the last bends in the river before TRC we could see the Andes off in the distance. At home Mt. Hood always seems so high as it looms in the distance from Portland. However, by comparison, the Andes with snow-covered peaks at 18-20,000 feet, dwarf Mt. Hood's elevation of about 12,000 feet.

As our boat ride came to an end it was time to put our rubber boots on. They were issued to us on arrival at Posada. They make much more sense than wearing hiking boots, which get wet and muddy. It was a much shorter walk from the river than the last time we were at TRC. Last year the river had washed away a lot of the river bank, but the same front steps were there. Years ago the researchers used this lower area to leave their mud-covered boots so as not to track up the research facility. The same holds true today for the lodge. Except now there are benches on both sides of the lower platform where you can sit to remove your boots. What a great job they have done with the Center, lodging both tourist and researcher alike, and giving real parrot-people, like most of the folks who have gone the extra mile--or in this case, the extra five-hour boat ride, an excellent opportunity to view the facility and to visit with the people who are doing fieldwork.

Using the original platform, they created a lodge with a hallway running down the middle with 13 rooms with coarse cloth curtains for doors, not unlike many other lodges. They have added on to the end of the lodge, with a 100-foot walkway to the showers and toilet facilities. The other end of the lodge where the "Chicos" (the macaw-returnees) had once been fed has been enlarged and now serves as a dining room/lounge area. This area had a short walkway that led off to the kitchen, where that wonderful local cuisine is prepared.

One of my favorite meals in the rainforest is a rice concoction wrapped up in a large leaf--the indigenous people's "box lunch"; it makes for a great meal when on the go.

TRC sits in the 700,000 hectare wild heart of the Tambopata-Candamo Reserve. The trails are much the same as years ago, while the towers have been moved to accommodate more filming at the facility. There are 13 artificial PVC nestboxes up, which are being monitored by researchers.

Eduardo Nycnader, one of the owners of Rainforest Expeditions, tells me one of the original 1993 Chicos (a Chica to be correct) has paired up with a wild male and they are showing a great deal of interest in one of the artificial nests.

One morning while a group of 20 of us tourists, researchers, and guides were standing on the beach across from the clay lick two scarlets flew in and landed in a tree a short distance from us. After a few minutes one of the pair flew down and over the group and then landed in another tree close by. She sat there for a few minutes and proceeded to fly down and land on my shoulder! This was the bird Eduardo mentioned that had paired up with a wild male. I had played with her when I was at TRC back in 1993 when she was fledging. Did she remember after all these years? I think so, and she wanted to say hello.

By the way, she is one of the Chicos that makes daily visits to the lodge. She likes to walk down the top of the walls of the rooms to check for crackers, cookies or anything else she can eat or have fun with. The kitchen staff has to keep a strong vigilance for the Chicos as they love also to get into the sugar at the coffee table in the dining room. Tambopata is open just like Posada so the Chicos can come and go as they want. Yes, that includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. But, not to worry, one of the guides will grab a banana and run to the macaw table in the yard so tourists can eat in relative peace.

One of the fun things to do at TRC is take a night walk. Simply take a walk along one of the many trails by flashlight, find a good place to sit down, turn off all the flashlights and then sit perfectly still until you hear something moving close by. One night after about 15 minutes of sitting in the dark--and I mean pitch dark--we were joined by an armadillo. (Quite the contrasting critter to macaws!)

Earlier in the day Eduardo and I had been out checking nest boxes and on our way back, not more than a 100 feet from lodge, we spotted a deer grazing. She looked up at us and went back to grazing. Living in a reserve decreases many of the animals' fear of humans.

Tambopata still remains the only clay lick where you can see three of the large macaws at once: the green-winged, the scarlet, and the blue and gold. There are also three species of mini-macaws: red-bellied, severe and, if you are lucky, the blue-headed macaw.

If you are into photography, your best bet for pictures will be the green-winged at Posada. At Tambopata you will need at least a 1000-mm lens and that might not be strong enough as you have to view the lick from across the river or, at low water, there is an island about half-way across. Also, two small blinds are available for use. One is above the lick where you can get a side shot and the other is in an area where the macaws like to hang out when not at the lick or in the trees above the lick.

Both Posada Amazonas and TRC are great lodges and deserve your consideration when booking an eco-trip to the rainforest of Peru! Please contact Rainforest Expeditions for more information.

Chico at Tambopata

Chico in guest room at Tambopata

Boat arriving Puerto Maldonado

Tambopata River

Artificial nest box (display only)

Getting back together

ARA:

Winter 02

Summer 01

Winter 00

Fall 00

Summer 00

Spring 00

Winter 99

Summer 99