Rain Forest Visit with Manu Nature Tours

Itinerary

Food

Guides

Boatsmen

Waitpersons

Tio Esteban

• Uncle Esteban arrived at Manu Lodge intending to stay for 15 days and has been there for 15 years. He believes himself to be about 70 years of age. Tio has good energy, is physically slight but is as strong as an ox, sharp in mind and with an excellent memory. One of his many duties includes clearing jungle paths. Tio is unafraid of most things, including jaguars, peccaries and snakes, except he fears natives and has sometimes encountered human tracks during his trail clearing. Manu Lodge is his home and Tio is the heart of Manu Lodge.
  
• Tio Esteban has a way with animals and has several pets who come when he calls the names he gives them:
  o "Benito" is a toucan.
  o "Bicky" was a baby tapir when Tio adopted and raised her. A jaguar had killed Bicky's mother and Bicky ran right into the arms of Tio. When Bicky was six years old, she went for a drink in the lake and was eaten by Clotilde. Tio cried for weeks after Bicky died.
  o "Clotilde" is a black caiman, about 14 feet long with a missing foot
  o "Maria" is a pale-winged trumpeter bird.
  o "Marsalino" is a black caiman, about eight feet long
  o "Verjeña" the peccary was relocated after attacking several tourists.

Jungle Plants

• Bamboo lives in the jungle. These varieties look different from Asian bamboo and are equally beautiful.
  
• Bromeliads grow everywhere, as do orchids. Orchids were not blooming during our visit.
  
• Fungus and epiphytes: so many types, textures and colors! We rarely saw the same kind twice.
  
• Ginger and heliconia grow profusely.. We think they look so unusual in our tropical floral arrangements and they are everywhere in the jungle.
  
• Mimosa plants! Have you ever touched one? It's short and delicate; when you touch it, the leaves immediately expire.
  
• "Strangler trees" grow beside a host tree, eventually surrounding and killing it. We stood inside a strangler tree that had already devoured its host.
  
• Trees in the rain forest are long limbed with foliage at the top. Favorites include cecropia and, the giants of the jungle, Ceiba. Capirona trees shed their bark three times annually in a successful effort to keep climbing plants from adhering. The surface is red, smooth and beautiful. Many rain forest trees do not root deeply and their trunks spread wide for balance.
  
• Unusual begonias amazed Lauren. The leaves look familiar, but the flowers are different.

Wild Animals

• Butterflies, more beautiful and colorful than any we have seen before, among others, Blue Morpho and transparent Ithomiidae
  
• Caimans (both black and white varieties). These became quite common to see and the largest one was about 15 feet long.
  
• Capybaras (three sightings)
  
• Crabs (in the jungle?! Yes, the forest variety!)
  
• Frogs
  
• Giant otters (three sightings of each two, eight and three animals)
  
• Glass fish
  
• Lizards
  
• Monkeys (Wooley, Howler, Squirrel, Brown Capuchin, White Capuchin, Spider, Dusky Titi)
  
• King Vulture (very rare, first sighting of the year for our guide Leo!)
  
• Mosquitoes, termites, flies, bees, wasps, ICK!
  
• Nests of birds, termites and wasps
  
• Possum, which scampered onto the dinner table in our dining tent in an unsuccessful attempt to help itself to a serving of oropeso bread
  
• Parrot flock of about one thousand (noisy!)
  
• Peccary herd of about 60 wild pigs (scary sounding, smelly and dangerous)
  
• Side-necked turtles, called this because they are unable retract their heads. Usually, several are stacked head-to-tail on a log taking in the sun.
  
• Stick insects
  
• Tayra (one sighting)
  
• Urania moth
  
• Wild turkeys who freeze in their tracks when they sense your presence; if you stop for a few minutes, they begin walking again (Hey, where did THOSE come from?!!!!)
  
• Worm we named "Alvaro's Halloween Fluke"
  
• Tracks of a jaguar (two days old), tapir tracks and peccary tracks

Great Stories from Naturalist Guide Leo

• Peccary attack required a female tourist to receive stitches on her back thigh.
  
• Male tourist strayed from the group when Nature called ("numero dos en la selva"). While crouching, a fer-de-lance snake bit him on the butt. He felt a sting but did not give it much attention. As the day wore on, the poison caused more and more pain. Eventually, he was taken to the hospital and his leg was amputated.
  
• Yellow-rumped cacique birds are skilled imitators. During the construction of Manu Lodge, workers heard the sounds of hammering, a creaking door and a circular band saw even though no equipment was in use - the clever mimicry of this bird!
  
• While doing research alone, Leo found himself stuck in the middle of a herd of peccaries. He managed to climb an arched vine and hold onto another vine while being surrounded by an inner ring of vicious males and an outer ring of females. It was two and a half hours before he was freed. How frightening!
  
• Mateo, the chef at the Manu Tented Campsite, slept alone in a tent. During the middle of the night, a tapir that was unable to see the tent bumped into Mateo sleeping inside! Here's someone else's photo of a tapir.
  
• Natives attacked a Manu Nature Tours boat as it traveled along the river. The arrow stuck in the wooden side of the boat after being shot from the trees above. The arrow is now in the office of Boris Gomez-Luna, owner of Manu Nature Tours.

Drinking Game (also from Leo)

Dumb Tourist Award

Cool Thing To Do in the Jungle

Canopy Climbing

 

With Leo's knowledge, we identified the following birds on this activity: Mealy parrots Attila white eyed Blue-crowned trogon Black-fronted nunbird Flycatcher Yellow-browed tody flycatcher Common piping guan Blue & yellow macaws Red & green macaws Blue-headed parrots Masked crimson tanager Plum throated cotinga Parakeets Spangled cotinga Muscovy duck (like the kind you see on menus!) Mountain tanager Caracari toucan Black caracara Tytira Paradise tanager Yellow-rumped cacique Golden eared tanager Slate colored hawk

We saw a great many other birds throughout the entire jungle trip. Here are more which Leo and Alvaro identified for us: Anhinga, the "snake bird" because it swims well and looks like a swimming snake Cinnamon or Cliff flycatcher Cock of the Rock Cowbirds Great egret Green jays Green kingfisher Highland motmot Hoatzins, clumsy, beautiful, can't fly far Horned screamers King vulture Kingfishers Marsh birds Orinoco geese Phoebe Quetzal Razor-billed curassow Red-throated Caracara Ridge kingfisher Roadside hawk Scarlet macaws Snowy egret Tiger heron Torent ducks Turkeys White necked heron White winged swallows

Giant Otters

• Juarez Cocha: In our catamaran, we followed two otters who disappeared into the grasses at the end of the Cocha. Thinking we missed them, we disembarked the catamaran to climb into another boat for traveling up river. As we departed, the otters came out to "say goodbye" from the bank.
  
• Salvador Cocha: We had the rare opportunity to view for over an hour eight animals near their burrow while they went about their daily duties of fishing, eating, snuggling, grooming each other, peeing, playing, barking a warning when we got too close and hearing their cubs "mew" from the nest. This kind of viewing NEVER happens - it was "Discovery Channel" without commercial interruptions!
  
• Otorongo Cocha: We watched from a steel viewing platform as a trio fished. One otter caught a 15" white piranha and carried in its mouth to the end of the lake to enjoy.

Jungle Sounds

• The high-pitched hum of mosquitoes at Salvador Cocha surrounded us for miles. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!
  
• Howler monkeys at Manu Lodge woke us at 5a each day to howl for thirty minutes to mark his group's territory. The females in his group barked in response. We are told that the dominant male howler eats his male offspring to prevent competition.
  
• Frogs at Manu Tented Campsite croaked from about 6p to 9p (perhaps longer, but we were asleep).
  
• Birds, crickets, or are monkeys? After a while, it was difficult to distinguish between sounds!
  
• Peccary herd: a herd of about sixty wild pigs was frightening after listening to stories of injuries they inflict. In addition, we heard the ground rumble as the herd moved nearby. There is something really horrible about listening to these unpredictable animals as they cracked hard palm seeds in their teeth and grunted uncontrollably.
  
• A bird whose song sounded like a Casio watch alarm
  
• Another bird whose song sounded like an old-fashioned telephone ring
  
• The rushing stream alongside Manu Cloud Forest Lodge provided a soothing white noise to sleep to.

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