Paradise Lost

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Tunki, Cusco. 23.20.

I’m back in Cusco. Same hotel, same room, same bed, even. I’m not sure if that makes the return better or worse. It’s like I never left… and yet so much has happened in the last six days. Can it really be true that I was in the Amazon Rainforest for nearly a week? Did I really see giant otters, quetzals, caimans and tapirs, or did I just dream it all?

In case you hadn’t picked it up already, I’m feeling genuinely quite sad. I’ve not had that feeling about leaving a place behind for a long time. It’s probably a combination of fatigue, consecutive 4.30am starts and extremely busy days, coupled with a legion of mosquito bites (the damned things seemed immune to even the highest factor DEET), but I imagine tangled up in all of that physical strain is also a genuine sense of loss.

I have never been to a place like Manu before. Where there are so many species of animal all around you all the time that you can barely keep track. Doñana comes close, but Doñana is relatively accessible. Bus timings aside, I could reach El Rocío within twenty-four hours of leaving my front door in England. Manu lies on the other side of the world and beyond: a full two to three days’ ride by boat and car from Cusco, over the Andes and far along the Madre de Diós River.

I will leave Peru in a few days’ time knowing I have seen and done all I came to see and do. I will be happy about that. But there is a Manu-sized hole in my heart. i didn’t feel this way about Bwindi, or Queen Elizabeth National Park, or Białowieza Forest. But I feel it here. I cannot explain why it affects me so. But it has.

We left Bonanza Lodge at daybreak. The fishing boat was where we had left it the night before, cleaned of all the silt and stones and shining in the sunlight. Our boat was moored a little way downriver – we had to move it to give ourselves space to haul the skiff out of the water last night.

I dozed on and off during the four hour journey to Atalaya. We stopped a couple of times at sandbars for loo breaks. The weather could hardly have been better, and the river had shrunk considerably, creating islands where there had been none before. My only regret with Manu is that we had not set out on a day like today. The things we might have seen!

We got to Atalaya Port just after nine, where we encountered a couple of other tour groups: one headed into Manu, the other headed back to Cusco (a three-day variant). Quite what they expected to see or achieve in three days when it takes at least one and a half to reach the park is beyond me, though perhaps they came for the hot springs. The bunch of loutish English fellas who got off their tour bus and went straight to the bar to buy booze and cigarettes gave a strong indication that they had not come all the way out here to see cocoi herons and black-faced antthrushes.

We said goodbye to our captain Felipe and his boat boy, Hugh, sending them off with tips for their service. I noticed that Felipe cut the motor every time he saw me angle my lens at something while we were out on the river. I almost stopped shooting because of that, so as not to inconvenience the others, but in my heart I was extremely grateful for his charity.

We saw the Río Madre de Diós one last time from the mirador where we had stood a few days ago, on a far wetter and cloudier day, before it vanished behind the trees, out of sight and out of mind, but not out of memory.

Having climbed steadily for most of the morning, the road from Atalaya forks sharply up into the cloud forests that mark the edge of the Andes. We stopped for lunch at a spot halfway up to Acjanaco (the pass over the mountains) where Rive had wanted to pause on the way down, only it had been raining hard then. Now, the sun was shining, so we could enjoy a short hike to see the twin waterfalls of Pachayoq – which may mean “master of the earth” in Quechua, if my work on piecing together their various suffixes is correct.

I guess I dawdled, because by the time I came down, the others had vanished. Rive too – but I soon realised where they had gone when I heard him whistle for my attention. They had gone up the road on Rive’s command, as he had found the thing he had brought us here for in the first place: not lunch, not waterfalls, but the real gem of the cloud forest: a quetzal.

Like the hoatzin, the quetzal is a bird whose name originated in the Nahuatl language of pre-Colombian Mexico. There, they were highly prized by both the Aztec and the Mayans for their spectacular green feathers. Moctezuma, one of the last Aztec emperors, had a headdress made up of more than four hundred.

Here in Peru, however, they are a shy bird of the cloud forests, and eagerly sought after by all the tour groups who pass this way. Lucky for us, Rive knew exactly where to look.

It would be the last wild encounter of the tour – and what an incredible find to end the trip. Certainly a lot more than “just another bird – like we haven’t seen enough already”, as the English louts from Atalaya brayed aloud over our shoulders while waiting for their cook to set the table.

After Acjanaco, the scenery changes instantly. The endless rainforest is gone. The slopes on the south side of the Andes are comparatively naked, marked by a few terraces and patches of eucalyptus trees. It is still beautiful – far more impressive than anything in Somerset – but it is not Manu.

I will recover from this maudlin reverie, I promise. But it does feel a little like saying goodbye to a lover who you fear you may never see again. I will simply have to make sure that is not the case. I’m stubborn like that.

We reached Cusco shortly after five – an impressively swift journey, considering twelve hours prior we had been deep in the rainforest on the other side of the mountains. Our driver Ale dropped us off one by one: first Jace, the Danish girls Katrin and Isabella and our guide Rive; then the German couple, Vera and Robert; and then me. I said a fond farewell to our chef Bernadino, who has been the beating heart of this expedition, never deprived of his enormous smile. I will miss that man – and not just because of his sumptuous cooking.

Farewell, Manu. It has been an honour. Tomorrow, I will head to Ollantaytambo, the last stage of my journey, for a few days of peace and quiet in the Sacred Valley. Between my work snapping away for all of six days and our exertions salvaging the boat yesterday, I think I have earned them. BB x

Strangers in the Forest

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Bonanza Lodge, 20.13.

The great Amazonian adventure is almost over. Like the macaws flying in shrieking groups across the river, I too will soon be traveling away from here. I am starting to get cold feet about leaving this place. I don’t have a choice, as I’m with an organised tour, and getting here without one would be next to impossible, but I can’t help feeling greatly attached to this place. There is something eternal about forests that pulls you in. Maybe it’s an inherited memory from years ago, before our ancestors left the shelter of the trees and walked out into the world.

Which is a very fitting image for what happened today.

Dawn breached like a golden whale through the clouded sky, bathing the forest in its hopeful glow. I haven’t had as many Amazonian sunrises as I’d have liked due to the inclement weather, but this morning made up for it.

We stopped off at the ranger station to sign out and fill out a couple of surveys. The posters in there about the pet trade stabbed at my heart like they did the first time – and, just like then, I seriously wondered what I was doing teaching when I could be out here, fighting for what I believe in. If I hadn’t pinned all my hopes on finding Her and raising a family, this is where I would be. Somewhere like this, anyway.

Flights of fancy aside, we set out for the river confluence we forded the other day, only this time we sailed downriver for a kilometre or so to reach Boca Manu, Rive’s hometown, so that he could vote in the presidential election.

I had almost forgotten that the rest of the world was still turning within the timeless shelter of these mighty kapok trees. Here, life goes on as it has done for millions of years. The sun rises over a misty canopy and sets to the shriek of macaws and the chirping of a thousand crickets. Politics feels so petty in a place like this.

Boca Manu is a world away from Cusco. This largely native community sits on the edge of the national park, where the Manu river meets the mighty Madre de Dios. So fierce is the flow of the combined rivers that the town is steadily retreating into the forest. The jetty is a few slabs of wood fastened to several oil drums with a plank bridge leading up to a tiled section of the riverbank that was once a couple of houses, long since lost to the river. Only the scaffold of a single wall remains, and it has been converted into an advertising post for the local ferrymen.

My companions set out for a walk into town while Rive went to cast his vote for one of the thirty-six contenders for Peru’s next president. I followed, albeit at a distance. From the way people stared, I don’t think Boca Manu gets many visitors. It’s certainly wouldn’t be on the itinerary if not for today being election day.

For the second time on this trip, I saw a case of jungle domestication. If I hadn’t met the resident macaw at Bonanza, I might have been more startled when a red howler monkey suddenly appeared out of nowhere, slipping through a farm gate and into a kitchen window, before the monkey’s owner, a small boy not much taller than the monkey itself, came back out with the howler wrapped protectable around his back.

It would be so easy to judge with a European eye, and yet I am sure these animals mean more to the locals here because they can name them. In our rush to become civilised, we have become worryingly nature-blind in the West. If I should be so lucky as to have children of my own one day, I will try to teach them what I know. When you a put a name to something (or even someone), it suddenly matters a whole lot more than it did before.

I dozed off on the boat, but was stirred back out of my reverie by a slightly cautious word from Rive: “Native people, on the bank of the river”.

I looked with my eyes first. Sure enough, there they were: brown figures at the forest’s edge, watching us. A man and woman, dressed in little but string and strips of cloth, flanked by a couple of grinning children. They stared at us at first, and then waved enthusiastically in our direction. A fifth child watched from the shadow of the trees, one finger in his mouth, unflinching.

I counted five, but Rive assured us that there would be a great deal more hidden away in the trees who would appear if we got too close. We respected the law of the land and moved on, feeling the curiosity of their eyes burning into our backs as we sailed on up the river.

Manu National Park is home to an unknown number of indigenous uncontacted tribes, some of the last people on Earth to remain beyond the reach of civilisation. Some were driven into these protected forests by conflict with farmers and miners over the Brazilian border. Others have been here since long before the borders of the park were drawn.

A Proto-Arawak people, the uncontacted tribes are divided into family groups throughout the vast area of forest stretching west from the river to the cloud forests at the foot of the Andes. They are only very rarely encountered on visits to Manu, which is all to the good, as their interactions with us in the past have not always been friendly. Camera traps around the lakes show that they have been known to trail visiting tourists on their walks through the forest, running silently through the trees and making their presence known only by their splayed footprints in the mud and, sometimes, bows, arrows and woven baskets left behind in a panic.

It’s dark out there now. I wonder what that family is called. What hopes and ambitions those young children have. The tribes are known to fight and each other over each other’s women – an important economic force in these communities, since more women means more babies, and more babies means a stronger community. Another side note that we have chosen to ignore in the West.

Back at Bonanza, the weather continued to be exceptionally kind – an apology, perhaps, for all those days of rain.

We had two hours to rest. I spent them exploring the grounds, chasing after a sunbittern that was lurking around the flooded ditch by the lodge and watching an adorable troop of squirrel monkeys feeding in the trees just behind my cabin. I’d forgotten how hard they can be to photograph as they move numbly through the canopy, especially once they’ve become used to your presence and no longer stop to stare at you out of curiosity.

I wonder – do they look at us the same way we looked looked at those native people at the edge of the forest?

After a chat with Rive about the natives over a bowl of Bernadino’s homemade snacks, we went into the forest to look for bats roosting in the great kapok tree. The flooded creek was still nearly waist high in parts, so we couldn’t reach the observation tower to watch the parrots flying in to roost at sunset, which was a shame. Seeing a different kind of bat made up for it though.

Instead, Rive suggested going to help the lodge’s boys retrieve their sunken fishing boat from the river’s edge. We had noticed it on the day we arrived, visible only by its prow sticking out of the water. Weighed down with the sheer volume of rain the night before we arrived, it had tipped over and the river had done the rest, filling it with silt and stones.

I was delayed because I had set out into the forest to try to track down a tinamou that was calling just metres from the forest path. They’re exceptionally hard to locate, though, being cryptically camouflaged and calling from the shelter of the thickest parts of the undergrowth. To make up for my lateness, I stripped down to my shorts once I got there and got into the river up to my neck with the rest of the men.

It took a team of twelve men in the water and another support team of gringos on the rope up on dry land the best part of half an hour (and no shortage of pivoting and digging) to get the job done. Led by our captain, a burly native man from Atalaya who engineered a makeshift tourniquet using logs and thick rope to drag the skiff closer to the shore, we eventually managed to haul the fishing boat up and out of the mud. It felt good to be helpful, rather than just coming and going through Manu like any other passive tourist.

I also learned at first hand why the uncontacted tribes have remained so, with civilisation so close at hand. Swimming from one side of the sunken skiff to the other, I found myself more than a metre from the riverbank. It dropped steeply all of sudden, deeper than I could reach, and the force of the current dragged me downriver. The only reason I didn’t get carried far was because I wasn’t that far out and I had the boat to hold on to.

I’m not the most powerful swimmer, but I don’t think even the strongest swimmer could fight a current that strong. In the dry season, the river isn’t quite as high, but it still flows with the cumulative force of hundreds of miles of rainwater, and the ground here is sloped as it climbs up into the cloud forests and becomes the Andes once again, adding to its momentum. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a river where the water wasn’t level before today. I’ve certainly never been in one that was quite so strong.

Dinner felt earned after that – as did the cold shower immediately afterwards. I stuck around outside for a while before heading back into my lodge to sleep, as the night sky was too good to miss. Accompanied by the eerie flash of fireflies below the skyline, an enormous arm of the Milky Way cut right overhead, flanked by strange new constellations that I’ve only ever read about in books, like the Southern Cross. I might have seen it briefly in Uganda, too, but I was only south of the Equator for a few days. And anyway, that was a very long time ago.

I don’t know when I’ll see a sky this clear again. The only light here comes from the dim lamps in one or two of the lodges, and the nearest town, Boca Manu, is many miles away to the north. So here, deep in the Amazon rainforest, you can see the night sky as it was always intended to be: immense, magical and unspoiled, like the rainforest all around me.

I don’t want to go. My clothes would really appreciate being somewhere higher and drier (especially after my dip in the river), but this place has got into my heart like nowhere else in Peru – and I’ve adored pretty much every part of this country that I have seen.

But going is tomorrow’s business, not tonight’s. I should get some sleep – we have an early start and a long journey tomorrow. I’ll let the rainforest sing me go sleep one last time. BB x

River Wolves

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Bonanza Lodge, Manu NP. 14.29.

Some days are red letter days. I should have known today would be one of those days when I woke up and it wasn’t raining.

After three days and nearly sixty-six hours of on-and-off rain, the sun had returned. The forest looks so different in the sunlight. I had almost forgotten what being dry felt like.

Our destination this morning was the macaw clay lick or collpa in search of parrots. Bernardino sent us off with a packed breakfast and Rive led us deep into the surrounding rainforest, with the caution that the macaws would not come in the numbers that they do in the dry season, owing to the abundance of fruit-bearing trees at this time of year. As such, I wasn’t expecting much – so I wasn’t overly disappointed when the only psitticaforme to put in an appearance (beyond the distant flyby pairs of macaws) was a couple of orange-cheeked parrots. They were adorable to watch, but they weren’t quite the spectacle that this place sees in the hotter months.

Eager to find us something to celebrate, Rive went out into the rainforest and came running back a half-hour later with the news that he had found a Fer-de-lance snake – the deadliest snake in South America and one of the most dangerous denizens of the Amazon – near the mammal clay lick a short distance away. Leaving our supplies in the macaw hide, we set out after him.

Sure enough, it was sitting right where Rive had found it: a beautiful and deadly viper, whose untreated bite is fatal. I didn’t need to worry about getting close enough for a good photo, as the lens was the perfect safeguard.

While we waited out the final hours, a troupe of squirrel monkeys and an accompanying pair of capuchins kept us company. I had been hoping for a close encounter with some of South America’s monkeys since we entered the park, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Back at the lodge, Rive called in a few favours and managed to secure us a couple of extra hours on the lagoon so that we could search for the otters again. Visits to the lake are strictly controlled by the rangers, but since we had laboured fruitlessly under a downpour the day before, Rive was given the green light to take us out again.

While the sun was shining (and the forest was suddenly absolutely sweltering) we rushed to wash and dry our clothes – they were, it must be said, a mass of damp and sweaty fabric by this point. While I was coming and going, one of the lodge groundskeepers approached with a smile and asked me something I didn’t at first understand: “¿quiere el gripotú?”. It was only when I realised that – just like our guide – he was saying a bird’s name in English that I gathered he was offering to show me a great pottoo. It was high up in the tallest tree, unmoving, looking for all the world like an extension of the branch upon which it was sitting, but this Leandro was able to point it out. I was very grateful – hard as they are to find, I was hoping to see one of these cryptic creatures out here.

After another incredible spread put on by our chef Bernadino, we set out. Hoping for a change of fortune, I doubled back and took my rosary this time. Maybe the Lady of the Marshes would give us the luck we needed to find the river wolves of the Cocha Salvador.

And she did. We had hardly been standing at the dock on the concha when our boatman called out “otter otter!”. We got into the catamaran and drifted out into the lake, but didn’t need to paddle the thing far – the otters came straight to us!

Giant otters are found only in South America. The largest of them – the dominant male and female of each family – can grow to an astounding two metres in length. They were hunted to near extinction a few decades ago when overfishing and the demand for otter fur purses led many wily Peruvians to export their pelts for great profit, but in places like Manu they have been able not only to survive but to thrive. Hundreds of otters are estimated to live in the conchas along the Manu river, with each family staking out a territory of their own.

They’re very endearing to watch, whether they’re hunting, eating or just playing around. The locals call them lobos – wolves – rather than nutrias (the Spanish word for otter) on account of their habit of forming family packs around a dominant male and female, but when they’re hauled out of the water and rolling around looking for a comfy spot, they look a lot more like very long cats.

Another tour group was waiting for us to return with the catamaran, so we couldn’t hang out with the otters all afternoon – which is just as well, because my arms got absolutely mauled by the lake’s biting flies, which didn’t seem to be bothered by the DEET I had applied before setting out. My right arm in particular looks like a measles case. We were dropped off at the second of the lake’s two docks, putting a large roost of long-nosed bats to flight from under the jetty as we arrived. I hoped to catch one in flight, but I got luckier: one of them landed on a tree by the jetty and clung to the trunk, watching me from those tiny, beady eyes. It only took off when one of my companions returned from the forest and stepped out onto the jetty.

Before heading back to the lodge, Rive took us on a night walk through the forest. The rainforest is a magical place in the first half hour after sunset: a symphony of birds coming off shift and insects and amphibians taking their place. Tinamous whistling mournfully in the undergrowth and woodcreepers echoing their cries from the canopy. The descending hoot of a pygmy-owl, the beautifully sad song of the ant-thrush and the piping calls of poison frogs from the leaf litter. What an incredible place this is!

Incredible – and also incredibly dangerous. As if the poison frogs weren’t enough, we found an enormous cane toad, many tremendously large spiders and two scorpions, including this especially monstrous individual clinging to a tree trunk near the river. I’ve been checking my boots and shoes twice as carefully ever since!

Bernadino had prepared another incredible feast for dinner, which felt like a triumph after the day’s work. Rive was pleased: essentially, we had ticked every box so far but the jaguar, and that was always going to be a Herculean task during the rainy season, with the sandbars all submerged by the swollen river and the mornings much too rainy to encourage any of the great beasts out into the open.

Tomorrow we begin the twenty-hour trek back to Cusco. Eight hours in the boat as far as Bonanza and then another twelve from there. I am very happy with all that I have seen, and I am ready to return to civilisation, but I still want to come back. In my heart I know that I am not finished with Manu. It has been a very special place. Someday, I hope I will see this place again. It is already imprinted upon my heart like so many places: a lighting tree in Huelva, a porch in Boroboro, a smooth boulder on the cliff at Finisterre.

Someday, Manu. Someday. BB x

Strange New World

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Jaguar Ecolodge, Manu NP. 20.07.

Shortly after eight this morning, we crossed over into the Reserved Zone. After three days of travel through Manu’s enormous national park, we have finally arrived at the inner sanctum – where the wild things truly are.

If it had stopped raining for even a minute or so of the eight hour journey upriver, we might have seen a lot more of those wild things than we did. As it was, the rains had swollen the river to a monstrous size, swallowing up most of the sandbanks, so the only creatures that were much in evidence were the water birds – who probably would have been there anyway.

All the same, it is hard to describe just how incredible this place truly is. The mountains are far behind us now, concealed by the clouds that covered our approach. Now it is only the river and the forest in every possible direction.

It’s surprising how quickly you get used to the sight of free-flying macaws; birds that until now I have only ever seen as captives of the pet trade. Pet parrots are such a thing – or at least, they were in my childhood – that seeing them wild almost feels like the reverse of normality.

So many of the iconic birds live here in Manu: blue-and-yellow, red-and-green and the iconic scarlet macaw. There was a scarlet macaw at the Bonanza lodge this morning, in fact, sheltering from the rain. A “free pet”, according to our guide, who comes to the lodge because of the prospect of handouts (and, evidently, shelter). There is little need for a cage when the animal is already in its natural habitat, I guess.

I realised only when we got to our destination – the Jaguar Eco Lodge – that I have finally lost my first object of this trip. Frustratingly, it’s my card reader. It’s not the end of the world – I’ve managed every other adventure without it – but it does make blogging on the go a lot less feasible as I can’t share the photos I’ve been taking on the go. I guess you’ll just have to wait. I’ll have to backdate these posts anyway, as I’m already three days behind – power has been a precious commodity, WiFi even more so m, and more importantly, I haven’t wanted to waste even a second on my phone when I’m out here in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

After a five o’clock start, we got back into the boat and sailed downriver to Boca Manu, where the Madre de Diós meets the Manu river. Our first port of call was the ranger station, where we were officially signed in and registered. Of the 29 rangers that work within the park, 11 come from the native communities that live within its borders. That much was plain from the personnel at the station, who looked about as far removed from Europeans as the modern world allows.

They were exceptionally kind. If we were not on a guided tour, I would have liked to stop and chat for a while. After all, I once wanted to be a park ranger myself. If it hadn’t been for my dismal mathematical ability and my lacklustre scores in Biology – coupled with my desire to raise a family – I might even have followed that path.

Manu is home to 1.030 species of birds. That’s an astonishing one tenth of the birds that can be found in the entire planet. So I might be forgiven for being a little glum at the prospect of the seemingly endless rain continuing for a third day, grounding most of the park’s birds deep within the cover of the trees.

At least a few of the shorebirds were gracious enough to put in an appearance, on what little of the shore remained, including a few handsome cocoi herons, wood storks and a jabiru, a marabou-esque migrant from Brazil.

We even had the good fortune to see the sandy-coloured nightjars that usually roost on the sandbars. They had sought refuge on a sunken tree, and looked rather disgruntled at their change of roost.

After another unbelievably good lunch on the boat courtesy of our chef Bernadino, we made straight for the nearby horseshoe lake of Cocha Salvador in search of giant otters. The usual location, Cocha Otorongo, has been out of bounds ever since it was raided by one of the local uncontacted tribes eight months ago.

There are signs in various places warning you to stay away from the tribes, not so much because of the risk to your own life through conflict, but because of the far greater risk to theirs of disease.

It feels strange to be in a part of the world where there are still people in the forest who remain free and out of step with the world. I don’t know what to make of it.

Powerboats are not allowed on the horseshoe lakes or cochas out of respect for the local wildlife. There is a catamaran for use by guides and their groups, provided you bring your own paddles. We couldn’t see the otters from the jetty, so we set out along its south arc in search.

The cochas are a sanctum like nowhere else I have ever known. I must have counted over a hundred species of animal and bird in the space of a couple of hours, despite the driving rain that returned to lash us throughout our quest. There were at least four species of kingfisher out and about, and an impressive young tiger-heron, which wasn’t as skittish as herons often are and allowed us to float right past.

My companions looked utterly despondent as the hours went by, the rain came down harder and the otters remained invisible. But I was having a great time, though I would have traded an hour of the day for a little sunshine, if only to make the conditions for photography a little better (I had to crank my shutter speed right down and force a steady hand to compensate for how dark it was beneath those clouds).

Another American bird that kept us company on our jaunt around the lake was the anhinga, an extended version of the cormorant, whose habit of swimming so low in the water that only its long neck breaks the surface has given it the alternative name of “snakebird”.

However, while the otters remained beyond our grasp, my primary target for the day was met over and and over again: the utterly bizarre hoatzin, a plant-eating bird that looks like an unholy cross between a hawk, a parrot, a pigeon, a chicken and a cormorant. Understandably, perhaps, this half-breed is in its own family. I’m not sure any other bird family would admit it as it of their own.

It really is, quite literally, the ugly duckling of the bird world. And I absolutely love them in their weirdness.

The otters never did appear, but we were finally relieved of the rain and rewarded with a stunning Amazonian sunset as we sailed back upriver to the lodge. We even encountered a family of night-monkeys on the walk back to camp, but my lens couldn’t handle the darkness all too well. I guess I’ll just have to keep trying! There’s always tomorrow’s night walk.

That’s on write-up done. Onto the next one. BB x

Deluge

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Bonanza Lodge, Manu NP. 14.00.

After a full week of clear skies, Peru has decided to remind me that we are still in the rainy season.

When Sirius, the Dog Star, disappeared beneath a looming dark shroud and the first drops of rain began to fall, I knew we were in for a tropical storm, but I underestimated both its ferocity and its stamina. The heavens opened around eight o’clock last night and it was well past nine the following morning when it finally stopped. The reprieve was brief – brief enough to see us up the Madre de Diós river to our base camp at Bonanza Lodge, at any rate – before the rains returned with a vengeance. As I write, I do not know how long this spell will last, but I can only pray it is a passing tempest.

If it rains this hard again, our chances of seeing anything at the clay lick tonight are next to zero. We may even have to swim there.

This explains the look of concern on the manager’s face and her repeated plea to stay positive. I knew I was chancing it coming here in the rainy season, but the driest season is also the busiest, and I did so want to avoid the crowds. Besides, it’s not like I had the economy of choice. As a teacher my hands are tied when it comes to holidays.

So here I am, deep in the Amazon, bracing myself for a long, dark and probably very wet night.

Mary, mother of God. The river that brought me here was named for you. Show mercy and spare us from this endless downpour.

Fourteen Hours Later

The rain has returned. We were spared for the afternoon and most of the evening, but shortly before midnight it came down hard. It’s not torrential, but it is constant, beating down upon the iron roof of the lodge like a thousand furious fists.

But we did it. We saw the tapirs. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t worth bringing the camera, but I wasn’t to know. They’re tremendously skittish for such great beasts. A couple of seconds of Rive’s flashlight beam was enough to send them lurching off into the trees.

I’ll need to be up and ready to leave after five, so there’s little point in sleeping now. I might as well write and record.

After docking at Bonanza Lodge, we had an hour or so to prepare a night kit and then we set out into the forest after Rive, our guide. He packed light: a couple of strong torches and a machete. I don’t suppose you need much more to cut a path through the forest, day or night.

The rain had swelled the river considerably, so naturally it had a similar effect on the creeks between the lodge and the clay lick. Some of them had makeshift bridges laid across them. Others didn’t. The water was never as high as we had feared – that is, chest height – but it did reach well above the tops of my boots, so as well as wading through the water, we had to stop after each crossing to empty out half the contents of the creek.

All around us was the forest. In the dying light of the afternoon, it is a truly magical place. The flash of electric blue of a morpho butterfly. The eerie descending trill of an ant-thrush. The hooting call of some kind of monkey, faraway, indistinct. The ominous croak of cane toads and the repeated growl of a crested owl from somewhere high up in the canopy. Crickets – everywhere. Every now and again, the enormous roots of a magnificent kapok tree, the true lord of the rainforest, towering above the canopy.

I often needed to remind myself to look down at the path ahead, which was perilous – if not for the thick, sucking mud around the creeks, then for the armies of tropical insects all about. Leafcutter ants marching in single file along branches that might have acted as guide ropes. Spiders the size of butterflies lurking in webs strung out across the path. At least once, I saw a bullet ant, a fearsome denizen of the forest, recognisable by both its size and its solitary habits. Their bite is what gave them their name. A creature best given a very wide berth.

We reached the clay lick shortly after dusk, just as the light was beginning to fail. The watchtower sits well above the forest floor, overlooking a muddy clearing, pockmarked with the sunken wells of animal prints. A large bird – like a guan, but even bigger – kept us company as we laid out the mattresses and mosquito nets and laid out for a long vigil. Rive said it was a blue-throated piping-guan. I couldn’t see in the dark, so he showed himself once again a bloody good guide.

I might have got some sleep here or there. Or I might not. I’m not sure. I know I was woken when the first tapir arrived, and that I was already awake when the second appeared. I know that my camera struggled to lock onto the great beast, despite the brilliance of Rive’s torch beam.

Rive gave us the order around three o’clock to return to camp. Leading the way with light and knife, he escorted our sodden party back through the woods. I cared little for wet feet this time and simply plowed through the creeks up to my thighs. When the rest of you is already soaking, wading through a river isn’t as bad as it sounds.

We made it back to camp within forty minutes or so. I’ve left my boots out to dry on the steps, upside-down, and have used my shirt to dry their insides as best I can – they’ll be more useful from here on out than my hiking shoes. In a minute, I’ll need to be up and dressed again. The rain hasn’t let up, and it’s showing no signs of doing so, but we still have a long way to go. Two days of travel around its border and we aren’t even in the reserve yet. That’s just how big Manu is.

Was it worth it? To see a tapir – a secretive creature of the forest? Absolutely. To have even a glimpse at what Vietnam must have been like? Of course. But for me, the best of all was the soundscape. No YouTube video could ever recreate the all-encompassing magic of the rainforest at night.

Dawn is here – but I can’t see it. Maybe the deluge will stop before midday today. All I can do is hope. BB x

Into the Jungle

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Rainforest Lodge, Manu NP. 17.57.

I probably didn’t get enough sleep last night. I woke up several times between eleven and four and, in the end, I gave up trying to get to sleep. Honestly? I genuinely haven’t been this excited for a very long time.

Let me describe it to you. I’m sitting in a very comfy chair in Rainforest Lodge, on the edge of the Amazon Rainforest. No – within that rainforest. We hit the Amazon when the stands of eucalyptus trees died away on the southern slope of the Andes to be replaced with mile after mile of endless indigenous forest.

Frogs croaking. Crickets chirping. The shriek of macaws flying in to roost. The heavy wingbeat of a guan, a kind of Amazonian turkey. I can still see its silhouette up in one of the trees above the main lodge. Earlier, I heard the piping song of a toucan, and the quiet hoot of a faraway tinamou. And up above, enormous banks of cloud, like I’ve never seen before – unless it was in wildlife documentaries about this vast forested part of the world.

Rive, our guide, picked me up from Casa Tunki shortly after five thirty. It was a fairly quiet drive out of Cusco, as we had a lot of ground to cover. We passed Huacarpay early doors – I’m glad I’m not shelling out 180$ for a private tour to that place. It looked like a bit of a step down from Lima’s Pantanos de Villa (which, though a whim decision, really was top notch).

We made two stops. One in Paucartambo for breakfast, and another just before at the Chullpas of Ninamarca, a collection of pre-Inca tombs the Spanish ransacked years ago – but that the locals still visit with offerings in memory of their ancestors from time to time.

The Manu Road is famous for the quality of its birdwatching. Of the more than a thousand species that can be found in Manu, some five hundred or so can be encountered along the road. We didn’t see anywhere near that many of them, but that’s mostly because of the rain that came down hard during our passage of the long and winding road down through the mountains.

The forest seems infinite, and we haven’t even reached the reserved zone yet. These are what are known as the “habitable quarters” – the zona cultural. Already, in the last hour alone, I have seen more species than I could ever hope to see in Taunton in a single year.

This is a very special place.

We took a short walk along the road (as the rain came down) in search of cloud forest species. Most of them kept well hidden, though our guide did locate an Andean guan watching us from the side of the road.

We had a lot more luck after lunch with the hunt for Peru’s national bird, the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (in case I didn’t already have enough Andean birds on my list). The breeding season may not be for several months – kicking off in September – but the local males keep a strict routine at their lek, cleaning their favourite perches and practising their dances for when the females come looking.

They’re fairly hard to miss, being a shade of orange so loud they might well be visible in the dark. I’m going into Manu without expectations – the thing I wanted to see most of all was a condor, and I was truly blessed on that front – but it was really special to see a bird so important to the Peruvians that they made it their national bird.

The lodge itself is an explosion of rainforest life. I’m having to lean heavily on the Merlin app to help me identify what I can hear: toucans, tinamous, tanagers, parrots, macaws, honeycreepers, earthcreepers and oropendolas. None of which I’ve ever seen or heard before.

I can’t see any charging stations, so I’d better leave it there. We set out early tomorrow for the Madre de Dios river at Atalaya. I have signal, which I wasn’t expecting (a begrudging thanks to Elon Musk’s Skylink) but I might run out of power at some point. So I’ll stop writing now and enjoy the sounds of the rainforest for a while. Dinner isn’t until seven – and I know it will be incredible, because our chef Bernardino is an absolute legend.

Wish me luck! BB x

N.B. Dinner was amazing, the night sky is even better (I saw a shooting star!) and there’s a changing station in the lodge – but not tomorrow, so I need to be prepared. But right now it’s raining with biblical proportions out there, so I’ll wait a bit for my phone to finish charging before making a break for it to my cabin!

The Drums of War

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Tunki, Cusco. 14.12.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing in the news today. It’s like the world is going to Hell. Here in Cusco, you’d never know there was a terrible war taking place far away, over the mountains, across the ocean and the great sea of sand. Trump might have a habit of talking big game, but he is backed by the mightiest nation on the planet. I fear for the people of Iran.

As if I didn’t already feel cut off from everything that is going on, I am about to go off grid for six whole days. I don’t imagine there’s much signal in the Amazon rainforest, and I would rather not use up my phone battery trying to find out. During that time, Peru will elect its next president and Trump’s deal with have to be met – or else.

Once again, I find myself wondering with no small amount of irony that the most dangerous stretch of my South American adventure will be the layover in New York.

But isn’t that what this was all about? To get away from it all for a bit – from work, from loneliness, from the depressing chaos of global politics?

Having bought the boleto turístico, and with one day more in Cusco than I’d originally planned, I decided to go all in. 130 soles for 16 sites may sound good, but at 20 soles each, the average traveler is more likely to save money by paying at each site. Some are far away, like Tipón and Pikillaqta, four are in the Sacred Valley, one of them is in the middle of a roundabout in one of the busiest streets of downtown Cusco and two of them are art galleries.

However – I bought the ten day pass, so now I have to get my money’s worth. Tipón and Pikillaqta are too far away to be reached without hiring a guide and a vehicle, but I reckon I can do everything else on this ticket. At least now it feels like a proper challenge!

With Sacsayhuamán already achieved, first on my list was the Museo Histórico Regional. It’s worth visiting solely because it was the house of the incredible Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, a 16th century Peruvian nobleman for whom the expression “main character energy” might have been coined. Though Spanish by birthright, he was also the great-grandson of the Inca Huayna Capac, one of the last rulers of the Inca Empire known as the Tahuantinsuyo. Raised primarily by his Inca mother and uncle, he developed a profound admiration for his heritage and, assisted by the lavish education his Spanish father provided for him, he became the first great writer of the Americas. At 21, he left Peru for Spain, fought for the Crown in the Morisco Rebellion, and published many books about his native land and its people.

Understandably, El Inca is venerated here in Peru as both a defender of the native people and one of Cusco’s most illustrious native sons, whose works were influential for many famous statesmen and philosophers.

Another of Cusco’s greatest heroes is Tupac Amaru II, also of royal descent, who started a rebellion against the Spanish after witnessing multiple abuses of power at the expense of the indigenous peoples of Peru through his work as a muleteer. Unlike El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, however, Tupac Amaru met a grisly end, torn apart in a public execution in Cusco’s Plaza Mayor as a punishment for his resistance.

It’s worth noting that Tupac Amaru II was the first public figure to abolish the slavery of Black people in the Spanish Americas. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Afeni Shakur decided to give her son the name of this legendary figurehead of indigenous resistance, knowing that such a powerful name could only inspire the young 2Pac to great things.

While it’s not on the list, I had to head downtown to find the enormous mural I’d seen on my way into town on my first night. I love a mural, especially when it tells a story, and one day I’d love to see Diego Rivera’s historical paintings in Mexico City. But for now, Cusco has its own retelling of the history of its people.

There are just so many details to pick up. The way the Spanish soldiers merge with the bodies of their horses, like centaurs, in imitation of the confusion the mounted soldiers caused among the natives, who had never seen a horse before. The war dog held on a chain by a Cistercian monk. The conquistadors gambling with dice over their stolen gold. The indigenous painter portraying the scene as a righteous conquest aided by a winged Santiago, under the instruction of a Spanish cleric. The bolas weapons of the Inca and the Spanish cannon.

You could read a hundred accounts of the Spanish conquest of Peru and still learn more from a painting like this.

This morning, I ticked off another two on the list: Puka Pukara, the Red Fort, and Tambomachay, the Resting Place. You’ll be offered a visit to these by any of the guides hanging around Sacsayhuamán, and they’re well served by the white servicio turístico vans – but, me being me, I decided to walk there.

It’s not that far. Tambomachay, the further of the two, is about an hour and a half from the centre of Cusco. It is mostly uphill, however, and I was lucky the weather was on my side: be it a favour of the Lady of the Marshes or no, I was protected from the sun by a merciful cover of cloud all the way there and back. I had my rosary on as I often do when I’m not sure if the road is safe or not, so I’ll chalk it up to a little divine intervention.

Even on foot, I still got there before the bulk of the morning’s tourist traffic arrived. It was worth the hike – steep though it was – to see a part of Cusco that I might otherwise have missed.

It also gave me the chance to check out Huayllarqocha’s small wetland reserve, which will have to be my substitution for Huacarpay. I didn’t see any of the grebes that supposedly live here, but I did see an Andean flicker (an American species of woodpecker) and a number of Andean ducks, a smart relative of the Ruddy Duck that can be found in North America.

Now that I’ve had some rest, I should go and pick up my washing from the lavandería down the road. After that, I should pack for tomorrow, before checking out the two art galleries and, with any luck, a performance of local music and dance at the Centro Qosqo de Arte Nativo.

I’m not sure if you’ll hear from me tomorrow. Like I said, going into the Amazon may well mean going completely off-grid. Either way, I’ll try to keep writing. The next six days are likely to be red letter days, both here in Peru and out there in the wider world.

Hasta la próxima. BB x

Violetears and Metaltails

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Tunki, Cusco. 17.42.

Six hundred years ago, under the vision of the Inca Pachacútec, a team of architects were tasked with turning an existing settlement in the Sacred Valley into the cultural nerve centre of an empire. For their inspiration, they chose one of the most powerful of all the animals with which they shared their world: the puma. The city of Cusco is believed to have been built in the shape of a resting puma, with the Tullumayo and Saphy rivers marking the outline of its body, the citadel of Sacsayhuamán as its head (ears and all) and the Huacaypata – the present-day Plaza de Armas – as its heart.

The puma was an incredibly important spiritual entity for the Inca. Legend gave it tremendous power: their spit was hail, the blink of their eyes thunderbolts, and their roar was the roll of thunder.

I’m writing this in Casa Tunki’s restaurant, with the heavy roll of thunder overhead. I have been exceptionally lucky with the weather thus far, but it’s still the rainy season out here, and the rain has finally caught up to me. It has spelled disaster for tomorrow’s expedition to Waqrapukara, which the operators have had to cancel due to landslides in the area. Luckily for me, I have three whole days after returning from Manu, so I am not too troubled. I could always try again when I return.

My wanderings today took me to a quiet corner of Cusco. Tucked away in the hills to the south of the suburb of San Jerónimo is a tiny hummingbird sanctuary, nestled on a forested slope off the 123 highway. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never be able to find it.

My guide Benjamin picked me up from the hotel and, together with his companion and driver Jeremy, we set out. It was just me on this tour, so for the first time out here I had the chance for a proper conversation.

The sanctuary itself – titled the Pachacútec Bosque Andino – is a strange mix of what looks like a garden centre, a Zen garden and a hiking trail. At different times of year, different birds can be found here. I got the impression from my guide that other guests have come here seeking the Bearded Mountaineer, a Peruvian endemic. He seemed a little anxious at first that I might be pinning my hopes on finding one. I hope I gave him the impression that I wasn’t a lister. I was just happy to be out of the city and surrounded by nature again.

One of the sanctuary’s starlets, a young trainbearer, put in an early appearance. The adult males of this species have enormous tails that nearly double their length, but this one still has a fair bit of growing up to do.

The primary residents of the sanctuary – as in the hills around Cusco itself – are the violetears. They’re extremely territorial and will fight off just about anything that gets in their way, no matter the size. I saw them take on metaltails, thrushes, tanagers and even the giant hummingbird that was trying to use the feeders.

Yesterday, I found them by sound and movement. Today, I hardly needed to try. They didn’t seem to be bothered by us at all.

Whenever the violetears were busy fighting everything that came too close, a tiny metaltail popped out of the bushes to chance a quick feed at one of the flowers, before darting away the moment the mechanical clicks of the violetears announced they were on their way back.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that hummingbirds and flowers have evolved simultaneously, with some flowers only admitting a certain species of hummingbird to visit them. It explains why their Old World equivalent, the sunbirds, remain stranded east of the Atlantic, while hummingbirds can only be found in the west.

The largest hummingbird species, the giant hummingbird, was surprisingly shy – though that may have more to do with the aggressive violetears than any inherent skittishness in its nature. They’re considerably larger than their diminutive relatives, being about as large as a small thrush, and they sound a lot less like bees when they fly overhead, though they still move like the clappers.

Well now – now that I have a whole day free, I think I’ll take it easy tomorrow. I’ll try to make more use of my boleto turístico, the ten-day ticket that covers most of the historic sites and museums in Cusco.

I’ve finalised the arrangements for the Amazon, which is now only a little over twenty-four hours away. The two Americans in the hotel next to me are busy discussing which nautical themed tattoo they should get (as they’re considerably cheaper here than back home), but I will be putting all of this behind me for a week. I am quite looking forward it that.

Fingers crossed my luck holds out for some wholesome companions! BB x

Cuscotopia

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Tunki, Cusco. 14.22.

Overnight, I’ve gone from one of the tallest people in town to one of the shortest. Or at least, on a par with the locals. That’s because Cusco is awash with tourists, as it surely has been ever since Machu Picchu was rediscovered. Towering Germans, athletic Americans, French and Italian girls walking around in legging shorts that seem at odds with the local custom of long dresses, heavy socks and boots.

I could go off on one of my usual rants about the vapidity of some of these tick-box trekkers. But I won’t. You’re bored of hearing it and I’m bored of repeating it. So I’ll focus on the other things I’ve seen. It is worth knowing, however, just how much the tourists seem to run this town.

Today is Easter Sunday, so I allowed myself a proper night’s sleep (my first in a while) and had breakfast at the hotel before going to the cathedral for prayers.

I have, at last, noticed the altitude. It’s not debilitating like I thought, but it is certainly a factor that cannot be ignored. Going to sleep last night was a drawn-out procedure, not because some of the Picchu junkies wouldn’t stop talking at the top of their voices, but because it felt like I was eternally short of breath. Every yawn and every deep breath felt incomplete. I guess that’s simply a factor of living at this kind of altitude – there’s simply less oxygen to go around.

By the morning, however, I was feeling much better, so I had all the energy I needed to go out and get my bearings.

Semana Santa came to an end this morning with the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection in the Catedral de Cusco. They had three Masses back to back and I caught the tail end of the second.

The cathedral was almost full to bursting, so I said my prayers in front of the shrine to Mary with a few of the local women. Unexpectedly, I felt something. Not for the first time, either. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but it moved me.

I scoped out the HQ for the Amazon Wildlife company so that I would be able to find my way there easily tomorrow. There was a local man with a very violent nosebleed being attended to by two policemen outside. I hope that’s not a potential symptom of altitude sickness!

Speaking of which, as it was still fairly early, I decided to climb up to the old Inca fortress of Sacsayhuamán that sits on a hilltop above the city of Cusco. When I say climb, I mean it. The ascent is no joke. It’s supposed to be good practice for the Inca Trail, but as that’s not on my itinerary, it served as a beginning for the Waqrapukara and Inti Punku side quests I have planned.

Sacsayhuamán is a large Inca complex, parts of which can be found all around Cusco, since the Spanish took a leaf out of their former Moorish rulers’ book and cannibalised much of the fortress to build their churches and colonial houses and estates. The rocks that remain are mostly the largest and most cumbersome, retaining their masterful stonemasonry – each of them cut in just such a way as to slot together without need for mortar.

There’s no gold here – any that there might have been was stolen by the Spanish may hundreds of years ago – but it is still quite an impressive complex. It’s certainly more than ‘just a pile of stones’ as one English father remarked to his wife and son on their way up the hill…

I decided to throw any idea of self-consciousness to the wind on the way back down and spent about forty minutes or so hunting hummingbirds. The winding path up to Sacsayhuamán follows a Eucalyptus forest, which was uncommonly alive with birdsong (those poisonous trees are usually devoid of life). One particularly noisy resident is the beautifully named Sparkling Violetear, one of the many hummingbirds that can be found in the hills around Cusco. They’re notoriously hard to photograph, but patience is a virtue I have learned through this hobby, so after enduring the stares and multilingual remarks about the size of my camera by all the passers-by I was rewarded with a close encounter with one of the sparkling little gems.

I saw a giant hummingbird, the largest of its kind, on the way up, but it didn’t stick around for very long, so the violetears were my main success this morning. I’m going to a hummingbird sanctuary tomorrow, so I might well see a great deal more of them, but for now, I’m happy with what I saw and heard.

I found a spot in town for lunch that wasn’t crawling with tourists (in fact, it was almost entirely Peruvian in clientele, which is always a good sign). A huge bowl of caldo de cordero and a drink cost me a grand total of forty soles, which is a little less than £9. I’m going to miss how affordable this country is.

I’ll also miss how handsome the people are. What a royal profile these Peruvians have! And to think that some people pay for a rhinoplasty to have their noses shrunk… What a travesty! I find it quite a fetching look, myself.

I’ve taken it easy today, otherwise I might burn out – it is a pretty full on adventure, and I’m conscious that I’m back to work the day after I return, so I need to fit in some time to rest during this holiday.

But that won’t stop me going out for supplies and another wander this evening. Maybe I’ll be able to find something new in the twilight! BB x

Mirrors in the Mountains

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Aeropuerto Internacional Alfredo Rodríguez, Arequipa. 16.20.

I have often seen it written of Uganda that it is Africa in miniature – that is, a concentrated version of the vast array of biomes you can find across the continent. The more I travel Peru, the more I’m convinced that this is South America’s equivalent: jungle, desert, glaciers, prairie, megacities and coastal plains. Peru really does have it all. No wonder it is home to the second largest number of bird species in the world (after Colombia).

If the Islas Ballestas are touted as the “poor man’s Galápagos”, then today I paid a flying visit to the poor man’s Salar de Uyuni. While my original plan for this adventure ended with a trip to Bolivia’s enormous salt flats on the edge of the Atacama Desert, my decision to go all in on an Amazonian side-quest to Manu got in the way. I really didn’t want to leave South America without seeing the salt lakes, though, as they were a fairly major inspiration for coming out here in the first place.

Luckily, there’s one tiny outlier of the Uyuni salt flats tucked away in the mountains east of Arequipa, within the Reserva Nacional de Salinas y Aguada Blanca. Getting there is a pretty arduous journey, but if you can find a way, the views are out of this world.

My onward flight to Cusco leaves at 18.05, so I needed to find a way to the salt flats and back in time to catch my plane. As luck would have it, there was a tour on GetYourGuide that fit the bill perfectly. It meant another early start, but after yesterday’s 2am kick-off, a 5.40am pick-up felt like a lie-in.

Not a bus or a people carrier this time, but a Land Cruiser. There were only two other travelers on board – a bilingual couple from Texas and Veracruz – so I got the front seat. Result!

Ah, but I’m not that naive. If something feels too good to be true, it’s usually because it is.

We had one more passenger to pick up before leaving Arequipa, but in a turn of events that would probably be familiar to a US Homeland Security officer, that one passenger turned out to be a family of five – they’d simply “forgotten” to mention they’d booked for more than one.

Not for the first time, being young and single became a major liability. As the most expendable passenger, I was asked if I would be so kind as to sit in the back.

I didn’t mind overmuch at the time – after all, one thing my superzoom isn’t very good at is in-transit photography – but I hadn’t considered the terrain… or the supreme manspreading abilities of the couple squeezed in next to me. The tarmac road stops shortly after leaving the Arequipa suburb of Paucarpata. From there on out, it’s a dirt track all the way up to the salt lakes – and the road winds a lot.

For all of two hours, I was rocked about in the back of the car, bumping my head quite a bit – which is more than can be said for the state of my legs! The relief when the lakes came into view… words can’t begin to describe!

There was a fair bit of activity around the edge of the lake – mostly free-roaming llamas and alpacas, but a couple of small herds of vicuña, too.

We stopped by the lake’s edge for a closer look. The herd’s dominant male wasn’t particularly chuffed, but he had his hands (or hooves?) full keeping one of the younger males in line with much running around and snorting.

Before going out to explore the area, our driver took us to the tiny lakeside community of Chilitia for a light breakfast. As an apology for the cramped conditions of the journey, breakfast was on the house for the three of us on the back row. Granted, we’re talking a grand total of 15 soles, but the gesture was very much appreciated – my legs were still pretty sore!

As always, the stop was also an incentive to buy local alpaca products. It’s getting to the stage where I’m considering breaking a lifelong aversion to souvenir shopping, but I’m still very conscious that I have to carry everything I have on my back – and it’s already a tighter squeeze than the back seat of that Land Cruiser once my lens is packed away.

So I just contented myself with watching the llamas and enjoying the palliative effects of a coca tea.

The most amazing thing about today’s adventure was the unrestricted freedom of it. Once we’d reached the water’s edge, we were given an hour and fifteen to go wherever we wanted – even out onto the flats, if we so desired.

Music to my ears! I’d already clocked a number of things I didn’t recognise, so I was anxious to get to work.

One of the big draws of the Salinas – at least for a naturalist like me – is that all three of South America’s flamingoes can be found here. The red-kneed Chilean flamingoes stayed far out in the centre of the lake, but a few flamboyances (yes, that is the collective noun) of Andean and James’ flamingoes were a little closer to the shore, so I tried to see if I could differentiate them by sight.

It’s mainly a question of checking their legs. Chilean flamingoes have black legs with distinct red knees. Andean flamingoes have yellow legs, and James’ flamingoes have red legs. If your eyesight is sharp enough, you’ll also notice that James’ flamingoes have red lores – that is, the patch of skin between the eye and the beak. Simplicity itself!

In the winter months, these lakes dry out and turn bone white under the unforgiving Andean sun, but now it’s the shoulder season, and there’s still enough water to keep the flamingoes around. Once it’s gone, they’ll leave these mountains and make for more permanent wetlands along the coast, like the Pántanos de Villa in Lima.

I’m still a kid at heart, so I scoured the lakeside for flamingo feathers. I found three bright pink ones, but they were kind of wet (as you might expect) so I cleaned them up using a couple of napkins I’d brought along and pocketed them. When they’re properly dry, I’ll put them in my journal with the others I’ve picked up along the way.

While there’s water, the salt lakes form an altogether different kind of miracle: an enormous natural mirror, broken only by the tiny ripples around the feet of the flamingoes. It’s places like this that make you especially grateful for clouds, because under a clear sky, half the magic of these magic mirrors would be lost.

Flamingoes aren’t the only knock-kneed stars of the altiplano. A familiar and yet unfamiliar call alerted me to a couple of Andean avocets, who sounded like the ones we have back home, only… accented. As though they’re speaking a different language. Which, I suppose, they are!

This one spent a long time chasing sandpipers. I’m not sure what threat it thought the tiny little waders posed, but it wasted no time in putting all the sandpipers in the immediate area to flight.

I spent about half an hour exploring the lakeside before turning inland in search of highland species. I found quite a handful, all of which I had to look up later: cream-winged ciclodes, Andean negritos, Cordilleran canasteros and crested ducks, to name just a few.

But the star find was a pair of adorable seedsnipes – a tiny wader distantly related to the plovers, but looking for all the world like a finch-sized partridge.

If it hadn’t been for the driver whistling me back to the car (fifteen minutes early, mind!), I’d have stuck around to see if I could find some more of them.

But alas! My traveling companions were bored and had seen all they had to see, taken the selfies they wanted to take, and were ready to go home. So I was summoned back to the car and we set off on the return journey to Arequipa.

Mercifully, I fell asleep for the first hour of the journey – probably on account of the sun! – but the last hour was even more cramped than the journey up had been, with both of my neighbouring passengers spread out in slumber. Once we were back in Arequipa, it took the best part of an hour before my legs had recovered completely.

That’s enough cramped conditions for one day. I’ve found my seat on the flight for Cusco and it’s wonderfully comfy (LatAm, you are a dream come true).

It’s time to go up again. The Inca stronghold of Cusco awaits! See you on the other side. BB x