birds

Man in Manhattan

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Newark Liberty International Airport, Newark, NJ. 17.27.

Good morning America! The sun is shining, my bag is re-checked and I’m off to see the city, standing on the steps of an absolutely rammed Amtrak train bound for Penn Station. I will never roll my eyes at the train from London to Taunton again. This is a whole other level of packed.

Two years ago, I promised myself I’d never come back to this country. I allowed a broken heart to derail what should have been a grand old adventure around the States and swore off America for good, having come to associate the place with gators, gumbo and the worst heartbreak I had ever known. And yet here I am, in Central Park no less, using the last couple of months left on my ESTA to explore New York City. Fate has a funny way of making us eat our words.

And boy, am I glad I did! What an exciting way to round off the Peruvian adventure!

People come to New York City for all sorts of reasons. Jazz, sports, food from every corner of the globe. World famous locations like the Empire State Building, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, Trump Tower, Times Square and 110th Street… The list goes on and on. But me? I had only three hours to play with, so I spent almost all of them in Central Park.

Why? Because Central Park is a sanctuary for birds traveling up and down the east coast. Being the size it is, New York City and its adjoining suburbs make up an absolutely enormous area of developed land that has devoured what was once a vast stretch of virgin forest and marshland along the eastern seaboard. Central Park sits right at its heart, a large but contained green lung which many migrating species use as an important stopover on their journey home.

Which is apt, because that’s exactly what I was doing.

I have always wanted to see New York City. I wasn’t so fussed about staying here, though now that I’ve had a bite of the Big Apple I can’t help feeling I’d like to come back someday with a bit more than three hours to play with, which simply isn’t enough time to explore a metropolis like NYC.

Everything here is exactly the way I pictured it: towering brown-brick buildings with iron steps winding up the sides. Yellow cabs and green street signs. And billboards – yes! Billboards! It’s a quirky thing to take a shine to, but they were such a memorable feature of my last visit to the US and I really have missed them!

The glorious weekend sunshine had drawn thousands to Central Park, especially the city’s athletic youth, who were out in force on the largest park run I have ever seen. I don’t know what the Americans put in their food, but there’s something larger than life about the American twenty-something-or-other: they’re huge. We like to joke in the UK that the US has an obesity problem (a problem we often forget is shared) but take a casual stroll through Central Park on a Saturday and you might be forgiven for thinking the average American to be some sort of übermensch. Then again, this is the land that gave us Michael Phelps and breastaurant chains like Hooters, so perhaps that’s not altogether surprising.

Anyway. I didn’t come all this way to gawp like an awkward teenager at all the breasts and rippling pectorals. Not even close. I came here to see some birds that we just don’t get back home – at least, not unless the autumn winds blow them way off course, since many North American species wind up in the Scilly Isles every year.

Most of the birds I went hunting for today are common backyard species that the average American wouldn’t get overly excited about, but I didn’t really get the chance to go exploring the last time I was Stateside, so I was quite happy to marvel at some of the city’s more colourful residents.

First up: the American robin, with his smart orange chest. These things are everywhere and pretty hard to miss. House sparrows and common starlings have invaded the Americas in recent years, and they’re arguably a lot more common, eking out a living even within the unforgiving human hive of New York’s streets, but the flashy American robin stands its ground in the leafy suburbs.

I saw two kinds of woodpecker and heard at least three, though I didn’t quite get as close as I did in Manu. One dashing bird that might have been more at home among the jewels of the Peruvian jungle was that spectacular American favourite, the northern cardinal. Not only are they beautiful birds, all decked out in red and black, but their song is – well, I was going to write sweet or musical, but the word I really want to say is homely. I can see why so many Americans are especially fond of them.

One more bird that I was really keen to see was an easy find throughout Central Park: the blue jay. I never get tired of seeing jays back home in England. Their electric blue feathers were among the most prized trophies for those of us who collected feathers as children, and the blue jay takes that dash of blue in the jay’s wardrobe and goes all in.

I wonder what the first settlers made of these birds? Of course, I’ve grown up seeing their pictures in books, so (unlike Peru) I knew exactly what I was looking for. But imagine those first travelers, confronted with birds that looked familiar and yet utterly, utterly different. Hence American robins – which are actually thrushes – named for their red breasts, and blue jays – which are in the crow family, though not exactly jays in the strictest sense – named for their striped blue feathers.

A lot of New World species have names that seem to have been coined in a hurry, unlike the birds we grew up with whose etymology is often a lot more complex. Sapsippers, seedeaters, sunbeams and puffbacks certainly seem a lot more user-friendly than mergansers, dunlins, ospreys and orioles. Americans seem a lot more prone to call things like they see them rather than spending years conjuring up a more esoteric or poetic name – such as the aubergine, which can be tracked in a perfect, unbroken line of evolution from its point of origin in the East until it crossed the Atlantic and became an eggplant.

On the subject of American approaches to birds, I was pleasantly surprised to find I was not the only one in Central Park who had come for the birds. I encountered at least three different parties out with their binoculars, all of them on the hunt for spring migrants, and all of them discussing their task in that wonderfully amicable way that Americans seem to specialise in.

One party by the reservoir pointed out a Bonaparte’s gull (or, in their terms, a “boney”) roosting among the ring-billed and American herring gulls. Another group were watching the blue jays I had seen earlier. A much larger party had gathered in the North Woods, seemingly following the news of a hooded warbler, a rare and colourful passage migrant in these parts.

I didn’t see it, but I wasn’t that fussed. After all, merely moments before I’d struck gold when a familiar silhouette soaring high above the city turned out to be that all-American icon that I’d already seen woven into a hundred badges of homeland security officers this morning: a bald eagle.

I really wasn’t expecting to see something as spectacular as a bald eagle in New York City itself, but it just goes to show what a magnet Central Park can be at this time of year.

It wasn’t the only inner city eagle I encountered, either. I was just about to cross 110th Street (of Bobby Womack fame) when I saw a long-winged silhouette hawking over the Harlem Meer that I instantly recognised as that of an osprey. These awesome fish-eating eagles are an increasingly common sight in Central Park during the migration season. I had good views of them in the Louisiana bayou two summers ago, but to see one fishing at close range with the backdrop of Harlem behind it was a real treat.

Up close, you can properly appreciate their owl-like eyes, which seem considerably larger than those of other birds of prey, and their rough, scaly talons, specifically evolved to snatch and hold on to large and slippery fish.

Sure, I was in Harlem, I could have used the opportunity to explore New York’s fascinating black history, and maybe even visited the homes of some of my favourite musicians. But I’m a naturalist first and everything else second, remember? So I ended up spending about fifteen or twenty minutes just sitting on the bank of the Harlem Meer watching it hunting, while a madwoman hurled abuse at passers-by in a heavy Bronx drawl and a black man in his forties played with two remote-controlled cars on the opposite bank.

Eventually, I realised that time was catching up on me. I had to make sure I was back at the airport with at least an hour to spare, as I could not count on security at Newark being swift (and I was right – the queue took about forty minutes, with sniffer dogs tasked with inspecting all of us).

As such, I had to ditch my whimsical plan to see Trump Tower. That ludicrous golden folly isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So in the time I had remaining, I packed up my camera for the last time on this adventure and took the Subway back downtown to Times Square – because I couldn’t come all this way to New York City and skip the human element altogether, right?

I suppose the ludicrous frenzy of New York’s most iconic street might have thrown me had I not just spent three weeks in South America, where crowded cities are par for the course. Compared to Lima, the only major difference was the colour: Times Square really is eye-wateringly garish. I only saw it during the day. I imagine at night it is a spectacle like nothing else on Earth.

Some other time, perhaps.

Well – that’s all, folks. I’ve made it safely onto the last flight of my adventure and I’m headed for home. The sun has already set behind us, but we’re racing forward in time over the Atlantic to meet it on the other side. Below me, Prince Edward Island is fading into the night and the shadowy island of Labrador – home of The Chrysalids and just about visible in the gloom – marks the last stretch of dry land in the Americas before this plane sets out across the lonely blue waters of the Atlantic and puts the New World behind us.

Thank you for coming with me on this latest and greatest adventure. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my travels as much as I have enjoyed writing about them. They’ll certainly keep me going through the next term ahead, which is always a busy one (though mercifully not quite as busy as the last two).

My adventures aren’t over yet. Spring is here and there’s plenty more for me to see and do back home. But it will be a little while until I have another adventure quite as grand as this one. A man’s got to work, after all!

Until then – hasta pronto, chavales! BB x

The Sun Gate

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Ollanta, Ollantaytambo. 20.15.

Today’s mission: Inti Punku, one of a number of “sun gates” scattered throughout the Sacred Valley. Situated atop a clouded mountain spur of snowbound Huayanay at around 3.830m above sea level, it is a formidable hike from Ollantaytambo, requiring a climb of over a thousand metres.

Since I had no intention of hiking the Inca trail to the gringo hotspot of Machu Picchu, the Inti Punku of Ollantaytambo was always the end goal of this adventure – the great hike at the end of my labours. I was told by a guide the other day that, provided I was young and fit, it would be no problem whatsoever.

Young is never going to be a problem. Fitness, however, is an interesting concept. I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as unfit, but I also would freely admit that I don’t exactly do a lot of exercise – beyond running about all over the place like a bumblebee at work. So the Inti Punku would be my test in more ways than one.

I set out early, but not too early. Too early for breakfast at the hotel, but not so early that the road was dark. I was lucky with the weather today: while the sun came and went throughout the morning, I was shielded from its high altitude fury by a merciful cover of cloud for most of the ascent. It rained on my descent, true, but not in the same way I experienced in the rainforest – more of a constant light shower, which was actually quite refreshing.

All the way up to the Sun Gate, I climbed in the shadow of Wakaywillque, more commonly known as Nevado Verónica, the largest of the mountains in the Sacred Valley.

It’s not yet winter here in Peru, but the snows of Wakaywillque are here all year round. Glaciers cling to its peak like frozen tears – an apt description, as its Quechua name literally means “sacred tear”. It was so named, or so the story goes, after Manco Inca’s flight over the Abra Malaga pass, signalling the end of the reign of the Inca in Peru.

The empty frame of the Inti Punku looks out directly onto the mountain. The Inca sun gates were built with the summer solstice in mind, framing the Sun at its zenith on the right day of the year. But I can’t help but feel the fact that this one faces the mighty apu of Wakaywillque was an intentional decision on the part of its architects. It truly is a spectacular mountain.

Tourists do come up here, though not in the same numbers that visit the more famous Inti Punku at Machu Picchu. I passed one group of five gringos coming back down the mountain, topped and tailed by a red-shirted Peruvian guide, and another solitary traveler, also accompanied by her local sherpa. They seemed surprised to see me heading up the sun gate alone. It is not a hard path to follow, though the road is dreadfully steep and cannot be rushed.

It took me nearly four hours to reach the summit, which is only partly explained by constantly stopping to look and listen out for the mountain’s wildlife en route. At times I was stopping after every ten steps – a reflection of the altitude rather than my fitness, I should like to think. I have climbed a similar height before with Skiddaw back home in the Lake District, but that hike starts at around 68m above sea level, not 2.792m.

I clocked several new species during the ascent, including a mountain variety of cuy, but I was accompanied for most of the journey by hummingbirds. I counted several kinds: mostly sparkling violetears (they really are everywhere) but also lesser violetears, black-tailed trainbearers, white-bellied and giant hummingbirds, and – at the summit – an Andean hillstar. I have become quite used to the sight of them flitting about from branch to branch, holding themselves almost stationary in the air while feeding from flowers and launching themselves into the abyss of the valley on tiny, invisible wings. I shall miss them when I’m gone.

The time of the Inca is long gone, but it is clear that the locals continue to venerate the mountain and uphold its traditions. Niches in the wall of the Inti Punku contain offerings of coca leaves, dried but still pungent, while a more elaborate altar had been prepared in the largest window of the sun gate. The fruit was fresh – it can only have been laid out there less than a day ago. A bunch of wildflowers tied together with twine had been placed in one corner of the complex, facing the snowy peak of Wakaywillque.

I have heard stories of locals hiking up to these sacred places to make offerings to the old gods and the ancestors in other places, but I hadn’t seen it in practice until today. It only makes the Inti Punku a more magical place.

I think I saw a condor soaring high above the summit, but it was gone by the time I made it up there. There are other birds of prey in these mountains, but I’m fairly certain of what I saw. Nothing comes close to the size of the condor. The mountain caracaras, buzzard-eagles and Aplomado falcons that I encountered might as well be peons to that giant lord of the skies.

I gave myself nearly an hour at the summit, which I had entirely to myself. As the rain came down, I took shelter in the largest niche (which mirrors the gate itself) and had my lunch. I wondered how many others had come here over the many hundreds of years this sacred site has stood upon this ridge. What did they feel in this spot?

It took me a lot less time to go back down than it had to climb up: two hours and fifteen minutes compared to the four hour ascent. It helps that it is entirely downhill: there are no instances of climbing down and then back up again (which you certainly notice at this altitude).

I made it back to Ollantaytambo shortly after two and promptly fell asleep – I was quite spent after my exertions in the mountains. It is easily the most hiking I have done throughout the Peruvian adventure.

But it is done. I have sailed the Pacific in search of pelicans and penguins. I have walked the northernmost sands of the Atacama Desert. I have witnessed the majesty of the Andean condor at unbelievably close range and wandered the mirror lakes of the altiplano in search of South America’s three flamingos. I have beheld Cusco in its Inca glory, journeyed deep into the Peruvian Amazon and seen giant otters, macaws, tapirs, toucans and even uncontacted tribes with my own eyes. Now, as a final quest, I have climbed up to the Inti Punku and seen the entirety of the Sacred Valley under the deathless gaze of Wakaywillque.

I have achieved all that I set out to achieve. I can go home with my head held high.

There remains one last adventure before I arrive at my front door. I must return to Cusco, catch a flight back to Lima, and then journey to the legendary city that never sleeps – New York – where I have a few hours to explore one of the most famous cities on the planet before my final flight takes me back across the Atlantic to the familiar shores of England.

I have used every single day of my Easter holidays. By the time I make it home, I will have been on the road for twenty-three days. Work must resume mere hours after my return – but at least I go back to it knowing that I have not let even a single hour of my holidays go to waste.

I haven’t found Her. But then, I wasn’t looking for Her out here. I came here, quite selfishly, for me – and I could not be happier with how things have panned out.

I will ride this wave of adventure-fuelled optimism through the summer term with all of its ups and downs knowing that, whatever happens, I have rediscovered what it is to be alive once again, and to live for myself. I will treasure that to the end of my days. BB x

Boy Scout

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Ollanta, Ollantaytambo. 20.49.

I’m feeling much restored after a full day’s rest. As fun as it has been to have an extremely active holiday – chasing condors, salvaging boats and traveling the length and breadth of Peru – I definitely needed a break before the long journey home. After all, I will soon be back to the grind of lesson planning and curriculum design, so an ease-in to normality isn’t such a bad idea.

It was not an entirely unproductive day. I checked in to my flight back to Lima, packed my rucksack with the things I’m not going to need anymore and bought some supplies. I also managed to do a little wayfinding for tomorrow’s hike up to the Inti Punku – and it is as well that I did so, as the main road to the only bridge across the Urubamba River is out due to maintenance work. There is a side street that leads there by another road, but it took a couple of attempts to find, which will save me some time tomorrow morning.

I scouted out the route ahead with the zoom lens (which I probably won’t take with me tomorrow, as it is a pretty monstrous ascent). It looks to be a fairly straightforward climb, though it does zigzag a bit past the first slope. High up on the ridge, only just visible against the white sky, was my target: the Sun Gate itself. Google and AllTrails estimate a three to four hour climb, making it a seven hour round trip, there or thereabouts. An early start, then. I will need to be prepared. Plenty of water, sun cream, a few snacks and – most importantly – I will need to take it slow. I’m a regular mountain goat on mountain trails back in Europe, but we’re already nearly three thousand metres up here, and I’m not foolish enough to race up the trail at this altitude.

I sat up on a boulder just beyond the trailhead for a while and watched the world go by. The PeruRail came chugging by, moving at a crawl along the ancient rails. No wonder it takes so long to reach Aguas Calientes, the town at the feet of Machu Picchu, some fifty kilometres to the west.

I was curious about the cost of getting to Aguas Calientes, even if I had no intention of seeing Machu Picchu itself, if only because the famous Inca citadel lies within the same cloud forests that form the border of Manu. In short, I wanted to wind the clock back a week.

The train is clearly half the experience, as a one-way ticket price starts at 84$ for the unsociable hours, rising into the hundreds if you end up on the luxurious Hiram Bingham train. Tickets for Machu Picchu itself – for the curious – aren’t actually as expensive as the train fare, but they do need booking months in advance. When I checked the website, the earliest available slot was the 6th June. So it clearly can be done for considerably cheaper than the tour companies suggest. This is good to know, in case I ever get the urge to see the place one day… if there should ever be an ebb in the flow of the hordes of tourists. Somehow, I doubt that day will ever come.

The animal spectacular that was Manu, Paracas and the Pántanos de Villa is over. Ollantaytambo is full of exotic people, who have traveled from all around the world to begin their journey toward one of the new wonders of the world, but it is not exactly teeming with exotic species. Or perhaps I’ve simply acclimatised so quickly that the exotic has become normal.

I can now map my surroundings by sound. The birds, I mean. When I first arrived in Lima, I was lost. It was like being in a country where you don’t speak the language. After three weeks, however, my hearing has adjusted, and I can tell most of the common species by sound – in particular, eared doves, rufous-collared sparrows, Chiguanco thrushes, tanagers and hummingbirds. As such, I was able to identify a different hummingbird this morning on my way out, purely because it didn’t sound like a sparkling violetear at all.

I suppose it’s the same trick that I have always used with accents. I’ve recently stopped trying to alter my Spanish accent to the Peruvian, largely because it makes my Spanish sound less Spanish and more gringo. I didn’t grow up learning to use the letter S in place of the letters C and Z and I won’t start now.

Changing my accent isn’t something new. I do it all the time, even in English. The register I use varies wildly, depending on my location. The accent I employ when I’m dealing with parents at work is very different to the one I use when hailing a taxi, or when I find myself in the north of England. A friend of mine once said I was the only southerner he’d met who made their accent more northern – the reverse is a lot more common.

I may be a language teacher, but I’m not really a proper linguist – not in the strictest, grammarian sense. What I am is a pretty decent mimic, which makes accent acquisition relatively straightforward, and a good accent can mask a number of errors. But I’m done trying to adapt my Spanish out here. It’s taken years and a lot of listening to get my castellano to the stage where I can dupe even native speakers into thinking I’m a Spaniard, provided they hear me before they see me, and I’m not about to let go of that gift over an awkward desire to blend in.

I haven’t got as much reading done out here as I’d planned. I’ve been so busy during the days and I’ve fallen asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow each night, which hasn’t exactly made for good reading time. I fell asleep listening to Witi Ihimaera’s Whale Rider. It didn’t grab me like I hoped it might. Tonight I’ll give Michelle Paver’s Rainforest a try. She never misses – and now, perhaps, I will be able to picture the world she describes with my own memories.

Wish me luck on the hike tomorrow – I’m going to need it as much as I will need the oxygen! BB x

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

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

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!

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