7 Days / 6 Nights Wildlife Photography Tour

Day 1: Welcome to the Amazon!

• Arrive in Puerto Maldonado, capital of Madre de Dios, and join a 2 hours journey by bus and boat to the lodge. Your first taste of the Amazon culinary will be in the river while you let the city behind to enjoy the amazing jungle landscapes


• Posada Amazonas Lodge awaits – a spacious ecolodge, with a bar, a massage center, and buffet service in the heart of a private concession own by the Native Community of Infierno, the guardians of the rainforest.


• Accommodation includes a 45 ms square room with a private bathroom and an open wall facing the forest.


• Your stay includes three meals daily, tea, coffee, guided excursions, and activities, refreshments upon arriving, and transfers to and from the airport.


•  This afternoon join a first group hiking leads to the 40-meter scaffolding Canopy Tower. A banister staircase running through the middle provides safe access to the platforms above. From atop you obtain spectacular views of the vast expanses of standing forest cut by the Tambopata River winding through the middle. Now and then toucans, parrots or macaws are seen flying against the horizon, or mixed species canopy flocks land in the treetop next to you.


• Note this itinerary is based on a double comfort room at Refugio Amazonas and Posada Amazonas, and a double standard at Tambopata Research Center. Includes private transportation from lodge to lodge and a private guide.

Day 2: Oxbow Lake and canopy tower

• Wildlife in the Amazon takes advantage of the first lights of the day as it is cooler, so we do. Even if you are on vacation there will be some activities that our guides encourage you to make it very early in the morning and it’s worth it.


• Photography at Tres Chimbadas Lake is thirty minutes by boat and forty-five minutes hiking from Posada Amazonas. Once there paddle around the lake in a catamaran, searching for the resident family of nine giant river otters (seen by 60% of our lake visitors) and other lakeside wildlife such as caiman, hoatzin, and horned screamers. The lake provides wonderful opportunities to photograph majestic trees, water reflections, and if we are very fortunate animal life. Although otters are frequently seen, the distances at which they are sighted usually do not make for good photography.


• We will be moved in a private boat to Refugio Amazonas Lodge, in the buffer zone of the National Protected Area.


• By the afternoon we will visit the farm, which is one of the few places where the light will not be a problem. Ideal for photography of birds who like open areas in addition to colorful fruits and plants.


• Night walks are great for photographing insects and frogs. We may be able to find praying mantis, cicadas, leaf-mimicking grasshoppers as well as huge toads, shiny green tree frogs, and bizarre horned frogs.

Day 3: Mammal clay lick and discovering new species

• Two hours deep in the Tambopata National Reserve, we will stop at the Chuncho clay lick. After a brief walk (~5 minutes) we will have the chance to see dozens of large macaws feeding on the special sodium-rich clays of the riverbank. The Chuncho clay lick probably attracts more large macaws than any other clay lick in the world and the sight of dozens of macaws taking flight is truly unforgettable. The details of our stopover will depend on the weather and the amount of macaw activity, as the birds don’t visit the clay lick when it is raining.


• Twenty minutes walking from Refugio Amazonas is a peccary clay lick. This mammal clay lick might let us see wild rainforest pigs show up in herds of five to twenty individuals to eat clay in the late morning. The chances of spotting them are around 15%, but well worth the short hike. Other wildlife also shows up including deer, guan, and parakeets.


• Help us reveal nature’s wonders, became a scientist, and get the chance of discovering new species, there is an amazing world of diversity! We will meet the resident researchers team at the lobby for a brief explanation of the type of specimen we are looking for and how to identify them, they will handle the material for collecting, we will walk around 15 minutes from the lodge to the light trap where all the diversity of insects we’ll be waiting for us, with our eyes sharpened we will look for the selected species will be looking for and collect them, if we are lucky we will get the chance to discover a new species!.

Day 4: Bamboo forest

• Four and half hours by boat from Refugio Amazonas, in the pristine heart of the reserve, lies the Tambopata Research Center.  One and half hours into our boat journey, as we cross the confluence with the Malinowski River, we will leave the final traces of human habitation behind. Within the 700,000 hectares of uninhabited nucleus of the reserve, sightings of capybara, caiman, geese, macaws, and other large species will become more frequent.


• By the afternoon, a three to five-kilometer hike will lead us to overlooks commanding magnificent views of the Tambopata winding its way into the lowlands. The forest on this trail, regenerating the old bamboo forest, is good for Howler Monkey and Dusky Titi Monkey.  The overlooks provide excellent panoramic photo opportunities of the Tambopata winding its way down from the highlands. On a clear day, it will even be possible to view and photograph the snow-capped Andean peaks in the distance.  At each overlook, we will have good chances of encounters at eye level at 30-50 yards with large turkey-like birds called guans and chachalacas, or toucans, or macaws roosting on the trees.

Day 5: Claylicks

• On most clear mornings of the year, dozens of large macaws and hundreds of parrots congregate on this large river bank in a raucous and colorful spectacle that inspired a National Geographic cover story. Discretely located fifty meters from the cliff, we will observe Green-winged, Scarlet, and Blue-and-gold Macaws and several species of smaller parrots descend to ingest clay. Outings are at dawn when the lick is most active. If the river is not swollen, thereby reducing the effective beach area, photographers should have plenty of opportunities to shoot the typical clay lick photographs from distances of 50-100 meters.


• A five-kilometer trail covers the prototypical rainforest with immense trees crisscrossed by creeks and ponds. Amongst the figs, ceibas, and shihuahuacos we will look for Squirrel, Brown Capuchin, and Spider Monkeys as well as peccaries. TRC is located within this habitat. Photo opportunities for all mammals and birds on this trail will be scant as visibility and lighting are poor and animals timid. Our principal focus will be general rainforest shots as well as portraits of the huge trees that are scattered throughout this forest.


• By the afternoon, a ten-minute upriver journey from the lodge to a tiny pond with a platform in the middle it is a great place for the late afternoon where we whittle away the remains of the day as we spot waterfowl such as Muscovy duck, sunbittern, and hoatzin along with the woodpeckers, oropendolas, flycatchers, and parakeets that call this pond their home. Opportunities to photograph these beautiful birds will abound, as the lighting and visibility of the pond are excellent and these birds´ habits are predictable over short periods of time.


• Night walks are great for photographing insects and frogs. We may be able to find praying mantis, cicadas, leaf-mimicking grasshoppers as well as huge toads, shiny green tree frogs, and bizarre horned frogs.

Day 6: Gardens and palm swamp

• We will photograph herps around the lodge gardens: frogs, snakes, and lizards.  TRC specialists will have spent the past few days screening the vicinity for encounters with the most photogenic herp species and will have prepared appropriate scenarios. The chicos, our flock of semi-wild, hand-reared macaws will provide additional photographic opportunities as they fly about around the lodge.


• Growing on the remains of an oxbow lake and providing both arboreals as well as terrestrial mammals with fruits throughout the year, the aguaje palms swamps are one of the most important food sources in the rainforest. Demand for these fruits and great conditions for planting rice makes the palm swamp also one of the most threatened habitats.

Day 7

• It is time to say goodbye, as the expedition comes to an end.


• Your visit will make a direct contribution to Wired Amazon and the National Reserve of Tambopata.


• You will take the journey back to the city to the airport for your national flight onwards.