INTRODUCTION This tour is a suggested itinerary designed by our specialist team! Choose this itinerary or alter it to design your own Journey. Posada Amazonas is a 30-bedroom rainforest lodge perfect for your first taste of the Amazon s natural wonders. Despite being relatively close to Puerto Maldonado, the Posada Amazonas offers ample opportunities to see wildlife such as squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, parrots and macaws. The lodge is also home to a family of giant river otters. Highlights include: Canopy Tower - A 30-metre scaffolding canopy tower gives you spectacular views of the vast expanses of standing forest with a good chance of spotting toucans, parrots, macaws or mixed species canopy flocks. Ñape Ethnobotanical Centre Visit Centro Ñape, a traditional community clinic, where the shaman or his assistant will take you on a unique tour to explain the uses of various medicinal plants. Lake - Paddle around Lake Tres Chimbadas on a catamaran, looking for the resident family of giant river otters, and wildlife such as hoatzin, caiman or horned screamers. Farm Visit - Visit a working jungle farm to learn about local agriculture and life. You will taste exotic tropical fruits including the source of chocolate and little known relatives of the tomato. Natural Construction Rooms Bedrooms open out onto the surrounding rainforest, allowing you to enjoy this diverse ecosystem even during downtime, with wild animals, including monkeys, often visible from the lodge. Wellness Centre Enjoy massages and aromatherapy at the wellness centre. ITINERARY
DAY 1: Arrival On arrival into Puerto Maldonado from Lima or Cusco, we will welcome you at the airport and drive you ten minutes to our Puerto Maldonado headquarters. While enjoying your first taste of the forest in our gardens we will ask you to pack only the necessary gear for your next few days, and leave the rest at our safe luggage store. This helps us keep the boats and cargo light. Skirting Puerto Maldonado, we drive 20 kilometres to the Tambopata River Port, entering the Native Community of Infierno. The port is a communal business. From here we transfer by boat to Posada Amazonas. The boat trip takes forty five minutes and takes us into the Community s Primary Private Reserve. We have a boxed lunch on the way. On reaching Posada Amazonas, the lodge manager will welcome you and brief you with important navigation and security tips. After settling into the lodge, we make the twenty minute walk from Posada Amazonas to the 30 metre scaffolding canopy tower. A banister staircase running through the middle provides safe access to the platforms above. From the top there are 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 may land in the treetop next to you. We return to the lodge for dinner and afterwards you are welcome to attend a presentation on the Infierno ecotourism project. This presentation is available every night from a staff member.
DAY 2: Tres Chimbadas Oxbow Lake After breakfast we make an excursion to the Tres Chimbadas Oxbow Lake. Tres Chimbadas is thirty minutes by boat and forty five minutes hiking from Posada Amazonas. Once there you will 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. Otters are most active from dawn to eight or nine AM. Later in the morning we visit the parrot clay lick. This clay lick is only a twenty minute walk from Posada Amazonas. From a hide located about twenty metres away you will see dozens of parrots and parakeets descend on most clear mornings to ingest the clay on a river bank. Species such as Mealy and Yellow-headed Amazon, Blue-headed Parrot and Dusky-headed Parakeet descend at this clay lick. The clay lick is active at dawn, during the late mornings and midafternoons. After lunch at the lodge we head out on an ethnobotanical tour. A twenty minute boat trip downriver leads you to a trail designed by the staff of the Centro Ñape. The Centro Ñape is a communal organization that produces medicines out of forest plants and administers them to patients who choose to attend their small clinic. They have produced a trail which explains the different medicinal (and other) uses of selected plants. We return to the lodge for dinner followed by an optional night walk. Most of the mammals of the area are active at night but rarely seen. Much easier to find are frogs with shapes and sounds as bizarre as their natural histories. DAY 3: Departure After breakfast, we retrace our river and road journey back to Puerto Maldonado, our office and then the airport. Depending on airline schedules, this may require a dawn departure. INCLUSIONS & DETAILS Accommodation Standard
Inclusions Difficulty Rating Single Surcharge Notes Price Dependent upon Accommodations All meals All tours, activity services and guides Transfer from and to the airport of Puerto Maldonado All river transportation Services that are NOT included in the price: International or domestic airfares Airport departure taxes or visa fees Excess baggage charges Additional nights during the trip due to flight cancellations Alcoholic beverages or bottled water Insurance of any kind Laundry Phone calls or other items of personal nature. 2 (light adventure) Single room FROM US$610 - Subject to season and availability, contact us for more details. Contact us for more details Season and availability SUSTAINABILITY Chimu Adventures undertakes a number of sustainability measures within its operations including: 1) Only using local guides and office staff to both maximise local employment opportunities and minimise carbon footprints. Local guides also ensure you benefit from the intimate knowledge, passion and culture of the country you re visiting. 2) Where possible, using locally owned and operated boutique hotels to maximise the return to the local community. 3) Chimu s Pass it on programme has provided funding to hundreds of local community projects in Latin America. Our aim is to empower local communities, helping them to develop their own infrastructure for the future. Since 2006, we have been working with Kiva (a well-known Non-Governmental Organisation), providing hundreds of loans to local businesses all over South America. 4) In our pre tour information we provide a range of tips and advice on how to minimise your impact on both local environments and communities. 5) Chimu Adventures offices also take a number of sustainability measures including carbon offsets for company vehicles and most staff travel. Chimu Adventure s internal processes are also structures to create a paperless office and to reduce waste. There are also internal programmes to help staff minimise their carbon footprint such as our staff
bike purchase assistance plan which encourages office staff to commute to work via bicycle. Currently almost half of our office based staff commute to work via bicycle.