Cost of the Peruvian Amazon Venture: $4.600 per person, based on double occupancy, from Lima; Single supplement $400 Price includes: Flights from Lima to Puerto Maldonado, all ground transportation in the Peruvian Amazon, all meals, taxes, entrance fees, trip information packet, bird list, and services of 3 guides (one local, two Ventures), snacks and drinking water Not included: Round trip airfare to Lima, alcoholic beverages, gratuities, laundry, and items of a personal nature.

Second only to Columbia in terms of bird diversity, Peru boasts an astronomical list of more than 1,840 bird species, 113 of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Peru owes much of its biodiversity to the majestic Amazon Forest, the most species-rich bioregion on Earth. Please join us on this venture as we explore the wide variety of incredible habitats present in the world-famous Amazon region of southeastern Peru.

We start our 9-day examination in southwestern Peru, the most species-rich region of the Amazon Basin, if not the world. We enter the Amazon in the town of Puerto Maldonado, located at the confluence of the Madre de Dios and Tambopata Rivers. From here, we will take an hour-long boat ride to our lodge inside some of the most pristine tropical rain forests in the world. From our lodge we will visit an oxbow lake where we will likely see the prehistoric-looking leaf-eating Hoatzin, a bamboo forest to look for specialists of this unique habitat, and two scaffolding towers where we'll get an eye-level view of birds present in the Amazon Forest's canopy. We'll also explore several forest trails where we'll look for understory mixed species flocks that follow army ant swarms; these flocks may contain 30-40 (or more!) bird species. Perhaps the highlight of our Amazon trip would be a visit to the world's largest macaw clay lick where up to sixteen species of parrots congregate daily to forage for minerals! When we get back to Puerto Maldonado, we should have seen at least 250 to 350 bird species. A bonus is that the financial support to the region during our visit to the region would've made a meaningful direct impact on the native Amazonian community of Infierno and their ongoing conservation projects.

PLEASE NOTE: This itinerary involves a lot of walking, and as such require moderate level of fitness. We may encounter rain on any day, even during the longer hikes, so be sure to have rain protection for optics. It is also worth noting that most of the tour involves forest birding, so please dress appropriately, in dark/neutral clothing. Tour participants are of course welcome to opt out of any of the tour activities for any reason.

Itinerary

Some of the Birds We Hope to See

King Vulture, Harpy Eagle, Crested Eagle, Pavonine Quetzal, Hoatzin, Sunbittern, Green Ibis, Sungrebe, Horned Screamer, White-throated Jacamar, Masked Fruiteater, Thrush-like and Amazonian Antpitta, Purus Jacamar, Round-tailed Manakin, White-cheeked Tody-flycatcher, Peruvian Recurvebill, Brown-rumped Foliage-gleaner, White-lined Antbird, Pheasant Cuckoo, Blue-and-gold Macaw, Scarlet Macaw, Rufous-vented Ground-cuckoo, White-throated Jacamar, Scarlet-hooded Barbet, Rufous-fronted Antthrush, Cabanis Spinetail, Great Potoo, Long-tailed Potoo, and many more.

Other charismatic species we may encounter include the Endangered Giant Otter, Emperor Tamarin, White-fronted and Large-headed Capuchin, Black-capped Squirrel Monkey, Bolivian Red Howling Monkey, Peruvian Spider Monkey, Kinkajou, Collared Peccary, Capybara, Spectacled and Black Caiman, several Poison Frogs, and perhaps even a Jaguar if we're very, very lucky.