Itinerary

DAY 1

 

Arrival & Reception by Biology Instructors - Lecturers
For workshops and seminars, guides with a background in biology and / or research experience are selected as instructors, who then conduct the workshops or lectures in the field in which they are specialized in.

Transfer Airport to Puerto Maldonado Headquarters
Upon arrival 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 deposit. This helps us keep the boats and cargo light.  

Transfer Pto Maldonado Headquarters to Tambopata River Port
Skirting Puerto Maldonado, we drive 20 kilometers to the Tambopata River Port, entering the Native Community of Infierno.  The port is a communal business.

Transfer Boat - Tambopata River Port to Posada Amazonas
The forty five minute boat ride from the Tambopata Port to Posada Amazonas will take us into the Community´s Primary Forest Private Reserve.

Boxed Lunch

Orientation
Upon arrival, the lodge manager will welcome you and brief you with important navigation and security tips.

Canopy Tower
A twenty minute walk from Posada Amazonas leads to the 30 meter scaffolding canopy tower. A bannistered 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.

Dinner

Ecotourism Lecture
A daily presentation on the Infierno ecotourism project is available every night from a staff member.

Overnight at Posada Amazonas
 
DAY 2

Breakfast

Infierno Community Visit
Forty five minutes downstream from Posada Amazonas, close to the port, lies the community of Infierno´s hub. Although homes are scattered over 10,000 hectares, the “hub” centralizes the shared infrastructure – school, store, medical post, and meeting room. We only visit with community authorization.

Soccer game
A soccer game is the perfect way to cap off a day at the community and the most fluent form of communication. The athletic and well adjusted rain forest kids are difficult to beat and have teams for every age group.  

Lunch

Ethnobotanical Tour
A twenty minute boat drive 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 their little clinic. They have produced a trail which explains the different medicinal (and other) uses of selected plants. 

Dinner

Overnight at Posada Amazonas

DAY 3

Breakfast

Otter Monitoring
We paddle a canoe around an oxbow lake, filling out standard Frankfurt Zoological Society otter monitoring cards. If we see giant river otters during our outing we register their location and direction on a map of the lake, we track and time their activity (swimming, fishing, resting, alarm call) and we attempt to trace their white throat marks, which are distinct for each individual.

Transfer Private Boat - Posada Amazonas to Refugio Amazonas
The one hour and forty five minute boat ride from Posada Amazonas to Refugio Amazonas will take us past the Community of Infierno and the Tambopata National Reserve´s checkpoint into the buffer zone of this 1.3 million hectare conservation unit.

Macaw Population Census
The macaw project has been counting individuals present in trail transects and river transects in an effort to estimate macaw population variations with seasons. During our river voyage we will be given data registration cards to note species of macaws sited, number of individuals and location. This data will be plugged into the general macaw project data set.

Boxed Lunch

Orientation
Upon arrival, the lodge manager will welcome you and brief you with important navigation and security tips.

Introduction to tropical ecology
Rather than a workshop this is a comprehensive lecture describing the basics of rain forest structure and function. Topics include the structure of the forest (ground, understory, canopy), adaptations of plants (aerial palms, epiphytes, tabular roots), ecology of gaps (succession of fallen trees), interrelations between plants and animals (Strangler figs, tangarana ants,  spiders consumed by fungi), interrelations between animals (mixed troops of brown capuchin and squirrel monkeys). Props are common floodplain forest trail sightings.

Dinner

Overnight at Refugio Amazonas

 
DAY 4

Clay lick monitoring
Following macaw project research procedures that have been applied for several years, we monitor parrot presence at the clay lick. From the clay lick observation site, we will repeat scan sampling methods every ten minutes, registering data such as start time, point of sampling, meteorological conditions, number of birds observed by species, and conduct characterization.

Breakfast

Seed dispersal and predation
Seed dispersal and predation fulfill an important role in the process of natural regeneration and maintenance of vegetable populations. The theory is that the recruitment of plants and seeds near adult trees is limited by herbivore predators.  In this workshop we will count seeds and sapling in expanding concentric circles centered around an adult mother tree.  We will  prove with this simple experiment how predators concentrate their activities in zones with high density of seeds and how those seeds that are dispersed further from the mother tree have greater survival possibilities.

Lunch

Flora and Fauna 5 - Fish
From a platform in a small pond we will sample fish using nets. We will learn the essentials of the identification key, as well as the properties of the principal families and the adaptation of fish to the extreme conditions of seasonal water formations in the Amazon.

Dinner

Night Insects
Night is commonly known as “the insect hour“ because  they leave their diurnal hiding places in order to feed, reproduce, etc. In this activity, participants will collect species of Orthoptera (grasshoppers) Mantids (Praying Mantises) and Coleoptera (beetles), with the aid of headlamps, gloves, magnifying glasses and recipients. A second sampling method used will be light traps to attract insects. Each insect will be thoroughly examined, so participants can learn the basics of their identification and their particular structures, survival strategies and  roles in the ecosystem.

Overnight at Refugio Amazonas

 DAY 5

 Breakfast

Rate of Construction of Termite Nests
Ants and termites are the animals with the most biomass per square meter in the rainforest. We will study the rate at which termite workers can degrade wood and build their nests by finding several nests, breaking off pieces of them, and then weighing and measuring the amount of matter that is reconstructed after a determined period of time.

Lunch

Rainforest Tattoo
Five minutes from the lodge lives Don Manuel, who grows a variety of popular and unknown Amazon crops - just about every plant and tree you see serves a purpose. At Don Manuel’s farm, we will prepare a paste from the fruit of huito and achiote to draw dark blue and red tattoos on ourselves. They last several days.   

Dinner

Amphibian Inventory
Nocturnal inventories are conducted using Visual Method Encounter Surveys. Transects are established in humid areas or near ponds. All amphibian occurrences are registered, annotating species, time, location, height from ground, substrate, size, weight, sex and presence of nuptial calluses (in case of the males) or pregnancy (in case of the females).

Overnight at Refugio Amazonas

 
DAY 1

Breakfast

Transfer Boat - Refugio Amazonas to Tambopata River Port

Transfer Tambopata River Port to Pto Maldonado Headquarters

Transfer Puerto Maldonado Headquarters to Airport
We retrace our river and road journey back to Puerto Maldonado, our office and the airport. Depending on airline schedules, this may require dawn departures.

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