We knew that we wanted to go into the Amazon rainforest SOMEWHERE during our South America expedition, but weren’t sure where. It is spread across NINE countries – Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and Brazil. We discovered that Peru had the second largest area of Amazon rainforest, after Brazil, and that logistics of getting/staying there were reasonably straightforward. It’s bizarre that Peru contains one of the driest deserts on Earth, some of the highest mountains and a big chunk of the largest rainforest – and that is pretty much how the country is defined – coast/desert, Andes, jungle. Anyway, it looked like this was the most convenient place to get into the rainforest so Debbie set about researching options. It should come as no surprise to learn that she quickly identified a luxury resort which had won the World’s Best Eco Lodge at the 2025 World Travel Awards, and it didn’t take that much effort for her to convince Steve that we should blow the last of our ‘indulgences budget’ on 3 nights at Refugio Amazonas on the edge of the Tampopata National Reserve.

We needed to fly from Lima across the Andes to Puerto Maldonado, and opted to travel the afternoon before to avoid the ridiculously early start that’d be needed to get to the meeting point in time. We left most of our luggage at the hotel in Lima as there was no point in paying for checked baggage that we didn’t need – and were out of Puerto Maldonado Airport and in a tuk-tuk to the city within 10 minutess of landing. A working jungle-frontier town, Puerto Maldonado was OK for a night. We had a decent stay at Hotel Copasu (apparently the best in town) for £50/night, and beers, Pisco Sours and a meal at the best restaurant in town for almost no money (although our drink arrived after we’d finished our meal!).

The next morning we were collected by taxi and taken to the offices of Rainforest Escapes, the company who run Refugio Amazonas and 2 other lodges – an incredibly slick operation. Arriving passengers were given soft duffel bags to decant their necessary items into, with the rest of their luggage being stored here, but having travelled light we didn’t need this. After spotting a sloth in the tree, we set off on the 2.5 hour journey to our lodge – an hour and a half by road (half of it on a VERY bumpy dirt track) before reaching the ‘port’ at Filadelphia and boarding a boat for another hour up river.

Along the way we spotted several cabybaras, the world’s largest rodent and about the size of a large dog, caught a glimpse of a giant black caiman and had a more up-close encounter with a smaller white caiman. We also learned that mature male capybaras can be identified by the distinctive scent gland on their nose, which they rub against plants to mark their territory.

After an hour or so we arrived at our lodge, first needing to climb 160 steps up from the riverbank and then hiking for 15 minutes or so through the jungle. But then we got our first glimpse of Refugio Amazonas and it was amazing! We’d not needed to worry about our luggage – that was miraculously transported to our room. The stay included all meals, excursions and a guide, and the options were explained to us over a welcome drink.

We’d arrived with 2 other couples and they seemed to be our ‘group’ – Australians and Spaniards – but at dinner we met another British couple who turned out to be in our group with the Aussies rather than the Spanish-speaking couple from Madrid. She was a retired gynaecologist from Lancashire who was ‘getting through’ a 1 month no-expense-spared trip to Peru, Ecuador and Galapagos as quickly as possible as she didn’t want to be away from home for too long – and amazingly didn’t seem to enjoy any of it. Perhaps spending your working life looking at ladies nether regions renders you joyless! The charming Australian gentleman said that he’d ‘worked for the government’ before retirement – his wife was quick to point out that he was actually a diplomat, before elaborating that he’d been the Australian Ambassador to Mexico, Pakistan, Kenya and so on. A rather different group to the one we’d shared the Galapagos cruise with!

The accommodation at Refugio was rather ‘interesting’ – one wall of the rooms is totally open to the outside to allow an ‘immersive jungle experience’ (marketing speak obviously), but beds were covered with heavyweight mosquito nets to protect guests from the mozzies and the creepy crawlies that inevitably joined us in the room. What was more bizarre that the individual rooms didn’t have ceilings – there was just a high pitched roof covering each block of 8 rooms – so effectively everyone could hear everyone else, and see when any lights were switched on for early starts. Not particularly relaxing, certainly not private, and there are surely no babies conceived during a stay here!

The glossy marketing presented a smorgasbord of activities to choose from but the reality was that the group need to collectively agree what they want to do. Mmmmm – perhaps unsurprisingly there were some very different interests even in our group of 6, but at least we were agreed that we wanted to do the signature/highlight visit to the macaw clay lick as a priority. What we hadn’t realised was that it involved a 3.15 am wake up for departure at 3.45am, followed by a 2 hour boat journey in the pitch black with navigation just by torch, Steve closed his eyes for pretty much the entire journey, having spotted the rocks and rapids on our arrival journey and trying not to think about how they were being avoided in the dark. It turned out that we weren’t the only people arriving at 6am, every other lodge within a couple of hours had a boat or two here, and we soon found that the glossy pictures were rather different from the reality – which was jostling for position at least 200m from the clay lick and with the only way of viewing the macaws was through binoculars or a viewing scope. Given that our binoculars. proper camera and long lenses are with most of our worldly possessions in a storage container in Paignton, we relied on our guide Lucie’s viewing scope and taking pictures through the eyepiece using our iPhones. The macaws come to the clay lick in the early morning to socialise and get the nutrients they are missing from this region’s fruit/berries diet from the clay. This is nature, not a show, so a sighting is never guaranteed. The birds start to arrive in pairs and settle in the trees until one or more is satisfied that there are no predators around, and then they start to descent onto the vertical clay walls. The birds had arrived but were staying high in the trees so we went for breakfast at tables set up on the beach by our boat crew – and then suddenly Lucie screamed ‘they’re licking’ and we were off back to the viewing point. It was pretty amazing to watch the beautiful birds, I think we saw 6 varieties. On the way back to the lodge we saw exactly the obstacles in the river that we’d avoided in the dark – the skipper and navigator are either very skillful or incredibly lucky!

We took guided walks in the forest, spotting various small monkeys, some not so small spiders, a tarantula that could not be coaxed out of it’s hole. We spent a couple of hours in a hide near a mammal clay lick, but nothing other than a few wild turkeys arrived. And after a 45 minute walk back to the lodge, there was a wild turkey in full view just a couple of metres away.

The Amazon rainforest displays incredible biodiversity – quite different to Galapagos which had an abundance of wildlife but very few species. From the top of the 45m high canopy tower – Steve managed the 240 steps slowly, Debbie only slightly quicker – we had a bird’s eye view of the treeline and caught glimpses of a toucan but couldn’t get a decent picture. Oh well, we’ll have to go to Costa Rica then.

Across the river we visited a farm which supplied much of the fresh fruit and veg to the lodge – lemons, avocados, mangos, oranges, ginger, coffee and plantains were bountiful. The estate was managed by a single old bloke and Lucie said that his crops made him very rich. We did wonder how long it would be before he was persuaded to sell out to a lodge developer.

We only had 2 full days here, and there were many activities that we didn’t have time to do but we got a good taster. On our final afternoon we took the boat down river for a sunset cruise, had a drink and some nibbles and raised a glass to the efforts to preserve this part Amazon rainforest. Eco tourism is key and the research done by the team at Refugio and other lodges is developing some brilliant initiatives to help the conservation. We hope our tourist dollars have helped in those efforts.

So how did it compare with Galapagos? They are chalk and cheese – the Amazon rainforest is incredible but we doubt that anything will ever beat Galapagos for wildlife (and yes, we have done an African safari!). We do feel very fortunate to have been able to experience yet another amazing place…