After getting up very very VERY early for our 45 minute flight from the highlands of Cusco, we arrived in Puerto Maldonado in the lowlands. Puerto Maldonado is renowned for its gold mining, Brazil nut collecting, timber extraction, agriculture and ecotourism. In fact gold mining was pretty common and we could see tiny make sift water sifters searching for gold as we passed by in our boat.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived was the temperature and the humidity phew!!!! and also feeling the need to for an oxygen mask everytime you climbed the stairs had now gone as we were now on the egde of the rain forrest

Here we travelled by boat to our lodge in the Tambopata Rainforest Area, on the Tambopata river. the place was gorgeous with each group having its own lodge and was right on the edge of the forrest. After a quick snoozed in our hammocks and some lunch we headed off out  on a nature walk in to the forrest. This had to be my favourite part of our 2 days in the jungle! here we split up into 2 groups and with one guide each learnt about some of the inhabitants of the forrest.

•  The walking trees! whose roots are above ground (most of the rainforrests nutrients are in the first 50cm of the soil) and who move up to 10cm a year to get to the next available pice of light (the rainforrest floor is a dark dark place!).
• Translucent butterflies, that are almost see through apart from red tipped wings.
• Tarantualla hunting (see the pics), here the guide stopped at a hole in the ground by a tree and asked if we wanted to see some spiders?!? he then tuck a small twig down the hole wiggled if for about a minute and out come 2 baby grey tarantuallas. I say they were babies, but they still could have playedtheir part in the film arachnaphobia, they were almost as big as my hand!!!!
• Then we saw the turmit mounds up a tree, natives of the area use part of the mound to treat alcoholics! appartently you dissolve a tiny part of the mound in a drink and they will never be able to drink alcohol again!!
• The errr Penis tree (you def need to see the picture of this one) that errr is the jungle form of viagra!
• Bullet ants, native to the rainforrestes, so called because their sting is just like that of a bullet!! fortunately I didn´t find out if this was true, the little monsters are at least 5 cm long!!
• All the time whilst we were walking around you can hear tucan´s and see macaws flying above your head

After this we then headed off to a local lake to watch the birds maccaws mailnly, they mate for life so you usually see them in pairs, if you see 3 of them together it usually means that they are still rearing their young! we spent the after noon here trying to catch piranahs - which is tougher than you would think! (cleaver little devils they kept eating all the bait). I spent the day feedig the angel fish my crackers and left everyone else to fishing, we did however eventually catch a tiny one- teeth n all!!!  

That night we headed back to our lodges for a bit of R & R befre heading out for some night caymen spotting!! aka Aligators!

My happiest memory of this trip into teh rainforrest has to be travelling along ion our mortorised canoe at 5am just as the sun was rising and seeing 2 red parrots (much smaller and harder to spot than maccaws) flying just above our heads!