Our eight-day Manu Biosphere Reserve Tour with a half-day excursion to see the Macaws Clay Lick is a complete package tour of Manu National Park.
Manu National Park is a popular destination in the Peruvian Amazon. The entire national park spans over 1,532,806 hectares. The lush tiers of vegetation rise from 150 meters above sea level all the way up to 4200 meters. Manu National Park comprises three zones – Manu Core Zone, Biosphere Reserve, and Cultural Zone.
Access to Manu Core Zone is exclusive to scientists and researchers. The Biosphere Reserve or the Manu Reserved Zone, which dominates the major part of the national park, has many trails and is popular among travelers. The Manu Cultural Zone is where the communities live.
The Amazon Rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world, and Manu, this lowland forest, dominates the major part of the Peruvian Amazon. Manu National Park is home to over 32 indigenous people who continue to practice their age-old traditions and customs. Some of these indigenous communities are currently living in voluntary isolation.
Countless species of birds and animals also inhabit the Amazon lowland rainforest, such as the black caiman and the giant armadillo. You will also find various plant species here. In 1987, UNESCO recognized Manu as a World Heritage Site, giving it its current status as a protected area. The Manu Wildlife Center and the Alto Madre de Dios river are some of the most known places of the reserve.
The eight-day tour to Manu Biosphere Reserve and Macaw Clay Lick program is carefully designed by our local experts from the native community to offer you the best of the pristine areas of the biosphere zone and cultural zone.
We are a local tour operator from the Palotoa community in Manu National Park. We take pride in employing locals from the community. They have extensive knowledge about the flora and fauna, trails, and indigenous culture and traditions. Do take a moment to see our guest reviews on Tripadvisor.
We will be picking you up from your hotel in Cusco at 06:00 in the morning. The first part of the drive will be through the Andes Mountain range. On the way, we will pass through Paucartambo, a folkloric and colonial town. Around noon, we will be arriving at the main entrance of Manu National Reserve.
As we enter Manu National Reserve, we will be traveling on a dirt road through dense fog, marking our entrance to the Cloud Forest. Eventually, we will arrive at the home of the Peruvian National Bird, the "Cock of the Rocks". They are known to gather in this area.
You will find that this is quite an amazing spectacle, complete with an impressive array of sounds and colors that can only be found in the jungle. We will be spending the first night of the tour in Rain Forest Lodge.
At 06:00 in the morning, we will start our journey towards Atalaya Port. On our way, we will stop in a couple of villages. Farmers in these villages are known to produce a variety of fruits typical to the region, and they also plant the infamous coca plants. We will then start our boat ride on the "Madre De Dios" river, one of the tributaries of the Amazon River. During our boat ride, you will have a chance to spot many varieties of colorful birds, including parrots, oropendolas, and vultures.
We will stop at natural hot springs, and if luck favors, you will have a chance to spot some jungle mammals like the renowned capybaras (jungle rodents that are as much as 2.5 ft. long). Early in the evening, we will arrive at the Amazon Lodge, where you will be spending the second night of the trip. The lodge offers comfortable service, where you can freshen up before starting the night walk. During the night walk, we will spot some insects, tarantulas, scorpions, and snakes.
We will be leaving Amazon Lodge, leaving behind the clean waters of the Madre de Dios river, and entering the clay-laden waters of the Manu River. With a brief stop at the Park ranger station at Limonal to present our permits, we will travel for about five hours deep into the Manu Biosphere, up the Manu River. Beaches, especially in the dry season, are full of nesting birds and feeding herons, egrets, orinoco geese, terns, and skimmers to name a few.
Some beaches will host sunning white and black caimans, and breeding side-necked turtles. Hundreds of sand-colored nightjars roost during the day on logs and beaches. Here you may have a chance to spot jaguars. You will also have an opportunity to see red howler monkeys and small squirrel monkeys, typical of the region.
After lunch by the river, we will travel to Casa Matsigenka Lodge near the Lake of Cocha Salvador. We’ll have the afternoon to explore some of the trails through the pristine rainforest in the area. A visit to the Lake of Cocha Otorongo is planned, where observation piers and a 30-meter observation tower in the rainforest canopy overlooking the lake are available for observing wildlife.
Our guides will show you the big family of giant otters that inhabit this lake. Optionally, before or after dinner, you can hike with the guide to spot nocturnal creatures. The lakes are full of eye-shine from the large black caiman, and if we are lucky, we may encounter an olingo, kinkajou, or even an ocelot on the trails.
Certainly, the nighttime noise of tree frogs and insects in the forest is an experience not to be forgotten. We will spend the night at Casa Matsigenka, a rustic native-owned lodge, managed by the Matsigenka themselves, with their own exclusive trail system. There are flush toilets and ambient temperature shower facilities, with screened twin rooms, comfortable beds, and mosquito nets.
After breakfast, we will be spending the morning on Cocha Salvador Lake. Most of the time will be spent canoeing on a floating platform on the lake, witnessing the ox-bow lake animal life. We may spot agami herons, sungrebes, and brown capuchin monkeys, usually fed with fruits nearby. Specially constructed piers jutting out into the lake enable us to look for a family of giant otters that live here. These are the world’s largest freshwater carnivores.
They remain mostly in Manu Biosphere and have been hunted to extinction throughout most of their former range. Each of these animals consumes between 4 to 5 kilos of fish daily. Often, they can be seen eating large quantities of fish on logs by the lake. We will spend the rest of the day walking along the trails in the area looking for some of the 13 species of monkeys that are typical in the region. Your guide will explain the basics of rainforest ecosystems and point out some of the medicinal plants of the area used by local, indigenous groups. We may also cross paths with a group of peccaries, a species of wild boar.
Later in the day, we will visit the Pakitza control post, where you will walk through its trails to see the biodiversity. In the evening, we will stop to see the sun setting over the world’s largest rainforest before returning to Casa Matsigenka Lodge, where you will be spending the night.
You will wake up to the call of the red howler monkeys ("Alouta Seniculus"). After breakfast, we will start our return trip to the Manu River. On the way, you will be able to spot a variety of birds, including herons, egrets, kingfishers, and the ever-present vultures, with the king vulture (Sarcoramphus papa) being the most spectacular.
We will have a brief stop in Boca Manu to fetch some cold beverages. Later that evening, we will arrive at Tambo Blanquillo Lodge. Late in the evening, you can have a guided tour of the lagoons in the region to see alligators and nocturnal animals.
One distinctive habitat near Tambo Blanquillo is the shebonal forest. This type of forest is high in clay content, creating clay licks, popular as Collpa, which are specially used by macaws and other rainforest species as a healthy diet supplement that helps them remove toxins from their digestive tracts. Macaws usually obtain these noxious chemical substances from the unripe fruits they ingest.
Our lodge is just 10 minutes away from the Macaw Clay Lick. A blind of 10 meters in altitude has been built facing it, so you can take close-up pictures without disturbing the birds' activity. It consists of 40 comfortable seats, each with a personal counter for binoculars and cameras, offering better stability for superb pictures of the macaws on the clay lick. Breakfast will be served at the blind, and a toilet facility is available.
At daybreak, we will start sailing to the "Macaw Clay Licks", a special place where flocks of parakeets, parrots, and macaws come every day to eat the nutritious lick. We will stop at a camouflaged hideout for the birds. It is a paradise for bird lovers. You will get to see many of them.
This activity depends heavily on the weather. We will spend around 5 hours waiting to see the macaws perform their daily activity. We will later return to the lodge for lunch. After lunch, we will visit the Camungo Oxbow Lake. Here, you will have an opportunity to climb up the observation tower for an awe-inspiring view of the Amazon plain and the lake. We will then return to the lodge for dinner.
We will begin the day with a three-hour boat ride up the river to Boca Manu. There we will stop to buy cold drinks. The river trip may hold surprises as we keep an eye out for wildlife on the beaches. Leaving Boca Manu, we will sail up the Madre de Dios River for about five hours to our signature Palotoa Amazon Lodge.
The afternoon will be set aside to relax. Alternatively, you can explore the forest trails to a lookout point on a cliff over the river to watch roosting flights of parrots and macaws as the sun sets.
We will get up early, and after breakfast, we will return to Atalaya by boat. Here, our private bus will be waiting for us for our journey back to Cusco. We will be reaching Cusco by noon.
Located in the southeast of Peru, in the provinces of Paucartambo in Cusco and Manu in Madre de Dios. It has an area of 1’717’295.22 hectares.
Manu is at 130 kilometers from Cusco city traveling by road, which interacts as a gateway to the Manu National Park. You can also get to Puerto Maldonado by land from Cusco or by air through Lima. From there you can ride the mother river of God by boat and you can get to the Manu Reserve, but it is more far and expensive.
The best time to visit the Peruvian Jungle is between April and November, during the dry season. The rainy season is from February to March, when access by road becomes more difficult and when the paths in the forest can be flooded.
The Manu National Park is divided into three parts: cultural zone or buffer zone, reserved zone or core zone, and the intangible zone. The cultural zone and the reserved zone are for tourist use. The intangible zone is used exclusively for scientific studies and with special permits. More details see section Manu.
It is not a requirement, but one must be able to walk a path of several kilometers to fully enjoy what Manu has to offer.
In the Manu National Park there are no reports of cases of yellow fever, malaria, and malaria; however, if you want to stay longer in tropical places, it is better to consult with your doctor.
tour was an unforgettable experience! The trip took me deep into the heart of the Amazon, where I saw wildlife like never before—macaws at the clay lick, monkeys swinging through the trees, and even jaguars in the wild. The guides were experts, sharing fascinating details about the environment and the animals. The trip also included night safaris and boat rides along the river, which were some of the highlights. If you’re looking for an authentic Amazon adventure, this is the tour for you!
Ce voyage a été une expérience inoubliable ! Il m’a emmené au cœur de l’Amazonie, où j’ai pu observer une faune sauvage comme jamais auparavant : des aras dans les argiles, des singes se balançant dans les arbres et même des jaguars en liberté. Les guides, experts, ont partagé des détails fascinants sur l’environnement et les animaux. Le voyage comprenait également des safaris nocturnes et des promenades en bateau sur le fleuve, qui ont été parmi les points forts. Si vous recherchez une aventure authentique en Amazonie, ce voyage est fait pour vous !
