Peru’s largest national park is Manú Biosphere Reserve, which stretches from the cloud forest and high-altitude jungle of the eastern slopes of the Andes down into the Amazon Basin. It’s one of the world’s most bio-diverse parks, protecting 15,000 plant species, more bird species than the United States and Canada combined, and more mammals than other Latin American rainforests.
Manu Biosphere Reserve is the preeminent reserve in the Peruvian Amazon, comprising 2 million hectares stretching between the departments of Cusco and Madre de Dios. Many travelers dream of visiting the tropical rainforest of the Amazon, and stopping by Manu is a great way to do it, as it’s believed to house the greatest biodiversity range on the planet, providing refuge for many endangered species, including the jaguar, river wolf, and the spectacled bear.
Interested in spending more time in Puerto Maldonado, one of the most important cities in the Peruvian Amazon? Well, this might be your chance. Pirwa Maldonado is looking for help from English-speaking travelers during the afternoon or night shifts. In exchange for five hours of work, you will also receive breakfast and lunch. You’ll have free days for excursions and will be able to control your travel budget.
The Tambopata – Candamo Reserved Zone was created in 1990 to protect 1.5 million hectares of rainforest and wetlands to the east and south of Puerto Maldonado, in the Amazon basin. It can be visited all year long and is a popular destination for travelers who want to visit its clay licks, which are some of the largest in the world and which attract hundreds of rare macaws and parrots as well as some mammal species. The reserve also possesses various world records when it comes to bird species (545 in only 5,500 hectares) and butterfly species (1122). The area is so diverse that a person can walk a mile along the rainforest of Tambopata – Candamo Reserve without encountering two trees of the same species.
The lazy town of Puerto Maldonado, on the confluence of the Madre de Dios and Tambopata rivers, is the perfect base for those tours of the Peruvian Amazon we wrote about. We’ve also dedicated some blog space to activities to do in the town itself, rather than solely visiting the surrounding rainforest.