Adventure Add-On
The Road Less Traveled
Only intrepid explorers journey to the Amazon rain forest, but getting there and back is half the adventure.
I’m jostling in a beat-up Landcruiser moving down the Manu Road. As we round a bend, a truck jam-packed with Peruvians is careening straight for us. The Manu Road is a one-lane dirt path that goes from the Inca-built town of Cuzco, Peru, over the 14,000-foot Andes, and into the lowland Amazon basin. Traffic is only supposed to drive in one direction — toward the world-renowned Manu Biosphere Reserve — on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but that doesn’t stop the oncoming vehicles.I peer out my window at towering trees enshrouded in mist along the cliffs and momentarily forget our dilemma. We’ve entered the lush Andean cloud forest, surrounded by tree ferns, orchids and trilling birdsong. As driver Emilio brings us harrowingly close to the cliff, Marianne van Vlaardingen, co-owner of Pantiacolla Tours, explains the situation: Mandatory voting forces citizens from across the nation to return to their hometowns — traffic laws be damned. I picked a fine time to travel.
I’m taking a 10-day tour of the Amazon rain forest, something I’ve long dreamed of doing — covered canoes on swollen rivers, lush jungle teeming with wildlife, communities of Amazon Indians. I never imagined that getting there and back would be half the adventure.
Emilio allows the truck to pass, and we continue. For eight hours we endure bumpy driving, cross rivers and dodge traffic as we talk and rest. We’re a motley crew: the Pantiacolla staff, my best friend, Daline, who is traveling with me before entering a Zen monastery, and a European fashion designer, Claudia. Marianne translates Spanish for us, because “Yo hablo muy pequeno Espanol” (“I speak very tiny Spanish”) is about the extent of my Spanish language skills.
Marianne, fair and slight, first traveled to Peru in 1987, a Dutch biologist studying tamarin monkeys. With laughter and enthusiasm, she tells how she fell in love with the rain forest — as well as Peruvian Gustavo Moscoso. The couple married in 1994 and founded Pantiacolla.
“I realized there must be a better way to help save the rain forest than to just research one small aspect of it,” she said.
Pantiacolla was one of the first companies to take tour groups into the Manu Biosphere — a 7,263-square-mile reserve scientists hail as the world’s most biodiverse habitat, with more than 200 mammal species including jaguars, anteaters, giant armadillo, monkeys and sloths and in excess of 1,000 bird species. Six years ago, Pantiacolla initiated cultural tourism with the Yine Indians — recording their legends, involving travelers with their culture and handicrafts, and helping the Yine become self-sufficient at running their own lodge. It sounded ideal in theory, but the project has had more than its share of trouble.
We enter the Biosphere at 11,000 feet, and then descend on steep switchbacks. By day’s end, I am amply ready for our stop at the Posado San Pedro lodge. We eat a delicious meal of hot minestrone soup, trout and a panoply of potatoes for which Peru is famous. Peruvian mountain people — who tend llamas and alpacas and crops on steep mountainsides — still harvest many varieties of potatoes by hand, selling them in colorful markets.
Daline seems out of sorts — a mix of time zone disorientation, altitude sickness and “jostling-vehicle-itis.” I have a slight headache. “Try this tea!” Marianne offers mate’ de coca, the same leaf used to make cocaine in its concentrated form. “One cup cures altitude sickness.” After the tea and a cool shower, I tuck the netting under my mattress to discourage mosquitoes bearing diseases, take my malaria meds, and sleep like a rock.
The next day, we drive until we get to Atalaya — our road stops at the river. A few airplane landing strips exist, including one next to Pantiacolla’s Yine Lodge, but Amazon dwellers travel mostly by river. We still have a couple hours before we’ll reach our destination, a lodge up the Rio Alto Madre de Dios — River of the Mother of God.
In his 1924 book, “The River of the Mother of God,” naturalist Aldo Leopold wrote that early Spanish explorers marked this river on maps with a thick line, with no beginning and no end. Leopold described it as “the perfect symbol of the Unknown Places of the Earth.”
We load our gear into the motorized canoe, and boatman Chiky Mambiro takes us down the muddy, gray torrent, swollen with recent rains. A Machiguenga Indian, Chiky has high cheekbones and chiseled muscles and colorful sara sara seed necklaces grace his neck.
