The Five Day Jungle Experience: Heat, Humidity & Eating Live Termites 

It’s unmissable as soon as we step off the aeroplane. Even out here on the concrete apron of the small airport, the humid air is thick with the dank smell of the rainforest, the scent of damp earth on every inward breath. In just a little over 24 hours we’ve travelled from the desert where it never rains to the jungle where it nearly always does. Paul and his driver collect us at the airport and off we go, at first along a stretch of the highway and then for more than an hour down a bumpy dirt road to the banks of the Tambopata River. Paul – pronounced “Powl” as in Paulo – is to be with us as our guide for the first part of this Amazon jungle adventure. He is instantly likeable, an inveterate giggler who seems as excited as we are to be heading out into the wild.

The adventure gets underway with a hike which starts just before twilight and ends in darkness, deep into the atmospheric jungle filled with the sounds of insects and birds. Twilight is also mosquito hour, so we’re coated in repellent yet still batting off the damned things as they whine past our ears. As the fading light casts eerie shadows, we spy our first toucan of Peru, posing neatly but noisily on the upper branches of a giant tree.

Humidity levels are beyond extreme, drenching our clothes in sweat before we’ve walked even fifteen minutes. Darkness falls quickly in the jungle and before long we’re on the lookout for nocturnals as Paul alternates his standard beam with ultra violet. When occasionally he extinguishes all light, the darkness is total: the hand in front of the face thing is literally true.

Within this blanket of black the sounds of the jungle are thrilling, a discordant and incessant chorus of birds, insects and frogs. Indeed, night hikes are as much about what you hear as they are about what you see, but the “see” element still provides its highs – giant spiders including a tarantula, glowing caterpillars and a dangerous type of scorpion so big that it even makes Paul draw breath and go “wow”. 

This isn’t of course our first jungle experience but it’s already fantastic. As we lay in bed waiting for sleep, those wonderful jungle sounds echo around us – our cabin at this lodge has wooden walls only up to 4 feet or so high, above that there’s just fine mesh up to roof level, enabling us to really feel immersed in our surroundings. It works so well that we drift off in the midst of this cacophony of mysterious sounds, still reeking of mosquito repellent despite our ice cold showers.

Day 2. Tuesday. 4:30am. Rendezvous with Paul and a couple from Rotterdam long before daylight, join El Capitan in the river boat and head upstream for about 90 minutes. An eerie fog hides the treetops as the day dawns, the air mercifully cool with the humidity yet to kick in. Once off the boat, we clamber across the chunky shingle of the exposed riverbed and settle down armed with plastic chairs, binoculars and telescope. We’ve arrived at the clay lick.

A clay lick is a fascinating part of the ecosystem. Many species of animal and bird in this environment have a diet consisting entirely of fruit, which creates a build up of toxins in the body which if untreated could be deadly. To counteract the negative effects of these toxins, it’s necessary to seek out minerals such as magnesium and, more importantly, sodium, minerals which are found in the clay at the steep cliff-like riverbank. This particular clay lick is of increased interest due to the fact that its most regular visitors are macaws, those most colourful and spectacular of birds.

The macaws’ clay licking regime takes place in the early light of the day, hence our own early start – but what a reward we receive. Dozens of both scarlet macaws and blue and yellow macaws flock to the site, taking on board the sodium in a noisy, sociable mass. It’s one of those joyfully reliable natural scenes which unfolds every single morning of the year.

We’re not scheduled to have much rest on Day 2, just time for lunch at the lodge before we’re off again, only the two of us this time, first to kayak down the Tambopata River and then meet up with Paul to go fishing for catfish in a tributary creek. Confirming what we already know, we fare considerably better with the former than the latter – the kayaking is excellent fun, as ever, but the fishing expedition results in a catch of zero just as it did with piranha fishing in Brazil last year.

However the fishing trip isn’t entirely fruitless, providing many more animal and bird spotting events, the most amusing of which is a caracara bird busily feeding off ticks from the fur of a capybara who in turn seems blissfully happy with the service provided.

The humidity continues to astound, this is up there with the most intense we’ve ever experienced. We fear that it’ll be hard to sleep, but we soon drift off still reeking of mosquito repellent despite our ice cold showers.

Day 3. Wednesday. A positively late start at 6:20am but this time loaded with backpacks as we make the journey to our second lodge via boat then 4×4, through the attractive looking gateway town of Puerto Maldonado and on to a second boat. Now in a different section of the Tambopata National Park, we are for this second section alongside the wider Rio Madre de Dios rather than the Tambopata itself.

Paul is gone now, replaced by the less gigglesome but more informative Ronal, who is eager to teach us about many of the trees, shrubs and fruits of the jungle on a walk through the area surrounding the lodge, including tasting some fruit we’ve never even heard of. New fruit is one thing, but another food sample is a real surprise, when Ronal invites us to stick our fingers into a nest and eat a few live termites. For such tiny creatures they have quite a “pop” when you bite them, not to mention quite a pleasant herbal, almost minty, flavour. We think it’s the first time we’ve eaten anything which is actually still alive.

Next up is a boat trip to Monkey Island where at first we find the procession of tourists feeding bananas to the capuchins rather unedifying. But there’s a story which changes our view.

The monkeys left on the island are the immediate descendants, plus one original, of those illegally sold as pets, abandoned by families when they realised that having a monkey is a bit different from having a cat, and subsequently rescued by an ethical welfare organisation. When this organisation ran out of cash, the poor monkeys, over domesticated, were not capable of living in the wild. The solution was to put them on a remote island and encourage visits by tour groups whose guides bring along bags of bananas so that the poor creatures, unable to be re-wilded, can at least live their full term. The future is now limited for the troop: many died during the pandemic, unable to distinguish between food and poison due to over domestication and without the support of visiting humans and now, after crossbreeding between types, the troop is terminally sterile. When the last one dies, the cycle will be over.

Evening brings a night watch boat trip where the occasional caiman shows itself but little else escapes the sanctuary of the dark. It’s so humid. Our cabin, again with fine mesh for walls and windows, has no fan or air cooling of any kind, the only respite is to stand under the cold shower – somehow the absence of hot water doesn’t seem as distressing here as it would anywhere else.

It’s been full on over three days in the sapping, de-energising heat and humidity. We drift off, soaking the bed sheets in a combination of perspiration and mosquito repellent despite our ice cold showers.

Day 4. Thursday. 5:00am rendezvous with Ronal. The first couple of hours of daylight provide the only relief from the humidity; dawn brings a coolness to the air which is as refreshing as a cold drink. Each morning the fog hangs over the treetops as darkness lifts, quickly burning off as the sun rises and begins its daily ritual of burn and swelter. Before 8 o’clock every day both the heat and humidity have already rocketed up the scale.

By 5:15 we’re on the boat again, heading to a landing point from which a 3km boardwalk takes us through swamp and jungle to the shores of Lake Sandoval. The waters of the lake are unbelievably serene, flat calm and acting as the perfect mirror to the lush greenery which is alive with morning birdsong.

Red howler monkeys amble across the high canopy, yellow coated squirrel monkeys crash through lower branches, exotic and unusual birds fish in the waters, soar overhead and issue disparate and raking calls. One bird which we spy – the hoatzin (nicknamed the “stinky bird”) – is endemic to the Peruvian Amazon and displays an impressive combination of colour and crest.

Along the boardwalk Ronal points out many trees and plants with unique or unusual characteristics, none more so than the incredible matapalos, the strangler fig, which, as he demonstrates, has a weird story – it grows from the top down. Seeds left in the poo of birds and monkeys germinate at the top of the canopy, sending roots which wind themselves slowly down a host tree until close enough to the ground to grow outstretched roots which act as anchors.

The twisting roots grow in size, so forming a new trunk wrapped around that of the host tree, whilst the anchor roots expand and grow in strength. Now able to support itself, the new tree proceeds to strangle the host tree, hidden inside this parasite, to death, hence its name. Over these couple of days Ronal has taught us many more facts about the unusual properties of a whole host of jungle plants, far too many to detail here, but all of them enhancing our appreciation of the wonder of nature. He’s a very knowledgeable and interesting guy.

Thursday evening brings a second night walk for spotting nocturnal creatures, during which we find out just how many gigantic tarantulas live at this lodge and within yards of our cabin. There are, literally, dozens of them, giant females and not quite so big males in astonishing numbers. No wonder they tell you not to leave your door open, not even for a minute – bad enough with all the airborne critters which can do you harm let alone spiders and scorpions.

It’s the end of Day 4. We came to the rainforest expecting heat, humidity and rain. Remarkably, we’ve had only two of the three, and in our whole time in Amazona we haven’t felt a drop of rain. Now THAT is good luck. We fall asleep knowing we’ve got lucky. And stinking of mosquito repellent despite our ice cold showers.

Day 5. Friday. 6:15am. Time for one last activity before our Amazona adventure is finally over, a canopy walk on hanging bridges way above the jungle up in the treetops where macaws call and leaves rustle. At the final platform, Ronal asks us all to simply close our eyes, be silent for a few minutes and just absorb the sounds of the jungle. Of course we’ve already done this several times ourselves – it’s amazing just how many different creatures you can hear.

As Ronal declares the vigil finished, he is clearly thoroughly edified even though he’s probably done it a thousand times before. “The jungle”, he says with feeling, “is magical”. Maybe the perfect final judgment on our stay.

And so we leave the magical jungle, our four night five day adventure over, and return briefly to explore Puerto Maldonado. From there it’s on to Cusco, 3,400 metres above sea level. It’s no longer tarantulas, mosquitoes and humidity that’s the challenge, it’s altitude sickness and a lack of oxygen.

It’s going to be a big learning curve and a whole load of adjustment. Let’s see what this next section brings…