Down into the Amazon basin

From Cusco we decided to do a week long journey into the jungle.  Manu national park is supposed to be one of the best places in South America to go to the jungle if you want to see wildlife.  This is mainly because it is primary rainforest (not stuffed up by man).   We were also traveling with the cheapest tour we could find so the accommodation was definitely rustic - lots of cold showers and surprisingly it was cold in the jungle, particularly after dark.  

It is however a bit of a trek to get there.   The journey was broken up visiting pre-Incan tombs, spotting the 'cock of the rock' and seeing our first monkeys.  After the first 7 hours on the bus we reached the edge of Manu National Park, but it would be nearly 2 more days (mostly by boat) before we entered the reserved zone (which is pristine rainforest, whereas the buffer zone is an inhabited area).  That's not to say we didn't have a lot of fun on the way.  As well as spotting some birds, monkeys, frogs and bugs we went white water rafting and canopy zip lining.  In fact the zip line was so fun we went again the next day!!   There were four zip lines in total getting progressively faster as you went.  The second time we went I was feeling a bit more confident and even went upside down!    

During the week in the jungle we saw 77 species of birds, 9 species of monkey, giant otters, black and white caimans, 3 snakes, frogs, toads, beautiful butterflies, a rhinocerous beetle, spiders galore and of course thousands of mosquitos and sandflies.  Unfortunately we weren't able to get photos of everything we saw as the animals were generally a fair distance away (the canopy was at least 40m up in the air) and under the canopy it was very dark and difficult to get enough light for photos.   There were also interesting plants to be seen, such as the walking palm (that can walk up to 10cm a year), the penis tree (yes, we have a photo of that one, so you know where it got it's name),  the garlic tree which grows totally hollow and amazing fig trees that create labyrinths of roots.  Then there were the ants, like the bullet ant which is an inch long and can paralyse a limb if it bites you or the army ants which native people use instead of stitches - getting the ant to bite them and then ripping the body off leaving the head and pincers to hold the wound close, or the leaf cutter ants which use the leaves to farm the fungus that they eat.