Okay, we’re on our way. We’re in Joburg waiting to board our flight to São Paulo, and then on to Lima after a few hour layover. We arrive at 12:40am Lima time.

These messages will try and give you all an update on our travels to Peru. Some may be a little long but I know at least my mother-in-law is fond of reading my long stories, so I’ve used her as the minimum standard. If you don’t enjoy being distracted, I won’t be offended if you don’t get past the first sentence.

I thought it would be worth introducing the trip so you know why I’m doing this.

First, to introduce Garret. Some of you know him but many don’t. Garret is a great birding mate of mine and was the only sucker that agreed to do this with me during my mid-life crisis (not really a crisis if the truth be told). Once Jeanie had allocated the requisite number of pink tickets, I sought a suitable companion and Garret took very little convincing, being equally fanatical about seeing great birds a little beyond the borders of South Africa.

Just as an aside, there were a few moments of confusion following the pink ticket handover ceremony. Jeanie thought she’d doled out 2 weeks of birding time and was shocked when I told her that there’s very little point in going so far for such a short time. After many additional promises were made, she eventually relented. She is the best wife in the world. Incidentally, one of the additional promises I made to her was that I publicly state that about her. At least I can now tick that off as it’s a long list.

Anyway, Garret is in his mid-30s and is a highly skilled pathologist. So, if I get a rare disease in Peru that requires a magnified analysis to diagnose, then I’ll know I picked the right guy. His medical supplies are also a little more comprehensive than mine. Garret is a slightly less experienced SA birder than I am (only because he’s ten years younger than me) but he’s travelled a little wider outside of SA than I have.

So, why Peru?

Peru has over 1900 species. As a comparative, South Africa has somewhere near 850 or so. I think Peru may have the third or fourth highest species count of any country in the world (Colombia is number 1 with over 2000 species). So that would be reason enough, but there are plenty of others.

By all accounts the people are friendly, the lodges are well suited to newbies like me, the scenery in proximity to the Andes is beyond compare and the distances between localities is not unmanageable.

We’ve arranged a private guide for the two of us (the settling of a guide is a very long story for another day).

Juan has put together a very diverse itinerary for us that will combine a high species count as well as target many of the endemics and specials. Our rough route is as follows:

• about 4 days in a clockwise loop from Lima where we target coastal and desert species and then highly specialized birds at 4,500 meters (Garret has some muti in his box of tricks to make sure I can actually see the birds rather than seeing the spots of a splitting headache)
• we then return to Lima and fly a few hundred kilometers south east to Cuzco on the western slopes of the Andes. You’ll know Cuzco as being the access point for Macchu Pichu and you’ll be pleased to know we’ll be visiting the archeological site (mostly because there are great birds nearby). We spend about 5 days in the western drier slopes of the Andes, which has a ton of special birds. If I send a report of seeing a Royal Cinclodes it’ll certainly come with lots of smiley face emojis
• we leave Cuzco on the Manu Road, which is what attracted me to this trip in the first place. The Manu Road travels from Cuzco, crests the Andes at around 5,000m and then descends through many special elevation zones to the Amazon basin. With changes in altitude comes changes in habitat and changes in birds. We descend over a period of about 5 days and our minds are set to be blown by the diversity we should encounter. Manu Road is considered by many to be the top bucket list birding experience worldwide. I can’t say if this is true or not but I’m sure it’s pretty good.
• we then spend the last 5 days or so in the Amazon basin which will be hot and humid but full of rainforest birds.

So, that’s it in a nutshell.

We’ve done quite a lot of prep but the volume is high and we’ll take some time to figure it all out.

So, how many birds will we see? A question a lot of people have asked me.

Hmmm.

I reckon we’ll see between 500 and 550 species in the three weeks. I’m hopeful that at least 350-400 will be lifers for me. In amongst that will be my 2000th world species. I’m currently on about 1700. Garret should get to 2000 a little sooner than me. He’s currently on about 1800.

And then we have a full day layover in São Paulo on the way back and we’ve organized a day trip with a Brazilian guide (as one does). That’ll probably add around 80-100 birds for the trip.

With each daily report I’ll give an update on species numbers as much as is possible. You’ll know when we hit those milestones.

So, wish us luck and hopefully some of you enjoy the updates. I’ll try send one each day, connectivity and exhaustion levels permitting. There’ll also be some bird, people and scenery pics.

Day 1 – Lima to Lima

After a very long haul from Cape Town to Sau Paulo and then a shortish layover and another long flight across the South American landmass, we arrive at around 1am in Lima.

We managed about 6 hours of sleep (with the help of medication) and after breakfast we took a walk down to the beach. We’re staying in the Miraflores area just south of the CBD and it would be best described as the equivalent of Camps Bay or a smart Sea Point. The streets are filled with cafes and bars and it is a wonderful atmosphere. We strolled through the Parque de Miraflores and ticked our first new birds. Nothing earth shattering but still great to stretch the legs and enjoy a bit of birding.

Being a Sunday morning, the streets and parks were full of people. We stopped for a quick coffee and then headed down to the coastline. The beachfront was much like you’d see on the promenade on a Sunday morning – runners, cyclists, walkers and birders. Yes, birders. Not only Garret and I but also a French couple.

The birds on the coast were fantastic. The bucket list bird was Inca Tern and we saw plenty of them. They are quite spectacular. They fluttered above the waves, which were full of surfers. Another comparison – just like Muizenberg. There must have been more than 100 surfers in the waves in perfect conditions.

After returning to the hotel at 12pm we met up with our entourage for the next three weeks. Juan is our main guide. He’s about 30 years old, devilishly handsome and he speaks excellent English. We’re told he knows a thing or two about birds as well. Then he has brought along his good mate Alex who is a bit older (about 25 years older) and may not be considered as handsome but he apparently also knows his birds. So, we’ve done well with a ratio of 1:1 for Birder:Bird Guide. And don’t forget our driver Julio who is somewhere in between in age and I have no idea what he knows about birds. As long as he drives us to them I guess that’s okay. Is he handsome. Hmmm. No.

They took us to a wetland to the south of the city and it was perfect conditions to get into things. We were blessed with a model-shoot down at the wetland (I’m not joking) but I felt too shy to use my long lens to take pictures of the three very scantily clad ladies. I chose to photograph birds instead, although I did snap an iPhone pic for posterity.

Great birds included Black Skimmers (in their hundreds), Grey Gull, Great Grebe and plenty of waders and waterfowl. the main targets were three reed birds and we snaffled all of them. The Many-coloured Rush-tyrant is a shining light of colour in amongst a family of very dull birds. It’s name is pretty apt. Then we eventually had good views of a Wren-like Rushbird which I called Wresh-like Runbird in my excitement. The final of the triumvirate was a Plumbeous Rail.

All in all an excellent first day. We’re chilling at the hotel and will soon be tasting our first Peruvian beer. I’ll try send some pics too.

• Total day birds: 55
• Total trip birds: 55
• Mike lifers: 28
• Garret lifers: 27
• Bird of the day: Inca Tern

It’s 3:30am and we’re both wide awake. Combination of jet lag and excitement. Today’s birding will not involve a huge number of species but it will be our first major blitz on the Peruvian endemics. We travel north to a unique habitat. The coastline up north is like the Namibian coastline. Extremely dry and barren but there is a weird microclimate at Lomas de Lachay where the mist rolls inland and condensed in the sandy hills creating a lush environment. That’ll be our search area. I won’t name any targets as that’ll jinx them. Also, it’s a long list and my fingers are a bit fat for typing that much.

We then head back south and start working our way inland and up. We have two days to acclimatize to the really high day on Wednesday when we peak at 4,800m looking for the world’s top wader. I’ve already told you what it is so test yourself and see if you’ve been paying attention.

Hopefully chat later when I can tell you that we saw everything we wanted to.

Day 2 – Lima to Santa Eulalia

We have just arrived at Santa Eulalia after leaving Lima at 5am this morning and travelling here via Lomas de Lachay. That’s a bit like saying we travelled from Cape Town to Swellendam via Lambert’s Bay.

Anyway, it was a very low species count today but what mattered is that we got a few very specific birds in the bizarre habitat in the desert to the north of Lima. I like to use comparatives as it helps me to explain but I would say that today’s scenery was very similar to the Brandberg Mountains in west-central Namibia. Completely barren sandy plains surrounded by imposing rocky mountains. There was hardly a smidgen of vegetation anywhere.

Our first stop was in a blind valley in amongst the mountains with large phallic-shaped cacti (cactuses?) dotted on the hillside (if any of my children don’t know what “phallic” means please ask your mother). Unsurprisingly, our first target was a bird called a Cactus Canastero. It is a super-tough Peruvian endemic and it was our first endemic of the trip. Non-birders wouldn’t have given it a second glance as it is a proper LBJ but I spent a good hour clambering the hillside trying to get a photo. As a result my watch tells me I climbed 40 floors today.

We had a magnificent breakfast in the valley, prepared by Julio, who turns out to be a wonderful chef. It was one of the best moments of the trip for me so far sitting on foldout chairs in an absolutely silent valley, enjoying a fresh fruit salad and a home brewed cup of coffee.

We then spent the next 4 hours in Lomas de Lachay looking for other really special birds. Our species count was 13. Yes, 13. But some serious goodies, including Least Seedsnipe, Peruvian Thick-knee and Coastal Miner (endemic). Garret was dialled in and basically spotted every single good bird we saw today. I was quite the opposite, being a complete passenger.

After another wonderful meal from Julio we headed south and then east to Santa Eulalia.  Traffic was mayhem but probably a normal day on the roads in Peru.

Santa Eulalia is at about 1150m and our “hotel” is a peaceful and beautiful little property in a gorge surrounded by dry, barren mountains. We had time for a quick walk around and found a Peruvian Pygmy Owl and our third endemic for the day – Black-necked Woodpecker. This time I actually spotted the bird so I can finish the day not feeling completely useless.

• Total day birds – 36 (yes, very low but high quality)
• Total trip birds – 75
• Mike lifers – 14
• Garret lifers – 10
• Bird of the day – Cactus Canastero (the woodpecker was a very close second)

Day 3 – Santa Eulalia to San Mateo

Today’s journey could have taken us an hour on the Central Peruvian highway but instead we headed for a big loop in the Andes that took us 14 hours. It was a monster day of travel but it was chosen that way so we could find all the special birds. And find birds, we did.

It was a day of classic roadside birding, stopping every few kilometers at suitable spots and simply walking along the road picking up species as we went. Our list count was only 72 species but 63 of those were lifers for me. It was quite incredible.

We started our day at around 1200m and topped out at 4670m and then dropped down to San Mateo at 3040m.

The scenery was beyond compare. I’ve seen stuff like it but never on this scale. It’s similar to a Sani Pass ascent but by a factor of 2 or 3 and the road is cut impossibly along the sheer cliffs that fall a thousand meters or more into the tumbling Andean rivers. Jeanie would have died a thousand times over with her vertigo as, at times, the vehicle’s wheels are within a meter of the sheer cliff drop-offs.

We had yet another phenomenal breakfast stop on a bridge over a huge chasm in the mountain. Julio is, without doubt, the best roadside chef on the planet. We had freshly cut fruit and fried egg sandwiches in the middle of nowhere.

The birding stops were exhilarating. At every stop we had lifers whizzing around us and there were many times we didn’t know which one to look at. The best stop of the day, however, came at a waterfall at 3800m in a habitat called polylepis forest. It’s not a forest in the traditional sense but rather short stubby trees covering the gulleys that just harbour so many good birds. Birding at this altitude is no mean feat as every upward step sucks all the air from your lungs, so we had many serious “hands on knees” moments where Juan or Alex would call us over for a good bird and we’d have to run up the slope to meet them. The bird that made us pant the most was a thing called a White-cheeked Cotinga. Its range is entirely restricted to Polylepis at high altitude and Alex knows only two spots in Peru where it occurs. Even in those spots it is extremely rare and hard to find. But Alex has seldom let us down and he found one for us, with much high fiving that followed.

Speaking of Alex, his credentials are top notch. He’s my age and he’s officially the top birder in Peru. He’s seen 1708 species out of 1890 or so species in Peru. Last year he did a Peru Big Year during which he recorded 1400 species.

Anyway, we ended the day climbing to 4670m and ticked a decidedly rare hummingbird called a Black-breasted Hillstar and then things fell apart for me. It turns out that altitude sickness is really a thing. I was desperately nauseous and just wanted my mommy. We stopped for a vomit and then I was given oxygen. I know Jeanie is rolling her eyes at my hypochondria and that’s probably why I really wanted my mommy.

Anyway, we eventually got to the hotel at lower altitude and I returned to normal again.

The worst bit is we go straight back up there again tomorrow to look for our special bird. I’m dreading it already.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot but I’ll send some pics to illustrate. Forgive any typos please. Garret pointed out a misplaced apostrophe in my first message and I felt ashamed. There’s likely to be a few more here.

• Total day birds: 72
• Total trip birds: 134
• Mike lifers: today – 63 total – 105
• Garret lifers: today – about 50 total – about 80 (he’s fast asleep so that’s as good as I can do).
• Bird of the day: White-cheeked Cotinga

Day 4 – San Mateo to Lima

I was wide awake at 3am and, I won’t lie, I was feeling pretty anxious about the day ahead. After yesterday’s altitude sickness debacle, I was dreading heading back up to 4700m, but I had absolutely no choice – we would be searching for a Diademed Sandpiper-plover. It’s such a special wader so they gave it a double barreled wader name. It’s an odd little bird that lives exclusively in very high altitude bogs, in tussocks of vegetation, surrounded by pools of icy alpine-like snowmelt water. It’s a very attractive bird and so the combination of its looks and difficulty in getting to and finding, puts it right at the top. It’s arguably in the top 10 birds of the world (can the birding aficionados in the group not point out the potential overstatement of this statement please?)

My anxiety didn’t improve much when we stopped at a petrol station to fill up after leaving the motel at 5:30am to hear from the pump attendant that there was a mine strike at the mine on the way to the bog we were going to and the road would probably be closed. This bird was one of the main reasons we had decided on Peru as a destination and I would be devastated to head home without clapping eyes on the little bugger.

My anxiety did ease a bit when we got through all the trucks on the central highway and turned off onto our access road to the bog. The strike was not in full motion yet and the road was still clear.

I say my anxiety eased slightly but I was still petrified of a dry retching and oxygen mask repeat, like yesterday. This time, however, I had prepared well. I had altitude sickness muti in me and, just in case, I’d gulped down a valoid. Mind you, I now had the extra worry that I’d sleep through the whole experience with all those drowsy inducing drugs I’d taken.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, and to save you all the pain of this ongoing suspense, we saw the DSP within 5 minutes of arriving at the bog.

Garret and I agreed there and then that it was one of the best birding experiences we’d ever had. I’m sure I’ve said that a lot but this was so special. We found an adult pair and two juvenile birds and I had a whale of a time taking about a thousand pics. And, guess what? There was no need for oxygen or a brown paper bag. We were breathless and a little queasy but I was about ten thousand times better off than yesterday.

Birding experiences aren’t only about the bird but also about the added bits that go with it and that is why this may have been right up there for me.

Julio had laid the breakfast table overlooking the bog and we returned to freshly brewed coffee and steaming hot cheese and tomato omelettes.

Omelettes?

Are you kidding me?!!?

The rest of the birding was very suitably complimentary to the DSP. Again, it was a low species count but the birds we saw were top notch.

We saw two endemics including the most attractive furnariid – White-bellied Cinclodes. We also wrapped up all the Seedsnipe species in Peru with Grey-breasted and Rufous-bellied and a trio of very hard to see Puna Tinamous that took about an hour and a half out of our day as they’re almost impossible to find, despite their repetitive loud croaking from the scree slopes.

Once again the scenery was otherworldly. I think I saw the army of Winterfell marching to King’s Landing. Or was it Gandalf and Frodo in Middle Earth? Take your pick of epic showbiz to picture it. If you can’t, there will be some scenery pics to follow.

All that was left of the day was the long drive back to Lima. The drive was made longer as the strike eventually closed the central highway and so we had to loop north and then west before getting to some well earned tar. But Lima isn’t known as the worst traffic city in South America for nothing and we hit rush hour on the way in and sat in gridlock for several hours before rolling into our hotel at about 6:45.

Another very long birding day but one of the best.

• Total day birds: 61
• Total trip birds: 159
• Total trip endemics: 14 (new category)
• Mike day lifers: 18
• Mike total lifers: 123
• Garret day lifers: 17
• Garret trip lifers: 101
• Bird of the day: Diademed Sandpiper-plover

Day 4 – Lima to Cusco

Today was the tale of two endemics.

I’m not even sure the non-birders know what an endemic is and I have been using the term pretty freely but you may be clueless.

Very simply, an endemic is a bird species (or any other animal or plant) that is found exclusively in only one country. So, for example, a Cape Rockjumper is a South African endemic, whilst a White-cheeked Cotinga is a Peruvian endemic. Some endemics are really easy to find whilst others take a lot of very hard work. We were looking for one of each today.

For the tough one, we travelled 2 hours south of Lima (4am start) to a place called Lomas de Asia (not pronounced like the continent but like u-see-u) which is a set of hills in the desert, much like Lomas de Lachay, where we went the other day. Incidentally, Lomas means “hills”.

We were at the Asia hills before the sun rose and before the entrance gate to the reserve opened. We weren’t to be denied our opportunity for good birds so we climbed over the gate with a blessing from Alex and Juan.

Raimondi’s Yellow Finch is an unpredictable nomadic bird of the dry hills and we’d missed it in de Lachay. We weren’t the first birders to miss a Raimondi’s.

Once we’d climbed over the gate we hiked a bloody mile up a winding path into the upper hills. Thank god we were a fraction above sea level and not at altitude. We were, however, on a tight schedule as we had a lot to do before the flight to Cusco.

Eventually after an hour we gave up and walked all the way back down the hill only to find a flock of them drinking from a small pool near the car. It was a delight to see them, as we were convinced we’d missed this one. The vigorous exercise was just as well as Julio had outdone all expectations once again with breakfast. Another post-lifer breakfast in the middle of nowhere. Life was good.

Our next stop was at the small fishing village of Pucusana on a headland and small natural rocky bay about 80kms south of Lima. Our next target was a very cool furnariid that has adapted to life at the seaside. It’s, unsurprisingly, called a Peruvian Seaside Cinclodes. Alex and Juan has effectively guaranteed us this one. This was the easy one for the day. They said it was virtually in amongst the town people at a small cove next door to the harbour. We warned them of the evil birding gods that take umbrage at “guarantees”. When you have time one day I can tell you few sad tales of woe of birds I was guaranteed, but never saw.

Anyway, we arrived at the small cove and all raced out of the car, pushing one another out of the way, as we had a competition to see who could spot it first. 40 minutes later we still couldn’t find it and it certainly wasn’t a big area. This was shortly followed by a lot of head-scratching from Juan and Alex. We didn’t say “I told you so” just yet but it was on our minds.

We left the Cinclodes-less cove and clambered onto our little boat in the chaotic port for our trip along the rocky cliffs just outside the natural harbour. There were about a million people on the quay shouting at us in Spanish but we had no time for retail – we had a few targets on the boat trip and we still hoped we’d have time to return to the cove for the Cinclodes.

I hadn’t expected heavy seas but there were a few moments on the boat where I thought I may need to ask for the brown paper bag again. It was a little lumpy for a landlubber like me. I’m delighted to report, though, that the fistful of lifers kept my mind off the lumps and I kept my breakfast inside.

We got every one of our targets with relative ease. Close your ears non-birders:

• Red-legged Cormorant
• Guanay Cormorant
• Humboldt Penguin
• Blackish Oystercatcher

There were also about a million Inca Terns.

We returned to the port and headed straight back to the cove. You guessed it – still no Cinclodes. Now we were grumpy. Well, about as grumpy as you can get on a splendid day of birding, which is probably not that grumpy.

Juan and Alex didn’t even have a plan B. I asked them if there was anywhere else we could find it and there really wasn’t. So they improvised. And so there was more hill climbing to the top of a cliff above the cove for a better view of more suitable habitat. And there we stood and scanned and, finally, at the moment before we were about to head for lunch, it flew and landed on the rocks below us and bounded around, much to our considerable relief. Juan and Alex’s relief was probably a notch above ours.

We returned to the little restaurant next to the cove where Julio finally had a break from meal preparation as we just had to try the local delicacy of fresh cerviche with fresh onions and a dash of chili. It couldn’t have tasted better, especially in the afterglow of another new endemic.

And so that was the last lifer of the 5 day Lima loop. We finished with 171 species, which is a low absolute number but a very high number of great birds. We saw 16 of the 17 possible endemics and plenty of other really good stuff.

We’re now on a plane to Cusco where the lifers will again come thick and fast tomorrow. We are also scheduled to head up to Machu Picchu, just to prove that we’re rounded, multi-faceted travellers. Have I mentioned there are good birds there?

• Total day birds: 44
• Total trip birds: 171
• Total trip endemics: 16
• Mike day lifers: 10
• Mike total lifers: 133
• Garret day lifers: 10
• Garret trip lifers: 111 (just to confirm to the non-birders that this lower number for Garret is not an indication that he is an inferior birder, but rather the opposite – he’s more widely travelled and has therefore seen quite a few of the birds that are new to me)
• Bird of the day: Peruvian Seaside Cinclodes

Day 6 – Cusco to Aguas Calientes

You may notice that these messages are getting longer but I’ve always had a lot to say. I would apologize, but I figure if I’m not too tired to write it, you all shouldn’t be too tired to read it.

So, here goes.

Another 5am departure from Cusco with a brief, but freezing, stop for a Puna Teal on a cold lake at about 3500m. I should have been excited for a lifer, but a Puna Teal is really just another duck. The birders in the group will be shaking their heads as there are some pretty cool ducks out there (peg that for later).

After leaving the icy marsh, following our first sprinkling of day birds, we descended into the Urubamba Valley for a coffee stop at the town of Urubamba, which is famous for their large corn kernels but, seemingly, not at all famous for coffee as we couldn’t find a coffee shop for love or money.

We entered the narrow streets looking for an appropriate establishment and I felt as if we had entered the South American version of the Bermuda Triangle. I remarked to Garret that we were in that Eagle’s song “Hotel California” where you can check in any time you like but you can never leave. Yes, it was a form of hell. Garret suggested it may not be the worst kind of hell but I countered that it was about as bad as it gets for birders. Being stuck in the narrow streets of a busy town and driving in circles, whilst there were hills and forests surrounding us with birds to be seen, was quite excruciating for me.

The purgatory finally ended when we arrived at the central market and found our morning coffee. Once again, we proved that we’re open to cultural experiences as we sipped our coffee and wandered around the market seeing the most impressive selection of fresh produce. A chef would have done their nut in that place as there was just about everything on offer that you can think of.

I will acknowledge that after 45 minutes of coffee and market, I had returned straight back into that mild form of hell. It was prime birding time and the only birds I’d seen so far were a few ducks and coots and the only birds I was currently seeing were the featherless chooks in the poultry section of the market.

“Baminos a pagariya”, I announced to Juan, which was my rudimentary Spanish for “let’s go birding” and we hustled out of the market back to the car. I think he could sense that I didn’t need a coffee fix nearly as much as I needed a birding fix. If only my family were that attentive when I issued instructions as we were back on the road in no time.

We spent the remainder of the morning in the garden of one of Juan’s friends watching for hummingbirds and a few other bits and pieces. We saw three endemic birds (Green and White Hummingbird, Rusty-fronted Canastero and Cream-Crested Spinetail) but the undoubted highlight was one of the world’s most iconic birds – Sword-billed Hummingbird.

It’s the only bird on the planet whose bill is longer than its body and that’s actually a fact. It really has to be seen to be believed.

The birding was good but it wasn’t the frantic “lifer a minute” we’d expected of today’s birding.

We jumped into the car and headed to the town of Ollantaytambo, which is the access town for the train ride down to Aguascalientes, which, of course everyone knows, is the access town to Machu Picchu.

Ollantaytambo is a beautiful, authentic Peruvian town with wonderful old buildings and an Inca monument on the hillside above it. It is, unsurprisingly, very touristy, but we really didn’t mind too much. After a rather rushed lunch we boarded the train.

I had planned to have a bit of shut-eye on the trip down to Aguas Calientes but that was impossible. Not only was it the most scenic train ride I’ve ever done, as the line snakes alongside the Urubamba River, from scrubby hillsides down into cloud forest, but we were told by Alex and Juan to look out for Torrent Ducks. So, here is where I backtrack on ducks. A Torrent Duck is a great looking bird and lives its life in fast flowing rivers in South America. Just like the Sword-billed Hummer, it is yet another iconic world bird. So, our snooze time was shelved as Garret and I both sat glued to the window looking for Torrent Ducks. When we saw our first one we leapt out of our seats and gave a victory yell, which must have been slightly disturbing for our fellow passengers.

Aguas Calientes is about the most touristy place you can imagine, even more so than Ollantaytambo, but it is still well worth a visit. It lies in a deep gorge overlooking the rapids of the Urubamba River and, weirdly, it reminded me a little of a Disney theme park. The paths are all well paved with cobblestones and the buildings are convincingly authentic but the big difference, I guess, is that here it is actually authentic.

We dropped our bags and headed straight out for some birding along the railway line. The precautionary measures against birders being flattened by the regular train traffic is light, at best, and we spent quite a bit of our time jumping off the railway to make way for a train as we meandered through the cloud forest and picked up about a gazillion lifers.

The Sword-billed Hummer was still comfortably in prime spot for BOD (bird of the day), but Alex and Juan mentioned they had a surprise for us. We stopped at a point on the railway line and the two of them were locked onto the canopy looking for this “surprise”. After 40 minutes of no success they conceded they were looking for a Masked Fruiteater, which is yet another Peruvian endemic and a particularly special one. It’s quite rare and range restricted and it is a seriously colourful bird. It has a light green belly with darker green streaks, a bright orange throat, a black mask and a bright red bill. It’s about the size of a robin and lives quietly in the canopy so, despite its colours, it is quite tricky to see.

Eventually Juan shouted out “MASKED FRUITEATER” and we all rushed over to see where he was pointing. That moment coincided with the 5pm train from AC to OT coming around the corner. As it did so we had to fold up the scopes and jump off the railway line onto the service path to avoid being run over by Peruvian Rail. I wouldn’t say it was a close shave like you see in the movies, but the driver was clearly determined to get us off the line as he tooted his whistle continuously as the train rumbled passed us. One would think the chances the Masked Fruiteater had stuck around during all that noise would be pretty minimal but we didn’t see anything fly out of the tree so we were still quite bullish.

Once the train has passed by we resumed our scanning in the tree.

As a brief interlude I need to mention that one of the most important birds for me on this trip would be a crazy looking thing called an Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. It’s about the size of a large pigeon, bright orange, with grey and black wings and a weird rounded crest that extends from the tip of its bill to the back of its head. We’re going to a place in about a week called the Cock-of-the-Rock Lodge and my expectations were that we’d see it then.

But as Murphy would have it, an ACR landed in the middle of the Fruiteater tree in the midst of our search and, despite my excitement, nobody else gave a damn as they were so focused on the Fruiteater.

This story ends well as we eventually saw the Fruiteater and I even had a quick moment to enjoy the ARC in between all the excitement.

So, we had our first afternoon of true forest birding and it really hit home how important local guides are. Of the 25 or so lifers we saw this afternoon we reckon we may have spotted and identified about 5 had we been flying solo. We’re not as useless as you think, as there is still a great degree of skill involved in actually seeing the bird being pointed out, so we patted ourselves on the back for the ones we would have seen ourselves, as well as the ones that were pointed out to us, and wrapped up the day with dinner at the least touristy place we could find.

Tomorrow is more birding in the forests in the morning and then we get another chance to show you all how we’re taking in the culture with a trip up to MC.

Goodnight!

Total day birds: 74

Total trip birds: 214

Total trip endemics: 21

Mike day lifers: 39

Mike total lifers: 172

Garret day lifers: 26

Garret trip lifers: 138

Bird of the day: Masked Fruiteater

Day 7 – Aguas Calientes to Ollantaytambo

I’ll try make this a little shorter but no guarantees. Once I’m on a roll I tend to ramble.

Juan opted for us to spend the early morning birding and a midday trip to MP. Great decision as the birding was very productive in the early morning and it has been raining since about 11:30 so we would have missed a lot if we’d deferred birding to the afternoon in favour of a morning MP visit. The queues for the bus were also a lot shorter mid-morning.

The morning’s birding was once again along the railway line but on a different side of town. There were a lot of repeat birds, which was useful for reinforcement purposes, but there were plenty of new ones too. I also got my pic of Torrent Duck so I’ll send that on below. You can judge for yourselves if it’s a duck worth talking about.

The feature of the birding for me in these cloud forests has been the tanagers. The non-birders (and possibly some birders) may not be familiar with this New World bird family. Garret and I were chatting about the fact that they don’t quite get the attention they deserve. Everyone has heard about hummingbirds but few non-birders would have heard of tanagers.

They’re mostly sparrow sized, or a little bigger, and they feed on fruits. They also tend to occur in mixed flocks (a few different species all together), which makes it enjoyable to pick them apart. But the most notable thing about them is their range and combination of colours. Garret describes it well. Imagine taking an outlined drawing of a Tanager silhouette and sitting with a palette of every colour known and you’d still struggle to produce the garish combinations that actually exist.

Because of all these colours the ornithologists have had to use some creative words to describe the colours.

I can give some examples just naming the tanagers we’ve seen in the last two days:

Saffron-crowned

Beryl-spangled

Rust-and-yellow

Blue-necked

Fawn-breasted

Golden-naped

Silver-beaked

Silver-backed

Blue-grey

I’ll send a few pics so you can see what I mean.

After our long morning walk we returned to AC and boarded the bus for the drive up to MP at about 11. There were some ominous spots of rain on the bus windscreen as we climbed the switchbacks up the mountain and by the time we arrived at the site we were in a slight panic that we’d arrived just too late as the clouds covered the ruins and destroyed all hope of the iconic pics of the ancient city and the two obelisk-shaped mountains in the backdrop.

We raced up the stairs pushing old women and children out of the way to give ourselves the best hope in a rapidly deteriorating weather pattern. Phew. We made it just in time to get our pics and then the rain came down.

So, what does one do when rained out at MP? You go birding, of course.

There aren’t too many birds up there, mostly because the place is chock full of tourists and I suspect the birds have found somewhere a little more peaceful to go about their business. There is, however, one very important endemic – Inca Wren.

Fortunately, the wren lives in the thickest vegetation so we were able to stay dry under tangled bushes, while trying to find it. Which, of course, we did. Well, A and J did but that’s what they do. They hardly miss a thing.

Once we’d grabbed our views and taken some snaps, whilst causing a traffic jam for the hikers to the Sun Gate we decided to don our ponchos and enjoy the ruins just like the 10,000 other people had decided to do today. And then, miraculously, the clouds parted for a few moments so that Alex could give us the whirlwind tour of the ruins before the rain really set in. I won’t try describe the beauty of the place. It’ll be easier to send a few pics. It really is quite magical. Jeanie, I promise my binoculars were packed away while we wandered the paths amongst the rugged stone buildings.

So, after the quick tour we queued for the bus and headed back down the mountain for lunch. We’re heading back to OT on the train at 4:22 and we’ll arrive well after dark so not much more to tell.

Tomorrow I’m sure Juan will have us up at 4am again as we’re off to the mist forests and high altitude of a place called Abra Malaga, which should deliver its fair share of special birds.

Total day birds: 54

Total trip birds: 238

Total trip endemics: 22

Mike day lifers: 20

Mike total lifers: 192

Garret day lifers: 6 (slouch)

Garret trip lifers: 146

Bird of the day: Black-streaked Puffbird (it’s not an endemic but a very cool looking bird and a really toughie. Inca Wren was an unlucky second)

Day 8 – Ollantaytambo to Ollantaytambo

Today was the first day where our birding was impacted quite a bit by the weather. It rained on and off for most of the morning, but because we’re hardcore birders we pushed through most of it, except for a two hour section where it was even too miserable for us. So, instead of birding, we stopped for a big bowl of chicken and potato soup at a local roadside restaurant. It was toasty warm inside and it was hard to drag me back out again.

It must be said that it was probably fortunate that we lost two hours because my head may have exploded if I’d had to deal with too many more lifers, such was the birding.

Our route took us up a monster pass to a crest called Abra Malaga, where we topped out at 4,200m (no vomiting in case you were worried about me) and then we descended all the way down to 1600m with frequent stops to work through the bamboo and cloud forests. This was special habitat and the 5 endemics we saw was evidence of that.

Before I go on I have to say that the beauty of the Peru scenery continues to astound me. I would suggest it’s the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen. Jeanie and I travelled through the valleys of the South Island of New Zealand to Milford Sound, which I’ve always thought of as unbeatable, but the cloud forests in the high Andes this morning was at such a larger scale that it was a winner for me.

Our stops in the cloud forests yielded handfuls (and sometimes bucketfuls) of lifers for both of us.

The birding methodology was to drive slowly down the pass and watch for mixed species flocks.

A or J would shout at Daniel to stop the bus (Daniel is our new driver, who, sadly, doesn’t produce roadside picnics like Julio). The car would screech to a halt and we’d frantically tumble out of the car, trying to keep up as the birds were named one after another.

These mixed species flocks are head-spinning stuff and it has become pretty clear on this trip that every bird takes me about 4 seconds longer to lock onto than it does Garret, so my mini-FOMO levels are incrementally growing with each bird we see. It may be the fact that I’m also trying to photograph everything that moves but it’s far more likely that I’m just a bit slow. As a result it’s high anxiety stuff, this birding.

It took us the entire morning to work our way down to a little town where a friend of Juan’s has built a lodge for birders. A few years back Juan spent some time at his house and noticed there was a resident Swallow-tailed Hummingbird mooching around the flowers and so it became the first reliable site in Peru for it, attracting birders to the garden. We were headed there to see it. And see it we did. It was actually way too easy but we appreciated how special it was and it quickly moved to the top of the “Bird of the Day” contender list, despite the 4 endemics we’d already seen.

After spending a very productive two hours in the garden we pointed the car back up the pass and began the long journey back home. One thing you have to steel yourself for on birding trips is a crap load of car time. Today we had plenty.

But we had two very important stops on the way up the pass. We were looking for antpittas. It’s a family of super-elusive and shy birds that can literally drive you to drink. They hop around in the gloomiest forests and hate to be seen. A and J chose a 4 hour drive back to OT to try and find two of them.

The first was Red-and-white Antpitta which took a bit of hard work before giving itself up and immediately grabbed top spot in the BOD listing. I’m delighted to report that I actually saw it about 5 seconds before Garret and so I had 7 seconds of viewing and he only had 2 before it vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. RWAP is an endemic and so it was very important.

And then began the Rufous Antpitta malarkey.

If the RWAP was shy, this little bastard took things to a whole new level. We visited 3 separate, secret, sites and spent more time than you’d think was reasonable, staring into the gloom of bamboo forests looking for any movement to find the damn thing. That’s not the worst of it. At the second site Garret clapped eyes on it and as I moved to look in the direction he was pointing, the stupid thing hopped out of sight. I spent another 20 minutes staring at the same moss covered log without any success.

There’s always that inevitability on these trips that there isn’t a perfect overlap of species seen by all participants and the non-overlapping ones are always the biggies. Emotions run from frustration and heartbreak to sheer hatred and jealousy. After we walked away from site 2, I don’t think I hated Garret for seeing such a special bird but my incremental FOMO had reached its highest level yet on this trip.

You’ll all be pleased to know that I have returned to a state of emotional calm as I got the greatest views ever of a Rufous Antpitta at site number 3 and I even had a chance to describe my binocular-filling views to Garret, just to tilt some of the jealousy his way.

And so that was the end of the day’s birding as it quickly got dark on the pass and we still had about a million switchbacks to get back to OT.

We’ve got another early start as we head back up the pass to work through the Polylepis Forest at 4200m to try and find one of the world’s rarest birds. I won’t utter its name as that will screw up any chance we might have to see it. I’ll tell you tomorrow when I most likely have to report that Garret saw it and I didn’t. I’ll probably board a plane straight back home (Jeanie’s hoping that is the case).

The weather prediction is pretty dire again. It’s scheduled to snow up there tonight and we’ve been warned by Juan to dress warmly. Yikes. Not exactly encouraging, but whoever said this birding thing was easy? Garret keeps referring to our trip as a holiday. I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about. I haven’t worked this hard since….well….forever.

Night night.

Total day birds: 73

Total trip birds: 287

Total trip endemics: 28

Mike day lifers: 43

Mike total lifers: 234

Garret day lifers: 25

Garret trip lifers: 172

Bird of the day: Red-and-white Antpitta

Day 9 – Ollantaytambo to Cusco

For those of you that think birding is for sissies (which I hope is a small or non-existent minority) you would have been well served to accompany us today and you would have seen that birding is more like an adventure sport.

Today we went in search of one of the world’s rarest birds. We hiked 7kms, up and down a mountain, in zero degree temperatures at 4300m.

It felt as though I was climbing Everest as every few steps we’d stop and I’d suck in as much air as I could before resuming the slow wind up the mountain. It was hardcore stuff. But, in the meantime we’ll pause this bit and come back to us later. I’ll keep you in suspense as to the success or failure of our mission.

Our day started at the usual pre-dawn 5:30am departure. Jeanie will be pleased to hear that our two night stop allowed for a bag of laundry, which meant my bag smelt less like a soggy towel and more like a fresh spring morning.

We ascended Abra Malaga (which means the Malaga Pass) for the second time in two days. This time, though, we made a few strategic stops on the ascending slope to mop up a few species that we hadn’t had time for yesterday. One of those species was an endemic, Junín Canastero, which thrilled me to the core but would have looked like the most arbitrary bird to most of you.

We got to the top of Abra Malaga at around 7:30 and the weather was miserable. It wasn’t snowing, but you couldn’t see very far with the mist and it was freezing. Not for the first time on this trip, Juan made a great strategic decision. We’d save our hike for a little later and first attend to a few more birds in the cloud forests on the other side.

Yesterday we sought out two species of Antpitta, which are notoriously frustrating. Today, aside from that rare bird I’m keeping you in suspense for, Juan decided we’d target two birds in an equally frustrating family. Tapaculos are mostly little birds that look like little furry balls with tiny little tails that they hold erect. Odd little things. They live in forests and dense thickets and hate to be seen.

Weirdly, Puna Tapaculo gave itself up far too easily but that’s because it is known to be the showiest of all tapaculos.

The second one was a bird called Diademed Tapaculo. This thing is so impossible that during our prep for the trip we couldn’t find a single photo of it on the net.

Within a few minutes of arriving at another one of A and J’s secret sites, we got a response from a tangled thicket alongside a mountain stream. And, yes, you guessed it – Garret saw it straight away as Alex pointed to its position. My binoculars took three seconds longer to find it, at which time it had disappeared from the branch it was sitting on and dived undercover again. I may not have heard it but I could feel the collective groan from my companions as I missed another bird, which meant they, more or less, had to start again for me. I also had to quell my jealousy but Alex came to the rescue once again, a few minutes later, as he spotted it as it popped out of the bush for long enough for my laggard eyes to get a fix on it. Sadly, I can report that there is still no easily available photo for this bird.

So, what is this rare bird we were off to next?

Royal Cinclodes is a bird that lives exclusively in the weird stunted trees that you find in the extremely high sections of the Andes. The habitat has a name – it’s called Polylepis and, up close, it’s quite beautiful as moss grows under the groves of trees and on the branches and stems (see attached pics below). It’s where the Cinclodes picks up little morsels and it must be about as fussy an eater as one of my children, whose name I won’t mention, as it will not go anywhere other than these groves at more than 4000m plus.

The Polylepis has been systematically removed for firewood over the centuries in this cold climate and there are now believed to be fewer than 250 Royal Cinclodes remaining on the planet. Oddly, it isn’t endemic as there is one grove in which it occurs in Bolivia. There are only about 4 known localities and Abra Malaga was our accessible site.

As we huffed and puffed our way to the specific grove, I was thinking about my daily blog. I had one version where we saw the RC and I had one version where we didn’t. Much like the Wimbledon finalist must prepare two speeches, depending on the outcome of the match, I needed two versions of this daily blog, depending on whether or not we saw the Cinclodes.

I would have to acknowledge that I had a far better prepared loser’s version as I was highly doubtful that we’d see it. Alex had missed it on two previous trips and I know a serious lister who was here last year and also missed.

So, now I’m scrambling for the right words as we actually managed to find a pair. Well, to be 100% accurate Juan found the pair but I’m using the Royal “we” (that could be the worst pun of my blog series). Fortunately when you do find them they’re actually not that hard to see as they’re pretty big birds and they feed like thrushes amongst the mosses and tussocks. Nothing quite like the tapaculos and antpittas. I will be sharing a pic of this great bird in the photos below.

Non-birders will probably not understand the emotional excitement of seeing something like a Royal Cinclodes. We’d come so far and worked flippin’ hard so it was a mixture of exhilaration and relief. We didn’t go quite as far as an aerial chest bump on the side of that mountain (the binoculars usually get in the way) but we certainly celebrated with high fives all around as soon as the birds had disappeared.

The rest of the day involved a very long drive back to Cusco, which included a lunch stop at a truly authentic Andean trout diner, a detour due to a strike in the town of Urubamba (of mazed streets and market fame) and a roadworks delay due to a landslide across the road.

I’m feeling absolutely shattered now, which is a combination of altitude and lack of sleep, so it’ll be early to bed for me. Tomorrow is another early start so Garret may need to carry me to the car. But, there are more birds to be seen so I’ll be up and at ‘em as soon as it gets light.

Till tomorrow…

Total day birds: 60

Total trip birds: 301

Total trip endemics: 30

Mike day lifers: 19

Mike total lifers: 253

Garret day lifers: 12

Garret trip lifers: 185

Bird of the day (and bird of the trip): Royal Cinclodes

Morning all. A fraction of controversy on our choice of bird of the trip. It’s a brown job but it’s the rarest bird we’ll see and unless we discover a new species there’s little that’ll top it from a world significance perspective. But I do appreciate some feedback. Maybe I should post some more controversy to get a few more responses

Day 10 – Cusco to Andean Spirit Lodge

It was another 4:30am wake up for our 5am departure from Cusco, from where we travelled west to the Apurimac Valley. I have to admit that I had a wave of exhaustion wash over me at about 10am and when the guys shouted “Andean Tinamou” I nearly told them I’d be happy to just keep my eyes closed and give it a miss. The FOMO got my eyes open and on to it so I didn’t need to bemoan another bird that Garret had and I didn’t (there are, thankfully, only a handful).

The exhaustion is a combination of consistent pre-dawn wake-ups, the relentless pursuit of birds, the ongoing high altitude and the huge number of switchbacks we’ve driven around. This morning was also a relatively slow bird morning which also contributed. I snapped out of it with the Tinamou encounter and I pulled myself towards myself for the rest of the day.

The Apurimac Valley is about 50kms west of Cusco at a slightly lower altitude, but the surrounding mountains are just as high as the ones we’ve seen previously. It’s a stark contrast to the cloud forests from the last two days, being far drier and scrubbier. It was the first landscape on this trip that reminded me of the Cape mountains, particularly the dry Karoo near Robertson.

The reminiscent scenery must have got into my head as I could only hear South African birds at our first stop. There were Lesser Striped Swallows, Pin-tailed Whydahs, Karoo Prinias and Neddickys.

Of course there weren’t any of those but it does help me to remember at least some of the calls by associating with South African birds. Don’t ask me, though, what the Peruvian match-ups were because I can’t remember other than the Pin-tailed Whydah which was a White-bellied Hummingbird. Clearly method isn’t working very well.

We worked our way up another pass through switchback corners that were all tarred to make sure that cars can get through the steepness, stopping occasionally to pick up a few birds here and there.

The afternoon was reserved for the Andean Condor viewpoint hike at the beautiful town of Chonta at about 3,700m. We both agreed that Chonta was the most authentically attractive town we’ve seen nestled on the side of the mountain, surrounded by verdant green hillsides and towering snow covered Andean peaks. It was, however, a little like the town from the Andromeda Strain as we didn’t see a single person. Actually, that’s not true there was one pretty little Peruvian young lady who was the shop owner, tourist guide gate keeper and seemingly the only person that was immune to the virus that seemed to have wiped out the rest of the town. I hope you all know I’m being flippant here. Most of the population are out attending to their daily work, I guess.

There are two tourist sites in Peru to access soaring condors for photography and the most convenient one, for us, was the one at Chonta as it looks down into the Apurimac Valley, which was where we’d be looking for two of Peru’s most localized endemics – the Apurimac Spinetail and the Apurimac Brush-Finch. In the end we found the ABF, just so we didn’t have the luxury of cancelling tomorrow’s birding for a lie in, while we head out for the Spinetail.

The hike to the viewpoint was undersold, with regard to time and strain. We assumed it’d be a one hour round trip but it turned into four. The 4.5km there and back reminded me a little of the Robberg hike in terms of terrain and distance but, obviously, there wasn’t an ocean to one side but rather the Apurimac River Valley.

It was a challenging up and down affair but well worth the effort especially since the condors were only three kilometers away and made them impossible to photograph. That’s clearly a bit of tongue in cheek but I’m just preparing you all for the disappointment of not seeing frame filling, eye popping Condor shots.

It was a great fresh air experience, though, and we also managed the odd new bird here and there.

After yesterday’s vigorous Royal Cinclodes “Bird of the Trip” debate we had another one today. At the end of every day we discuss the bird of the day amongst the four of us. Today we had a range of very good birds so I did a little experiment. Some days the bird of the day is unquestionable but today I figured would be different.

As we sat in the little shop tended by the pretty Peruvian I asked my four companions what their bird of the day was. I included Daniel as well as he also carries around a pair of binoculars to see what we’re getting so excited about. This is how it went.

Alex – White-eared Puffbird (not endemic but very cool range restricted bird)

Juan – Slender-billed Miner (very hard to find Furnarid a la Royal Cinclodes but not nearly as rare)

Daniel – Peruvian Pygmy Owl (cute factor through the roof)

Garret – Apurimac Brush-Finch (opting for the only endemic we saw)

Mike – Crimson-mantled Woodpecker (I’m a woodpecker fanatic and this one is the prettiest I’ve ever seen)

So, it just goes to show that birds of the day/trip are subject to a huge amount of personal preference and there are often more than one possibility. The irony is that we’re doing a night walk for owls shortly and if we see a Buff-fronted Owl the choice will be unanimous.

We’re now at a very beautiful lodge called Andean Spirit Lodge, which took some effort to get to on the most awful road. The bad news for my family is I don’t think we’ll ever get out as getting in was easy compared to getting out.

Night night.

Total day birds: 48

Total trip birds: 317

Total trip endemics: 31

Mike day lifers: 12

Mike total lifers: 265

Garret day lifers: 10

Garret trip lifers: 195

Bird of the day: White-eared Puffbird

Quick post scriptum to day 10.

We went owling last night. It’s a thing we do to really show how hardcore we are. After 12 hours of birding we forsake a quiet beer on a veranda and we head into the darkness with about a 4% chance of actually finding one.

Last night we got lucky and found a Koepcke’s Screech Owl after an hour of searching. You would think that was good enough but, no, there was a Buff-fronted Owl that started winding up just as we were about to head for a late dinner.

We turned around and headed back into a thicket chasing the call. We were told by A and J to turn all lights off so it was interesting stuff trying to negotiate precipitous paths in darkness. Thank goodness it was nearly full moon.

We got to the calling owl and were about 5 meters from it but as we shone the torch it ducked right and started heading further and further away.

Undeterred we followed it. Dinner was getting cold.

We ended up on a road just outside a house and were met by three large rabid dogs and an extremely drunk Peruvian, who first started shouting at us (which did the owl search no favours) and then he urinated right next to us. It was either time to laugh or to cry. We laughed.

We called it a day (or so I thought) and headed for dinner.

The offer was made for more owling after dinner but I declined. Another hour of searching yielded nothing so at least my FOMO was under control this morning.

A and J then spent another two hours and eventually saw it. I was delighted I wasn’t there.

Chat later. Pic of owl to follow.

Day 11 – Andean Spirit Lodge to Cusco (for the third and last time)

Just to get this out of the way, as I’ve had numerous messages of concern for my exhaustion levels. There have been a few suggestions that I cancel the rest of the trip and head to a tropical island retreat for some R&R and there have equally been a few suggestions to stop whining and make the most of things while in the best birding country in the world (please don’t debate that with me).

I’ve opted for the latter, but I can assure you I was up and at ‘em again today. I was still 3 or 4 seconds behind Garret for most things but we know that is not unusual.

Anyway, we were back on the tourist trail today. To an extent. The Inca Trail isn’t the only multiple day hike in Peru. For a country that has so many dramatic landscapes there are certainly many more. I suspect the popularity of Machu Picchu makes the Inca Trail the most well known, but the second most popular trail is called the Salkantay Trail that starts at the base of the Salkantay Massif. It just so happened that there were birds there that we needed to see. Well, to be more specific, there was one bird that we needed to see – Vilcabamba Tapaculo.

You’re probably wondering whatever happened to the Apurimac Spinetail. That one was done and dusted early this morning with the silky smooth skills of A and J, despite their late night following their extraordinary commitment to see the Buff-fronted Owl. They were so tired, in fact, that I was the first one to hear it so maybe my early night helped.

Other than having one of the coolest bird names around, the Vilcabamba Tapaculo is a very poorly known endemic of the Cusco area and so very much sought after by birders. It’s poorly known because it is so localized, but it’s also a Tapaculo. It hates to be seen.

To get to our spot we had to drive up yet another twisty, turny pass to get to the “base camp” of the Salkantay Trail. This meant a major difference from many other scenic passes we’ve done. This one had loads of traffic. Buses and minibuses travel up every day, delivering adventurers to the trail, so our usually quiet roadside birding was considerably noisier.

It’s a customary habit of most road users, not specific to Peru either, to toot their horn as they pass, as if the binoculars and intense concentration on a tree or a bush are not an indication that silence would be preferable.

Anyway, we got to the hustle and bustle of the base of the trail amongst tourists of all shapes and sizes and lines of horses, either carrying gear or people. If the latter I did wonder why they went all the way up there to be carried on a horse. Maybe to see a VT? Probably not.

We worked our way through a number of orientation speeches for the hike ahead and were pleased we only had a 15 minute walk to get to our VT spot.

As it turned out, the build up was probably overdone, as Alex found an enthusiastically singing bird, perched on a little mossy rock, behaving in the most unTapaculo-like way.

We spent the appropriate amount of time viewing this anomaly and even pointed it out to a few hikers that seemed interested. The vast majority, I reckon, must have thought we were crazy. At least they couldn’t toot.

And, with that, our day of birding was wrapped up at 10am and all that was left was our long drive back to Cusco.

It’s a strange feeling to be at our place of sleep before dark, but here we sit in the foyer of Hotel Royal Inka, waiting for our room to be cleaned.

I promise it wasn’t my doing, getting us here this early. We head into Manu National Park tomorrow and Juan has to do an afternoon of admin to prepare, as amenities are scant compared to the busy touristy Cusco region.

Manu National Park (Manu is pronounced like the Afrikaans name “Hanno”, not “Mar-noo”) is the bit I’ve been dreaming about for many years. I hope I’m not setting my expectations too high but we should move from day lists in the 50s to far higher numbers and lifers will come thick and fast as we descend into the Amazon basin. Reception may be a little iffy but I should have moments to send the reports.

Tonight, we’re tossing culture aside as we feel we’ve sampled a broad range of the Peruvian cuisine, although we’re yet to try out Guinea Pig. Instead, we’ve decided to head to Paddy’s Irish Pub, which, according to the “Top 10 things to do in Cusco”, is the highest Irish owned pub in the world. We’ll be drinking a Guinness to celebrate the VT.

Wish us luck for Manu.

Total day birds: 33

Total trip birds: 331

Total trip endemics: 31

Mike day lifers: 8 (I saw Koepcke’s Screech Owl after sending the report yesterday so included it today)

Mike total lifers: 288

Garret day lifers: 5 (ditto)

Garret trip lifers: 206

Bird of the day: Vilcabamba Tapaculo

Day 12 – Cusco to Wayqecha Cloud Forest Biological Station (pronounced way-ketch-a)

I had a high level of anticipation for Manu Road when we left this morning, but I probably underestimated the distance we had to travel to get there. We also had a few birds that we needed to mop up on the way and since they were “target” birds it made for some hard toil in the car.

The first few were simple enough as they were at a large wetland (a declared RAMSAR site) called Huacarpay Lake. It was open wetland, easy birding and it allowed us to move the list along.

On the way to Huacarpay, we set about a list reconciliation to make sure all our numbers were right.

Garret has his iGo Terra listing app, I’m using ebird and Birdlasser and then we have listing booklets given to us by Juan. The reconciliation was quite necessary as our various totals had diverged substantially and we needed a single version of the truth. Some of the observant members of the readership may have noticed some numbers that don’t tie up from one day to the next, so it was time to get it 100% correct.

We, as birders, may be hardcore, but we’re also super-nerds.

There was a particular reason Garret needed his list to be tip-top this morning. He was nearing a milestone of 2000 world birds and he wanted to make sure he could mark the moment appropriately in the field. He had some frantic moments as we neared our first stop and we still hadn’t finalized the reconciliation. There was every possibility that he’d miscounted and the milestone would pass him by without him realizing it.

We literally tallied our last bird as Juan invited/instructed us to get out of the car for some birding. The numbers tied up and relief washed over Garret’s face as he stepped out knowing, with absolute confidence, that he was on 1996.

I reckon there are few people on the planet who are more on top of their list than Garret, so I also felt some degree of relief that we wouldn’t be high-fiving the wrong bird.

As an aside, I am the listing antithesis of Garret, so we may need to celebrate within a range of about 30 birds, if I get a milestone on this trip.

Number 1997 was a Yellow-winged Blackbird, followed closely by the quite sumptuously named Subtropical Doradito, which, in the flesh, is not sumptuous at all.

Sadly, 1999 was the prize bird of the morning – the endemic Bearded Mountaineer. It’s a beautiful, large hummingbird that gave us a real run-around before we finally nailed it. I was slightly disappointed with our view of this uber special as it was very brief, but good enough to move on. There was also a degree of disappointment on Garret’s face that the mountaineer wasn’t number 2000, especially when Juan announced that our next target bird was a bird called a Common Miner.

And that’s not a short story either. We had the option of a two hour drive to the entrance to Manu, but the Miner took us on a four hour detour to the top of another serpentine pass at 4300m. In fact, we didn’t have the option at all as we’ve placed our faith in Juan and he has delivered every time.

There was some justice in this rather plain bird being Garret’s 2000th as he was the one to spot and identify it. Furthermore, Garret is a self confessed lover of brown birds so it didn’t seem out of place at all.

Time was marching on and I was still dreaming of Manu Road.

We climbed in the car and bumped and rattled, up and down, and eventually arrived at my lifelong birding utopia – the Manu Biosphere Reserve. Once again, this is an unsubstantiated fact, but it is said by many that it is the most bio-diverse place on the planet. In bird numbers alone (never mind all the other mammals and creepy crawlies) there are over 1000 species. That’s huge.

We took the pics and climbed into the car. I was ready for two hours of Manu Road birding before it got dark. Daniel then engaged reverse and we turned off a side road in the opposite direction to Manu Road.

What the f….

“Where are we going?” I asked Juan, sounding a bit panicked, I’m sure.

“We’re off to look for the very localized Scribble-tailed Canastero” he answered, with absolutely no concern for my emotional state.

Just to be clear, I love an LBJ more than most, but this was not the time for LBJs. I wanted toucans, tanagers, hummingbirds, trogons, jacamars and motmots.

Let me give an analogy.

It’s like giving your 6 year old a huge wrapped Christmas present on Christmas morning and then as he/she starts tearing at the wrapping paper, you whip it away and say that he/she will have to wait for Boxing Day. And then, as a replacement, you give him/her a chocolate. A smallish one too.

The canastero was an hour and a half round-trip through high altitude grassland and, aside from the canastero (huge relief given the circumstances), we pretty much didn’t see a single thing.

Garret remarked that we were in the most bio-diverse place on earth but yet we couldn’t see any birds. The irony was not lost on me.

We finally returned to the gateway to my birding pleasures, but it was already 4:30pm and we only had 45 minutes of light remaining. That was all we needed for our bird of the day, which we unanimously chose as the Grey-breasted Mountain Toucan. That was more like it – definitely one of our top birds to see on the trip.

You wouldn’t believe it, but we dumped our bags at the lodge and headed out for some pre-dinner owling, which is at least better than post dinner owling. Thankfully, it netted Band-winged and Swallow-tailed Nightjars but zero owls.

Garret and I both agreed that today was our toughest day of travel for a few reasons. The first being the incredibly low ratio of birding time to driving time. We also had expectations of forest flocks rather than target birding, which is often quite demanding and species-low.

But, it was still an excellent day as Garret got to 2000, we saw a bunch of lifers and we’re staying at the most beautiful lodge. And then there is the added bonus that tomorrow we are on Manu Road proper. We only have 35kms to drive to Cock of the Rock Lodge, but I reckon most of that will be on foot. We’ll certainly be reversing the ratio we had today.

Total day birds: 69

Total trip birds: 347

Total trip endemics: 33

Mike day lifers: 14

Mike total lifers: 285

Garret day lifers: 9

Garret trip lifers: 216

Bird of the day: Grey-breasted Mountain Tanager (when I said “unanimous” I meant Garret and I. A and J opted for the canastero)

Day 13 – Wayqecha to Cock of the Rock Lodge

As I predicted yesterday, we would reverse the birding/driving ratio today and that was certainly the case. It was a mere 35kms from Wayqecha to COTRL, but it took us almost 12 hours. But, unlike yesterday, where most of it was in the car, today we walked for around 8 or 9 hours.

Today was the day I had really been looking forward to. I remember reading a trip report from Manu Road about 20 years ago that described the walk down through the elevation levels, picking up bird flocks on the way. And that was what we did today.

The descent starts at around 3200m and we’re now at 1655m at COTRL. The upper sections are more open, with shorter elfin forest, but as we’ve descended, the trees have become taller and the vegetation is slightly more tropical. We’re now still in the cloud forest at COTRL, a long way from the basin, but it is definitely different here.

The Manu road is quite magical. It’s not a great road, in terms of surface and width, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a Jeep track, at best, with passing maneuvers being quite hair raising as most parts of the road have cliffs towering above on one side and precipitous drops on the other.

The driving is not even the bit that requires the most care. Trying to follow the frantic bird parties alongside these chasms requires great discipline to ensure a view of a Tanager or toucan doesn’t cause you to step off the cliff to a sudden death.

My family can rest easy that I stayed well away from the ledges and didn’t do anything silly.

This morning was spent targeting a few species, as we’d birded similar habitat on the Abra Malaga pass, so the morning was actually relatively slow in terms of lifers and trip birds. The birds we targeted included a few antpittas, a fruiteater, a becard and a Flycatcher or two. We also spent some time on another dreadful bloody Tapaculo (that we eventually clapped eyes on).

The antpitta we were after was a tiny little thing called a Rusty-breasted Antpitta, which is a tough little bird to see but, while we were waiting for a show, a Red-and-white Antpitta (the endemic we saw very briefly the other day) hopped along the path towards us. It was very un-antpitta-like, but it set the tone for the day.

Manu Road is all about working through feeding flocks of birds. The birds feed communally and the flocks can contain up to 30 species, so you have to concentrate very hard when you come across these parties.

We’d drive slowly along the road and A or J would spot a party and we’d race to get out of the car to make sure we didn’t miss anything. It’s pretty frantic stuff as many birds only pass through briefly and it is so easy to miss something.

The elfin forest was a little slow but once we had dropped into the cloud forest we managed a very decent number of birds.

If you had to scroll through our day list today, you’d get a real sense of why this place is so special. We had representatives if so many of the special neotropical families as we worked our way down – tanagers, toucans, antpittas, woodcreepers, tapaculos, hummingbirds, tyrants, becards, motmots and trogons. Quite incredible.

Speaking of lists…

As I mentioned yesterday, Garret’s list is a finely controlled piece of his birding make-up. And then I also suggested mine was quite the opposite. It was always going to be likely that my next milestone bird would pass by in the field without any knowledge of exactly which bird it was.

So, when I loaded my lists to ebird (which is the world birding app that I use) I wasn’t too surprised to see that I had catapulted straight over 2000, without even realizing it. My list tells me I’m on 2008 and that I saw 36 lifers today. Wow, what a day. But now which bird was it? Garret and I just sat and counted backwards and we have determined that an Olive-backed Woodcreeper was my number 2000. You’re all probably going to think I’m making this up, but I was solely responsible for spotting and identifying the all-important bird. It was probably the first of the trip for me, so that seems like an appropriate milestone bird, doesn’t it?

I’m also quite fond of woodcreepers but now you’re definitely thinking I’m taking this a bit far.

Anyway, we arrived at COTRL with just enough time to add three new hummingbirds to our list at the feeders and then, thank god, Juan found the Rufescent Screech Owl for us at the lodge, which saved us from heading back out there for some more owling.

It has been another amazing day with incredible birds and the fulfillment of a lifelong birding dream. Tomorrow we’re birding straight from the lodge which should be awesome.

Total day birds: 89

Total trip birds: 379

Total trip endemics: 34

Mike day lifers: 36

Mike total lifers: 322

Garret day lifers: 27

Garret trip lifers: 244

Bird of the day: Red and White Antpitta

Day 14 – COTRL to COTRL

This morning we concentrated on the cloud forest surrounding the lodge. We drove a little more than half the distance back up Manu Road towards Wayqecha, stopping at every flock that crossed our path. It was classic Manu Road birding, with frantic activity as the flocks passed through, followed by moments of quiet.

It really is exhilarating stuff as lifers were found in just about every flock. But there’s plenty of anxiety too, for fear of missing something important.

I think my companions were exposed to a fairly broad range of vocabulary from me today as I inevitably was the dunce that couldn’t see each new bird. My mouth may need to be washed out with soap this evening.

A and J’s patience was, more or less bottomless and, by the end of the morning, I don’t think I missed out on anything.

I have realized as this trip has gone on that my eyesight is not nearly as good as I thought it was. I am well into middle age, though, so I’ll use that as an excuse. The forest birding is really tough when tiny or distant birds dash through gaps between the leaves and the mind has to process what has been seen and link it to what it actually is. I have also had to accept that so many of these birds we’re seeing are well beyond my skill level and I know I wouldn’t have seen or identified half of them without A and J.

Aside from the lifers within the flocks, the bird we were really looking for was a Golden-headed Quetzal. It’s like a Narina Trogon on steroids. I was desperate to see one and, fortunately, it was unlikely to be too challenging from an ID perspective. We tried at just about every stop, all the way up, and then all the way down. Not a peep. It also didn’t help that A and J told us that it is pretty common and they couldn’t quite understand why we couldn’t find one.

We packed it in and headed back to the lodge just before midday and 5 minutes from home we stopped to look at some rather stunning Inca Jays when Garret came to the rescue and spied a quetzal flying across the valley in front of us. It perched on an open branch and I was happy.

Juan reminded me it was like our hike up a mountain for the Raimondi’s Yellow Finch and then finding it right where we’d started. At least during the quetzal search we saw a ton of other lifers and the quetzal is a decidedly better looking bird than the Finch.

We had an very rare bit of downtime for lunch today at the lodge but even that was spoiled by some quite beautiful hummingbirds at the feeder (Wire-crested Thorntail being the undoubted highlight) as well as an impromptu forest walk for three more lifers.

So much for my afternoon snooze.

This afternoon was set aside for a visit to the world famous Andean Cock of the Rock lek. Perhaps famous in the birding world, I guess.

A lek is a gathering point for certain bird species that display to females at a communal spot. Something akin to a male beauty pageant.

The lek here in Manu is one of the places to observe this bizarre behavior from one of the world’s most beautiful birds. The actual display area is so reliable that they have built a viewing platform and, twice a day, you can visit the platform and watch these rather otherworldly birds squawking and squeaking to impress the rather dull females. They may look too notch but their singing voices are bottom of the barrel.

This particular lek has been reliable since 1992. It reminds me of the characters Norm and Cliff from Cheers who were possibly as reliable as the COTRs at their gathering spot. The COTRs have the edge on Norm and Cliff in the looks department.

And then it was back up Manu Road for a nightjar as it was getting dark. On the way there we had our best Tanager flock since arriving in Manu. No less than 9 species whirled and whizzed through the trees and contributed to my viewing headache, especially as the light faded. There was quite a bit more swearing as we both missed two of the nine, but perhaps tomorrow we’ll get them.

The nightjar was the rather elaborate-looking Lyre-tailed Nightjar, adorned with unimaginably long tail streamers that trailed behind as the bird flew above us, in and out of the forest canopy. A and J continued to work their magic and found the bird perched on the branch of a tall tree. There was a bit more neck craning and a muttering of one or two expletives but eventually I found it. And, just as well as it is certainly one of the best looking I’ve ever seen.

With A and J, the birding is never done. On the way back down the bumpy road to a highly anticipated dinner, the spotlights were sweeping left and right of the road for owls. Yes, another stop for a Rufescent Screech Owl and, thankfully, this time I managed a photo. Pretty cool bird.

And so ends another magical day in Peru. We continue to add species as we descend and that shouldn’t change tomorrow as we head down to Villacarmay down in the Amazon. I think I’ll be packing the jackets, gloves and beanies away for good as the temperature and humidity ride. So far this has been my least sweaty birding trip but that’ll all change tomorrow.

Total day birds: 81

Total trip birds: 411

Total trip endemics: 34

Mike day lifers: 30

Mike total lifers: 352

Garret day lifers: 19

Garret trip lifers: 264

Bird of the day: Inca Jay (although there were many other contenders)

Day 15 – COTRL to Villa Carmen

A and J had set some solid plans for this morning to head back up into the cloud forest for a few bird parties and then to head downhill to Villa Carmen. That all went out the window, when they realized overnight, that our last chance for one of Garret’s most wanted birds for the trip, Amazonian Umbrellabird, was best accessed in the other direction. Garret wasn’t arguing against the new plan but he was immediately on edge. This turn of events that this was our last chance for the AU had taken us both by surprise. We had expected it later on and, with this being our last chance, the anxiety levels were heightened.

It was still mostly dark when we arrived at a bridge over a cascading stream and we set about our search, which didn’t go well at all. It was dead quiet and there wasn’t any sign of the AU.

An AU is an audacious looking thing from the wonderful neotropical family of cotingas. Incidentally, the COTR is also a cotinga and the bright orange and black COTR contrasts enormously with the all black AU, just showing how variable the family is. Other than being black, the AU male has a bizarre overgrown crown of feathers that hang over its head, the appearance of which gives it its name. It also has a long blank wattle drooping from below its bill so it couldn’t be described as classically attractive.

After searching for some time we had to call it quits. We had a lot more planned for the day and it was time to move on. Garret’s shoulders were sagged even more pronounced than they were when he missed the Fire-eye yesterday and I was trying to think of a way to snap him out of it when the car screeched to a halt and A and J yelled simultaneously that there was an AU perched on the left hand side of the car. It wasn’t the drastically bizarre male but, in this world of birding, the considerably less attractive females count and so that was the best way to snap Garret out of his brief moment of melancholy.

I had my disappointment, which remained permanent, when Garret and Juan spotted a Crimson-bellied Woodpecker in the forest, which is about as big as a crow but I still failed to see it. Woodpeckers, as you know, are my favourite and this one is the one I most wanted. There was not much more that could be done about that and so it was chin up and focus on the next thing. To make matters even worse, Garret had already seen it before this trip and didn’t need it as a lifer.

Following from those ups and downs, it was mostly a very slow, soporific morning as we drove down towards Villa Carmen. Each stop was mostly birdless and even Alex had to admit that “this morning is less activity; I don’t know why”. There were a few stops that yielded one or two excellent birds but it was quite different from the flock birding of yesterday.

The first exhilaration was a wonderful view of a perched Solitary Eagle. We’ve seen very few raptors in the forest but that’s not entirely surprising as they are mostly hunters below the canopy.

Another exhilaration was the culmination of an intensely frustrating search for an endemic hummingbird. The Peruvian Piedtail is a tiny little thing and prefers the gloomiest and dampest forest sections. We had a few fleeting glances of its black and white tail as it buzzed past us in the forest, but it wasn’t quite enough to tick.

And then, finally, Alex, with his eagle eyes, spied it perched near us in the forest and urgently started pointing for us to look but simultaneously telling us not to move. Partly because I was desperate not to miss it, but mostly because I am not a very good listener, I moved. And the piedtail buzzed off. Alex was understandably grumpy after all his hard work and I got an appropriate talking to.

But he’s not the top birder in Peru for nothing, so he shrugged off my indiscretion and simply found it perched in the gloomy forest for a second time. I made absolutely certain I listened to all instructions given and we all walked away with another endemic.

Juan had a lunch stop planned at another friend’s lodge called Bambu Lodge (their spelling, not mine). The lodge is situated at about 600m altitude so the habitat and temperature were completely different.

As slow as the morning was, the afternoon was fast. Very fast. It was my favourite kind of birding – standing in a lush garden and watching the passing parade of so many birds. We’re now in the lowlands so I’ve seen a few of these widespread neotropical lowland birds but there were just tons of new ones for me. And the same can be said for Garret.

In a two and a half hour wander around the garden we both netted about 25 lifers. It was fast, but not too fast, and it was far from the tricky bird parties of the cloud forest, so I was at least able to see everything at almost the same time as everyone else.

The only downside to the afternoon related to one of the world’s most beautiful hummingbirds. The Rufous-crested Coquette is a tiny little thing, with the male adorning an ornate rufous crest of loose feathers, tipped with black. I’ve seen a RCC before in Panama but, sadly, only a much more modest looking female (there’s a theme of drab females in this post). This was my chance to finally get the RCC sexism monkey off my back. We spent about an hour staring at bushes with purple flowers, watching a female buzzing around, but still no male. And to make matters worse, as we were about to leave, Alex came to us with a dead male in his hand that had succumbed to a window strike. As much as it was nice to see a male in the flesh, I didn’t really want it to be in that state.

We’re now at a beautiful lodge down in the Amazon proper and, despite a very long day out, A and J dragged us out again for some bamboo specials. I have to admit that I’m back in my state of exhaustion, which is only made worse by the fact that Garret does not seem to have an off switch. He has an insatiable need for more birds and A and J are very willing and able to continue feeding that need. There’s a plan for a bit more owling tonight but I may need to dream those lifers rather than actually see them.

Total day birds: 106

Total trip birds:

Total trip endemics: 35

Mike day lifers: 38

Mike total lifers: 390

Garret day lifers: 32

Garret trip lifers: 297

Bird of the day: Amazonian Umbrellabird

Day 16 – Villa Carmen to Amazonia Lodge

Today felt like a relaxing tropical island holiday compared to yesterday. Alex (who is firmly in charge of the time keeping) allowed me to sleep until 5:15. What?! That’s a picnic.

The other bonus was that there was no car involved. We simply walked off the verandah of this amazing lodge and into the forest. The property of the lodge has a mixture of open forest clearings, tropical and bamboo forest. There are also a few oxbow lake-type things, which is where the hoatzin hang out.

The diversity of habitat meant that the birding was first class. It was probably our best morning so far and lifers came thick and fast.

The theme of today’s birding was looking for ant-thingies. For non-birders (and maybe even some birders), the ant-thingies are a “super-group” of neotropical birds that live in the thickest parts of the forest and, for the most part, are incredibly difficult to see. It was birding made for me (tongue firmly in cheek). Weirdly, though, I was actually remarkably on form this morning. Come to think of it, the vegetable broth we had for dinner last night was full of carrots. I’d even be inclined to suggest that Garret used more expletives than I did.

I was in such good form today that I spotted our bird of the day – Rufous-breasted Piculet (a piculet is basically a miniature woodpecker). I spied it sitting quietly on a horizontal branch, whilst looking through seven or eight layers of foliage, trying to find one of the ant-thingies. It even took a while for A and J to see it, mostly due to my poor directions and not their diminishing birding skills. Thank god they did eventually figure out where I was pointing as I’d have had a tough time trying to identify it without their help.

The methodology with the ant-thingies is to use playback. There are some birders that are ethically opposed to playback, but of the 19 ant-thingies we saw today (6 Antshrikes, 3 Antwrens, 6 Antbirds, 1 Bare-eye, 1 Antpitta and 1 Antthrush), we only saw two that did not require playback. So, I guess that means that you’d have to settle for far fewer birds on a trip like this without playback.

There were two broad methods. The first was when A or J would hear one of them deep in the forest and play the call of the bird to attract it out. The second method Garret described as “fishing”, where we’d get into suitable habitat and A or J would try a range of calls that might work.

They were frighteningly successful in almost every instance as the birds would slowly come through the foliage towards us and we’d get glimpses of a head or a wing or a tail. Eventually the full bird was pieced together, with a fair smattering of f words in between, and we’d move onto the next one. It was tiring but rewarding work.

One of the two that didn’t require playback may also be considered to be cheating by the purists. One of the young lodge workers has a stake out for Amazonian Antpitta and has been feeding it mealworms on a daily basis. We arranged a rendezvous with him at 7:30 and we followed him into the forest. He was carrying a small mat of soil and grass, like a square of instant lawn, and a jar full of mealworms. We arrived at a bench, which looked along a clearing in the forest to a small corner where he placed the mat of soil and grass and then he carefully laid out four or five little worms on top. He then started to call the bird, but his methodology was not to play the song of the Antpitta but rather to call it like he was calling a cat. He’d named it “Chico” and he quietly called “come Chico, come Chico”, interspersed with whistles and clicks. As ridiculous as that sounds, it worked like a charm. Within a minute or two he spotted it deep in the gloom, stepped back to stand with us and Chico popped out, ever so briefly, but long enough to snap up a mealworm, and then it dashed back into the forest. It was a brief encounter, but a wonderful one.

After our 5 hour stroll through all the habitat types at Villa Carmen we had lunch and then bade farewell to my favourite overnight spot of the trip so far.

It was an hour long bumpy road to the tiny informal port in the marginally less tiny village of Atalaya on the Rio Alto Madre de Dios (upper mother of god river) where we boarded our boat to take us to Amazonia Lodge.

This was the end point for our journey with Daniel, so we wished him well on his seven hour journey back to Cusco. It’s hard to believe he had to drive all the way back in one afternoon and evening a distance that has taken us about six days. Daniel has shown remarkable interest in most of the birds we saw but somehow I don’t think he’ll stop for anything on the way back up Manu Road.

The boat trip was very short but it was one of the highlights of the trip so far. Travelling by boat is just so serene compared to the jolting of the car on the bumpy roads. It truly felt like the real Amazon as we cruised down a few rapids and watched macaws and oropendolas fly overhead, crossing from one side of the river to the other.

The boatman dropped us off at a small clearing in the forest at the edge of the river where we were met by two guys with wheelbarrows who loaded our bags and led the way through the forest (including a tricky stream crossing) to our lodge. It was the most rustic approach I’ve ever had to an overnight location.

We’re now at Amazonia Lodge, which is about as remote as we’ve been and possibly the most basic. Lodge is a stretch but the bed is clean and the food is tasty.

You’ll only read this in a few days’ time as there is no WiFi but, even worse, there’s no beer.

Total day birds: 97

Total trip birds: 530ish (without WiFi we can’t upload our lists.

Total trip endemics: 35

Mike day lifers: 40ish

Mike total lifers: 430ish

Garret day lifers: 37 (Garret knows these numbers without loading up)

Garret trip lifers: 335

Bird of the day: Rufous-breasted Piculet (with some very close contenders, most notably Grey-breasted Crake, which took an absolute age to find)

Day 17 – Amazonia Lodge to Amazonia Lodge

When we, as birders, think about these tropical rainforests, or we see aerial footage of them on TV or photos in books and magazines, we’ll often remark about how many birds you would see in these forests.

I, personally, have visions of standing in the forest, with birds whizzing past me, not knowing which way to look as there is so much to see.

Having now spent quite a bit of time in them on this trip and on one or two others, I’m learning that is not necessarily always the case. As South African birders, we’re mostly used to open country birding. We’ve got a lot of LBJs but, a bird that you can see, even if it’s drab and brown, is a lot easier to identify than a bird that you cannot see.

All quite philosophical, actually, but this morning was a reminder how tough this neotropical birding can be.

We were up at the respectable hour of 5am for a 6am departure on a walk through the forest that surrounds Amazonia Lodge. In the six hours we were out there we saw about 25 species in the primary rainforest. I can gather more species in 20 minutes in Kirstenbosch.

Our first two hours yielded six species. We started the day with a straight up hike, three quarters the way up a very steep hillside, to the only canopy tower we’ve been to in Peru. My expectations were high. We’d see tanager flocks, busy bird parties, soaring raptors and commuting macaws and parrots. A great start to a day in the tropics, surely?

It wasn’t quite like that at all.

We did see macaws. Three Military Macaws at about 500m distance and then a single Scarlet Macaw even further away.

An Ivory-billed Aracari (a type of toucan), a Paradise Tanager, a few White-collared Swifts and a calling oropendola made up the balance of the six species. It may have been the troop of Wooly Monkeys nearby or the calling Forest falcon that chased all the birds away but it was, quite simply, a disappointing experience in comparison to so much of the other birding we’ve had on this trip. Incidentally, we never saw the forest falcon. As a brief aside, if I had known the identity of the calls, I would have logged plenty more as there was a lot calling, but we were hoping for visuals.

The remaining four hours were spent walking through the quiet gloom of the forest, adding one or two species every 20 minutes or so. It wasn’t all bad as most of the birds we saw were lifers and some of them were even very special. Two of them were actually lifers for Juan as well, as for us, which is quite something, knowing how regularly he spends time in these forests. The birders in the audience may be interested in the identity of those two birds – Sapphire Quail-dove and Grey-throated Leaftosser. In fact, it was only the second time Alex had ever seen the leaftosser himself so we felt lucky to see it. The leaftosser was the experts’ choice for bird of the day but Garret and I chose something a little more colourful.

We returned to the lodge just before lunch time and I got a chance to take off my sweat-sodden clothes and jump into a cold shower before I was given the unexpected news that we’d have a two hour midday break. I was grateful, given the increasing temperatures and reduced bird activity.

The afternoon was a lot better, perhaps because it was two and a half hours and not six, but it was also a little busier, which was the reason I should be giving.

It had a dash of failure as well, though. We spent most of our time looking for a bird called a Peruvian Revurvebill, without success, and we also struck out for the third time today with a manakin species. We’ve heard, but not seen, three of them. We’ve actually only seen a single manakin species on this trip – Yungas Manakin up at COTRL.

However, any afternoon walk that ends with a Black-throated Toucanet and three woodpeckers in the space of 10 minutes must be officially declared successful. The last woodpecker we saw was a Yellow-tufted Woodpecker, which is almost as attractive as a Crimson-mantled Woodpecker, and I’m told it is very common in these parts yet it still remained outstanding until the dying light today. I told Juan that I wanted a 50% refund on my trip costs if he didn’t find me one of those so, in a world where money makes things go around, he pulled out all the stops. Strictly speaking, we actually had to rely on Garret to spot it but I hadn’t actually specified that it had to be one of the guides for my refund. Juan seemed to have a relieved skip in his step on the way back to the lodge.

Speaking about the lodge, I have to admit that Amazonia Lodge sounded so exotic and, dare I say it, upmarket, but it’s the most basic place we’ve been to. That’s a euphemism for run-down, if you can’t read between those lines. The walls are peeling, there are no fans and, aside from the food which is quite good and the busy hummer feeders, it has been a disappointing stay. There’s no doubt that the birding is exceptional, given patience and skill, but I do yearn for the busier birding and enhanced luxury we had at Villa Carmen.

We’re here for tonight and then we head further down the Rio Alto Madre de Dios to our final destination, which is Manu Wildlife Centre. The boat trip is a marathon affair. In a straight line, MWC is over 100kms away from here and, with the twists and turns of the river, it’s most likely double that distance. We’re scheduled to be on our very comfortable boat for over seven hours, but there are reclining bucket seats, so it may be a great way for me to recharge before the last assault on our list to see if we can reach the quite amazing number of 600 species for the trip.

Once again, with no WiFi, you’ll be reading this in arrears which is a bit weird, but at least you’ll get a few installments in one go (or quite possibly you’ve enjoyed the break).

Till tomorrow then…

Total day birds: 66

Total trip birds: 565ish

Total trip endemics: 36 (we added Koepcke’s Hermit today)

Mike day lifers: 32ish

Mike total lifers: 462ish

Garret day lifers: 18

Garret trip lifers: 354

Bird of the day: Scarlet Macaw

Day 18 – Amazonia Lodge to Manu Wildlife Centre

There is only one way to get to MWC and that is by boat. There are literally no roads through these parts linking the towns of the Amazon Basin. I had looked forward to the tranquility of the boat trip, despite the estimated time of 7 or 8 hours on the river. After yesterday’s toil it was going to be pleasant sitting on my arse.

We woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the roof and it definitely got me thinking how un-tranquil our river trip would be if the rain was coming down for seven hours.

The short hike through the forest from the lodge to the departure point was also made a little interesting as we scrambled for ways to make sure our stuff didn’t get wet this close to the end of the trip.

Fortunately the rain was light and, aside from a short squall in the first few minutes of the boat trip, the conditions were close to idyllic.

The boat trip turned out to be everything I’d hoped for. The constant soothing motion of our boat over the river was a far cry from travelling by car and the busy birdlife was an even more distant cry from the hard grind of yesterday’s forest birding. We continued to rack up the lifers and new trip birds with terns, raptors, vultures, parrots and macaws, but the highlight for me were the two species of nightjars that Alex spotted as we cruised down the river. The flock of Sand-coloured Nighthawks and the single Ladder-tailed Nightjar were proof enough for me that the owling is for the hardcore birders and riverside nightjar viewing is for softer people like me.

I do need to mention that we have travelled in parallel over the last week with an American birding couple in their late 50s/early 60s who were both very well travelled and experienced birders. They had invited three guides that had guided them in Bhutan, Brazil and Uganda and they would be spending 3 weeks in Peru revisiting sites they’d explored 20 years ago, showing their three companions the wonders of Peru. They were self-guiding and seemingly doing a great job of it as their list call every night had many of the same species we had. At first we avoided too much engagement with them as the days were long and I was mostly exhausted and needed my bed but, on our last night, I had quite a long chat to Jeff (the 62 year old Californian). He has a world list of 5,200 species, which I can now appreciate how huge that is and he’s spent many weeks in South Africa as he is a cycad-specific botanical expert and the Eastern Cape, Barberton area and the Zuurberg are to world cycads what Manu is to world birds.

Why this aside? Well, as we sat enjoying a quiet moment on the veranda of the Amazonia Rustic Camp (I’ve chosen to drop the word “lodge”), some of his group asked him if he wanted to go owling.

He animatedly exclaimed “Owling?! Are you kidding? Owling’s shit. Why would I want to traipse around in the dark for hours, hoping to see maybe one owl, after a hard day of birding in the field? I’d much rather relax and drink a cold beer.”

Suddenly, I liked Jeff a lot more than I had 5 minutes before that.

Incidentally, he found the only beer at Amazonia Rustic Camp as they arrived and squirreled it away in the freezer, saving it for their second night. I told him he should feel very guilty for not sharing.

Anyway, we made one or two stops along the river, including a rather depressing stop at the river-side village of Boca Manu, which is a fraction downstream from the confluence of the Manu and Alto Madre de Dios rivers. It’s about as remote as one gets and the populace looked as though they knew there was simply no way out. It used to be a boat building town but trees are no longer allowed to be felled from the forest so they rely on log scraps that are washed down the river during the flood season. It seems as if times are now pretty tough. I was tempted to make up for lost time with a cold beer or two, which were available, but instead I opted for a cold coke, also about as rare as a Peruvian Recurvebill at ARC.

We eventually reached MWC after 8 hours on the river and 172kms travelled. My estimate wasn’t that far off. We listed over 60 species of birds and I actually got a chance to take one or two photos, which has been a practical impossibility in the dark forest.

MWC is a breath of fresh air compared to ARC. The rooms are great, the camp is nice and neat and tidy and they have hammocks. As we arrived I went straight to the hammock, climbed in and told A and J that I was going to sacrifice 20 afternoon lifers for a chill in the hammock. Garret looked at me with dagger eyes, so I tore myself away and donned my full body kit to avert the mosquitoes, which are here in their masses.

It’s also very humid down here but actually not that hot. As it turned out we had the most wonderful afternoon meander. There were actual birds in the forests surrounding the lodge and I could see them for just about the first time on this trip. In a momentous moment in time I had my bins on an Olive-backed Foliage-gleaner for at least 30 seconds before Alex even saw it. Once again there was a toucanet and a few woodpeckers and that lifted it to an extremely good walk. We also saw the most bizarre looking aracari called a Curl-crested Aracari, which has the closest resemblance to a ‘70s perm of any bird I’ve ever seen.

The only complaint I have regarding this afternoon is that I was swindled into an owling walk. Alex took us for 3 hours away from the lodge and then we were only allowed to turn back when it got dark. To be fair we did see an Ocellated Poorwill (a kind of nightjar) but how many owls do you think we saw or heard?

Nil. Nought. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

In the inimitable words of Jeff, the cycad guy, owling is shit (don’t worry, my children have heard me say far worse and so have Juan and Alex). After half an hour of purgatory in the darkness, my withdrawal symptoms from three days without beer, started to set in and I decided, with explicit permission from A and J, that I take a walk back to the lodge on my own, in the darkness.

Don’t freak out, because nothing bad happened, although there are jaguars in these parts, but ironically I did experience one of the highlights of the trip. I’m not much of a mammal guy, so I’m not sure how significant this was, but about ten minutes down the trail a huge ghostly white armadillo bumbled across the path in front of me. It was about the size of a golden retriever (my reference point as we own two of them) and instead of running away it paused for 10 seconds in the undergrowth and stared at me with its woefully poor eyes. And then it turned around and crashed through the leaves away from me. I believe it’s called a xxxx and I’m not sure I’ll ever see one again.

Apologies for the exceptionally long missive today but I’m realizing I may only have your attention for one or two more days plus I spent 8 hours in a boat today and there wasn’t much else to do.

I believe there’s WiFi here but I’m still sitting in darkness and it’s anybody’s guess if this will send but if it does at least you’ll all be caught up by 7:30 tomorrow morning.

Total day birds: 77

Total trip birds: 607 (broke through with ease)

Total trip endemics: 36

Mike day lifers: 33

Mike total lifers: 497

Garret day lifers: 19

Garret trip lifers: 373

Bird of the day: Curl-crested Aracari

Day 19 – MWC to MWC

Well, it’s arrived. Our last full day of birding in Peru. We’ve got some time on the boat to Puerto Maldonado tomorrow, where we’ll see a few birds, and we’ve got a long layover in São Paulo on Saturday for a few more, but day 19 is officially the last day of our Peru birding.

I’ll send some final thoughts in a few days’ time as we kill a million hours on planes and in airports but, for now, I can say that I think I’m ready to come home.

I don’t mean that in a negative sense at all as the trip has been truly wonderful, but I long for my own bed, a shower that isn’t taken in the darkness, a toilet where I don’t need to put the loo paper in a little dustbin next to the toilet but, most of all, I’m really looking forward to seeing my family.

I think we could safely say that we’ve sucked just about everything out of our trip and I felt a little like I was going through the motions a bit this morning after the clay lick (see below) when we spent about two hours in a bamboo forest in high humidity, surrounded by mosquitoes and fire ants but with only one of our three target birds obliging (that damn recurvebill stayed away again but at least we saw the Rufous-headed Woodpecker). It made me realize how lucky we’ve been to see almost 650 birds on this trip but the uncomfortable hunt for a few extras at this stage had my mind drifting to a cold coke at MWC (which never materialized like the recurvebill).

I know I’m speaking for myself when I say I’m ready to come home, because I am pretty sure Garret could keep going for another three weeks. His insatiability for new birds every day is quite remarkable and I have certainly seldom birded with anyone with quite the same drive to eke out everything possible. I think I may have to promise his family that I make sure he boards the same flight that I do because you should be worried that he may stay longer.

Our day started sedately enough, despite the 5am departure on the boat. We motored for about 45 minutes and then took a 3km trail to the clay lick.

This may be a new concept for non-birders so I’ll explain briefly. A clay lick is generally a clay bank carved out and exposed by the river and it’s called a “lick” because it’s where parrots and macaws congregate to lick the clay to balance their diet. As fruit eaters they have a very acidic diet and the alkalinity of the clay brings it all back in line.

The lodge that owns the property (not our lodge) has built a huge platform that overlooks the clay bank and we got there nice and early to watch the comings and goings of about 9 parrot and macaw species. It was all very civilized as breakfast had been lugged along with us (in true colonial style, carried by someone other than me) and I enjoyed a three course meal, highlighted by pancakes and syrup, as the birds flew around us.

We were granted a nice two hour lunch break, which gave me a chance to connect to WiFi and call the family. I even got a chance to swing gently in that hammock for 30 minutes.

Garret tossed his midday rest for a walk with A and J as they both chased “year birds”. You’ll remember that I mentioned Alex saw over 1,400 species in Peru last year. Well, this year he is targeting 1,500. In the slightly adapted words of Obelix the Gaul, “these Peruvians are crazy”.

We finished off our Peru adventure this afternoon in grand style. We hopped on our boat again for a short trip down the river, arrived at a clearing and then walked about 800m to an oxbow lake. There was a small covered jetty harbouring an oar-propelled platform boat, which our two boat-hands kindly paddled for us while we soaked in the late afternoon rays and spotted a bunch of new birds. It reminded me of a gentle evening booze cruise on a Zululand pan, but without the booze. I reached several times for a cold one but, alas, it wasn’t on the agenda. Perhaps A and J know that my birding attention doesn’t need any further impairment.

Despite the lack of alcoholic encouragement, it was about as peaceful a time as we’ve had on this trip. Garret missed an antbird that I saw, which disturbed the calm a little, but even that quietened down and we simply relaxed and enjoyed it.

The cherry on top was logging another “giant” mammal for the second day in a row. These Amazonian oxbow lakes are the right spot for Giant Otters and we found a group of about 8 of them who went about their daily fishing activities right in front of us.

We returned to dock as the sun was setting and I was petrified that I had an 800m owling walk ahead of me , but it was enjoyably brisk except for a brief interlude to lure out a Long-billed Woodcreeper, which was right near the top of my wanted list when we left Cape Town. We may see one or two new birds tomorrow but I’ll always think of that woodcreeper as Peru’s farewell gift to me.

As I mentioned above, I’ll have some time over the next few days to round up my thoughts so I won’t make this any longer than it already is.

Sleep tight.

Total day birds: 85

Total trip birds:

Total trip endemics: 36

Mike day lifers: 26

Mike total lifers: 523

Garret day lifers: 24

Garret trip lifers: 399 (the antbird is killing Garret even more now).

Bird of the day: Rufous-headed Woodpecker

Day 20 – MWC to Lima (or is it Sao Paolo because I’m losing track)

For the birders out there, you may want to stop reading here as there were virtually no birds, other than a Jabiru, which got Garret to 400 lifers for Peru. I think I’m more relieved than he was as it meant he didn’t need to drag me out of the airport in Lima during our long layover to add one more bird.

But, even as a birding follower, you may be interested in the most bizarre day of travel I can ever remember.

It all started very badly as Garret set his alarm clock half an hour too late. I haven’t bothered to set mine on this trip as Garret has been like a precision Swiss clock for our morning wake-ups and so I’ve never needed to. I wasn’t worried.

I should have been. Maybe he’s just exhausted after the frantic birding pace?

The alarm went off 5 minutes before breakfast and, if there were only a few birds to miss, it wouldn’t have been a crisis (Garret would argue the opposite) but we had a very tightly timed morning of travel where we couldn’t afford a mishap. It was a complete scramble to get everything ready for the 5am departure.

The second crisis was that it was pouring with rain. We’ve been incredibly lucky with the weather to this point but it all came apart on our departure day. If we were going to be sitting in a car, there would have been no real drama but we were travelling on two boats this morning and so, within 5 minutes of departing MWC, we were both bundled underneath a plastic sheet which was mostly ineffective and getting wet. It wasn’t typical tropical warm rain. It was a cold front. I didn’t know that happened in the Amazon.  We were both absolutely freezing after three hours’ exposure to the elements on our boat.

The first boat trip took us from MWC to a dreadful gold mining town called Boca Colorado. The boat landing was as close to a monumental disaster as we’ve had on this trip as I started teetering on the narrow plank exiting the boat and nearly ended up in the muddy brown waters of the Madre de Dios River. I recovered just in time. I shudder to think how badly that would have affected my mood, especially considering I would have lost every photo I took, never mind having to travel for two days with wet clothes.

We then climbed into a local taxi, which was about as old as my first car. It was a Toyota, which was good, but there was not much more to put in the “pros” column, whilst the list of “cons” would be too long for this message.

That taxi trip took about an hour and a half over a diabolical road. The worst parts of the road were the narrow river crossings. They’re all made possible over small wooden bridges. The description of the construction is necessary to explain the next mishap. Each bridge has about 20 planks laid parallel to the river (obviously varying depending on width), all of which are supported by struts below. Each plank is separated by a gap of about 15cms. Just enough width for a new born calf hoof (the relevance will become apparent shortly). Then, on top of the parallel strips, they lay two strips of wider planks, just wider than a tyre width, that are in line with the road. Each plank supports the tyres of the vehicle as it crosses. Much like the parallel strips you drive onto when a mechanic needs to inspect the undercarriage, I think. I don’t know much about the mechanics of a car.

As we approached one of the crossings, we had to wait as there was a small herd of cattle crossing. They had to walk across the wider planks as the narrow ones below were akin to a cattle grid.

At first, we waited tortuously for the first cow to cross. It had an unusable back leg (it must have been broken) and it took what seemed like forever for it to get across. Then another four cows crossed with a very young calf. The cows seemed to know that they needed to to stay on the wider planks, but it may have been the calf’s first crossing so it simply walked out onto the narrower slats and all four legs dropped through, straddling it immobile in the middle of the bridge.

What a stuff up.

Our taxi driver, Juan and Alex all jumped out of the car with great intention to resolve this mishap. They would simply lift the calf to safety. The only problem was that the ample-horned mother cow wouldn’t let them get close to it. I don’t think a butting into a muddy river was in any of their job descriptions. They made several half-hearted and totally fruitless attempts. Alex even bravely picked up a few stones to throw at the cow but she simply stared him down.

We were well and truly stuck with no way to cross.

At one point, our driver even contemplated driving with one tyre on the outer plank and the other on the narrow slats. It was a very precarious solution and since I had nearly fallen in the river once today, that wasn’t going to happen.

Fortunately, the locals were a lot braver than A and J, so we waited for a build up of traffic and then a pair of sturdy men got out of their cars and shooed the cow away, grabbed the calf by its ears and tail and carried it safely across the bridge.

Muchos Gracias.

Fortunately that was the end of our ground travel mishaps for the day.

We arrived in the town of Santa Rosa, took another boat (again in the driving rain) across the Inambari River to a clearing on the opposite bank to access the main road. That river crossing only took about 5 minutes but it’s worth mentioning that the boatman spent every minute of that bailing water out of the boat as he steered us to the other side. Chris de Burgh springs to mind (anyone younger than 40 won’t know what that means).

Once we’d paid the ferryman we got in another taxi and drove for 2 hours to the Puerto Maldonado “International” Airport.

It was a mere six and a half hours since leaving MWC and we had still not boarded one of our 4 flights for the next two days.

We said a very sad, but fond, farewell to A and J who were flying direct to Cusco to reunite with their families before their next assault on their year lists. They have been AMAZING but there’ll be more about that in my trip roundup (everyone groans at the thought of another long message from me).

We’re now at Lima Airport waiting for our flight to São Paulo at 11pm. We land at 7 tomorrow morning and then get collected for a morning of birds at a lodge. I may ask them for a bed while Garret sees about 50 more lifers. For the birders who are shaking their heads at how soft I really am I’m just joking, of course.

No bird summary today as it’s pretty much unchanged from yesterday.

Day 21 – São Paulo

This note feels a bit superfluous as we’re no longer in Peru. I’ll do my best to keep it short.

We were due to leave Lima at 11:10pm last night with a 5 hour flight to São Paulo and then a 12 hour layover, which didn’t sound like much fun, especially since we were in a different country with a pile of different birds.

So we arranged a half day “tour” with Wild Brazil, which simply entailed being collected from the airport, driven two hours to a lodge, birding time, lunch, shower and then a two hour drive back to the airport.

To be honest I was skeptical whether it would be worth it. I was even more skeptical when our flight from Lima was delayed by 2 hours and only left at 1:10am. It was a fitting end to a rather long and difficult day of travel. I definitely had thoughts that we’d have to cancel our excursion to Espeneiro Negro in the Brazilian Atlantic forest but our guide, Samuel, was waiting for us just outside of customs and we figured any new birds would be better than 12 hours in an airport.

It was a wonderful decision. I felt strangely energized and didn’t ask for my midday nap. The weather was beautiful and sunny but so nice and cool and not humid at all. Thoughts that Espeneiro Negro would be like Amazonia Rustic Camp evaporated the minute we arrived. The hosts were gracious, there were piles of bananas on the feeders and there were birds simply everywhere. We took a short walk through the forest, which was very quiet at the time of day and year but it mattered very little as we just returned to the feeders and enjoyed the spectacle.

We recorded 43 species today, of which 21 were lifers for me. The tanagers were simply beautiful and I got a chance to take some pics.

We’re now at São Paulo airport (it has a name that I can’t be bothered to spell) and we board our flight to Joburg in an hour. I feel like we’re a little more than half way done with the travel so I’m feeling good.

The only problem is that Garret jumped out of the car at the airport and ran away into the nearest patch of bamboo. I don’t think he’s coming home.

Total day birds: 43

Total trip birds: 670ish (Garret is in the bamboo so I can’t confirm the precision)

Total trip endemics: 36

Mike day lifers: 21

Mike total lifers: 544

Garret day lifers: 21

Garret trip lifers: 423

Bird of the day: Crescent-chested Puffbird

Final thoughts on Peru

As promised here follows my final thoughts on the trip and on Peru in general. I like to waffle and I have plenty of time to kill at the airport so it comes with a length warning. There will also be limited birdy stuff so this is most probably for my own memories in ten years’ time and for my very dedicated readers.

The scenery

Absolutely beautiful in almost every area we went to. The coastline is barren and bleak but we were lucky with the weather (without mist) and so we saw it at its best. The most dramatic vistas were on all the Andean passes. We went up and down from just about every angle so we saw most of it. The western slopes are dry and scrubby and so are many of the eastern slopes we were on initially. The highest areas are alpine-like with short heath-like vegetation and mossy bogs.

It’s only when we ventured further east of Cusco that we moved into the higher altitude cloud forests, polylepis and elfin forests. And then, of course, as we dropped below 500m in the east we were in the tropical forest of the Amazon Basin. The extent of these gallery forests is mind-boggling and most of it along the Rio Madre de Dios was pristine. It’s only when we got to mining towns and Puerto Maldonado that it degraded quite a bit.

The most beautiful areas, for me, were the cloud forests and obviously Machu Picchu was a visual highlight.

The roads and driving

This was one of the tough bits of the trip. When I looked at a map before we left I noted the distances were very short and so I didn’t expect a lot of car time. This was an underestimation. The roads are not terrible in condition but the mountain passes just seem to go on forever. It takes absolute ages to ascend or descend the thousands of meters we went up and down. On one particular day we spent about 9 hours in the car with very little birding (Cusco to Wayqecha). I’m not naive to the toil of travel on a birding trip having been to Mozambique and Ethiopia previously but this was just worse than I expected. The boat at the end was such a pleasant replacement.

The weather

We were astonishingly lucky with the weather. You’d generally write off two or three full days to bad weather but, at most, we lost a few hours early on.

The first two weeks were mild to very cold. The coldest was when we saw the Diademed Sandpiper-Plover at 4,800m. It was below freezing.

Weirdly the last week in the Amazon wasn’t nearly as hot as I expected but it was extremely humid so there was a lot of sweating. At least at night I could sleep.

The people

Seemingly a very peaceful and friendly bunch of people. We were in hotels and lodges throughout so it is a skewed view but we spent many lunches and breakfasts in very authentic local eateries and I found the people to be incredibly non-intrusive and took us as just passers by. Even with binoculars and camera lenses I never felt I was a spectacle. We spent about half an hour in a remote village in the Amazon where I bought a cold coke and sat and drank it amongst the villagers and about ten little kids passed me and I was very aware that they didn’t even give me a second glance. It’s very different to being in Africa where umlungus/gringos are noticed.

The food

This bit is specifically for Goggo (Jeanie’s mom) as I know she’ll appreciate it.

The food was generally excellent. In most places the food was very simple plates of food. The Peruvians love their carbs and every meal comes with at least two. There was almost always white rice and potatoes or French fries.

They also love their bread. We stopped at so many little bakeries where A and J would eat plain bread straight out of the bakeries. And heaps of it.

There were a few specific local meals that stood out for me:

Lomo Saltado

This was my absolute favourite. It is basically sautéed strips of beef with chunks of red onions, red peppers and tomato served with rice and French fries. I had it about ten times and I was never disappointed. Goggs will be making this for me when I get home. Please?

Cerviche

This is a very traditional dish of Peru. I had it in Pucusana, which is a coastal village and then once at Ollantaytambo. Also absolutely delicious. It’s usually made with a fresh white seafish. Naturally served with rice.

Andean Trout

We had pan seared trout with quinoa on a few occasions. The quality varied dramatically. At one eating house about half way back up Abra Malaga it was a over cooked bone fest served with potatoes, which wasn’t great and then in a touristy restaurant it was boneless, well seasoned and deliciously juicy. The price at the eatery was about R40 and about R140 in the restaurant so no big surprise there was a quality difference.

Chicken soup for breakfast

The Peruvians don’t restrict breakfast to traditional breakfasty type things. Chicken soup is common, particularly at high altitude where it’s cold. We’d spend the first 3 hours of the day birding and then stop at a tiny eatery and we’d have chicken soup. It’s more of a consumme (sp?) than a broth but it comes with a boiled chicken breast with skin and about three different kinds of potato (there are apparently 3,000 types of potato in Peru but this fact is unsubstantiated). I may have taken abuse about my need for midday naps (which I never actually had, for the sake of clarity) but we often found time for chicken soup. On a few occasions I joined in too, even though it wasn’t quite Granny Pam quality.

We never got around to eating guinea pig, which is the true iconic meal in Peru. We saw it on the menu in one restaurant and it was twice the price of lomo saltado so you know which one I chose.

The cost of food is very comparable to South Africa. Main meals are around R120-R160. Our tour included all meals so we didn’t need to watch the prices at all so I may have missed the exact comparison.

Oh, last food thing. The fruit is delicious, which you’d expect in the tropics. We ate a lot of passion fruit which makes a grenadilla look like a very poor cousin.

Coffee

I’ve realized two things about coffee and myself on trips like these these. Firstly, I’m a bit of a Southern Suburbs coffee snob and, secondly, I’m not an addict. There was nothing wrong with the coffee, it was actually quite good, but I went most days without.

Garret, on the other hand was unable to get through the day without it. A morning coffee was imperative before he was able to spot his first bird and then a midday fix was just as important.

The coffee is served very differently. They brew a very strong concentrate which is stored in a small glass bottle and then dilute with hot water from a flask, either on the road or in the eateries.

Accommodation

For the most part the accommodation was everything we needed. We stayed in quality hotels in the main centers like Lima and Cusco and then smaller quaint hotels in smaller towns like Aguas Calientes and Ollantaytambo. InIn the more remote areas we stayed in guest house-type places and simple lodges. In this category I think Wayqecha was my favourite, whilst Amazonia Rustic Camp was at the bottom of the barrel. ARC lost huge points for a lack of cold beer. Like Garret needed his coffee, I needed a cold beer at the end of the day.

The birding

Obviously, it was amazing. No doubt about it. Our final numbers reflect that it isn’t considered the top birding destination in the world for nothing. The altitude variation is the key for Peru as well as the climate changes from a dry desert in the west to a tropical rain forest in the east. The isolated scrubby valleys in the Andes have also contributed to the high levels of endemism. Our itinerary was actually restricted to south central Peru. The northern parts of the country are, arguably, even richer with higher numbers of endemics. A and J said we’d need 15 days to cover those areas and we’d probably add another 400 species. I think Garret is ready to go tomorrow whilst I may need to start contemplating my pink ticket acquisition strategy for the next 20 years.

As good as the birding is and as high as the diversity can be, the birding is harder than you think. The open country stuff at the beginning was a real pleasure but hard to separate canasteros and ground-tyrants and miners and cinclodes. But then the forest stuff is really tough to keep up. I actually coped way better with the close tall forest birding at low altitude compared with the cloud forest flocks. In the cloud forests the birds are often distant or moving very fast and I battled to pick up all the species in a flock.  In the dark forest the birds come in ones and twos and it was easier for me to keep up. Garret was the other way around where his better long-distance eyes picked up flock birds far more easily than I did.

I referred a lot to the exhausting pace of the trip, with extremely early starts and owling into the evening. I have taken a suitable amount of abuse from birding mates for my comments but it was genuinely very tough at times (plus there may have been some poetic license with my hyperbole).

We were birding with the top lister in Peru (Alex) who used to guide a crazy Swedish guy, Gunnar Engblom, on his radically extreme tours, so he is used to serious listers chasing big totals, so it was not just me being useless. 20 days of 13-15 hour birding days is hard. Jolting car travel is not downtime either. Plus Alex was chasing his own big year list so we were often spending half an hour trying to see a single species in the humid, mosquito forests. Garret is genuinely far more determined than me and I had true admiration for his continual efforts to add each additional species.

Don’t tell him I told you this but he also admitted that he disliked the owling but he was prepared to suffer it for an additional owl or two.

And then seeing almost 650 species is an exceptionally high number for three weeks and trying to remember them all was often an additional challenge for me.

The photography was generally very difficult. The light conditions are often sub-optimal and I was often just trying to see the bird rather than worrying about photographing it. But make sure you watch my insta page as there will be pics of some of the birds that sat still for more than a fraction of a fraction of an instant.

But overall the birding was just amazing (I repeat myself). I’m not sure when I’ll do another three week birding trip but I’m so pleased that I did this one. If you want to see some of the world’s greatest birds then Peru is the place.

Juan and Peruvian Wings

We couldn’t have done better. As simple as that.

He’s a young guy and has only about 4 or 5 years specific birding experience but his organization and catering for our needs was world class. We never had a single mishap related to transport, accommodation, meals or birding localities. At least none that were in his control. We asked him to show us a lot of birds and he arranged the itinerary to achieve that end. I expected 550 and we got nearly 100 more. He and Alex were a perfect combination. Juan’s English was excellent so he could always understand our needs which were then communicated to Alex and then he would be set on the trail making sure we maximized.

Our last day of travel that I spoke about with a form of dazed surprise may have been extraordinarily interesting but Juan had arranged it all like clockwork. Mobile reception is very iffy but at every changeover from boat to taxi or vice versa there was the next guy waiting for us right there and then. We wasted not a minute on a day that needed precision.

We finally said goodbye to A and J when we went through security to board our flight to Lima. They were flying direct to Cusco an hour later. It wouldn’t surprise you to hear that they used that hour to go birding in PM.

My travelling companion

Aside from a few half day trips to WCNP Garret and I hadn’t travelled at all together. It was a potentially very risky venture spending three untested weeks together, given how difficult I can be and how structured Garret is, but it is quite remarkable that we’re out the other end of the trip and we’re still talking to each other like we were on the first day. Sharing a room and bathroom with someone for 21 straight days is a big ask but, more than that, we were together birding the whole time as well. I’m sure he’ll need a break from me for a decent period but we’ll definitely be doing a lot more birding in the future. I’ll be back to half day WCNP trips whilst he may be seeking out more voracious, hard-core birders for his next trip.

When did I get the time to write these?

Most of you will know that I love to write about stuff that I do, which is why I decided to do this daily diary. It wasn’t meant to be a quality, edited article every day; merely a record of my thoughts for my future reminiscing as well as to give my family and others an insight into a hardcore birding trip.

I would usually use the last few hours of car travel each day to start assimilating my thoughts and then I’d single-finger type them inmy iPhone Notes before handing to Garret to do a quick read for appropriateness. Then a quick copy into WhatsApp and send.

As much as Garret loved precisioning his lists every evening, I loved writing these.

I apologize for spelling and grammar errors (especially misplaced apostrophes, which I’m sure my family enjoyed with revengeful glee) and I guess an apology for the length, sometimes, because most of you had normal life to get on with. But, for those that did read them and enjoyed keeping up, thanks for coming along.

We’ve just landed in Joburg and I’ve got one more flight before seeing my wonderful family who I have missed like crazy.

Until next time.…