The Cloud Forest

On Thursday morning, our rainforest guide, Mitchel, met us at our hotel in Cusco. We joined another young couple from France, and our driver, Guillermo. The six of us were headed to Manu National Park, one of the best-preserved rainforests in the world and home to one in nine bird species on Earth. The park is divided into three zones: the first open to anyone, the second restricted to scientists and visitors carrying special permits, and the third restricted to the native people--some of whom have no contact with the outside world. We were headed into the first two zones, the zones culturales and the reserved zone. The tourism permitted in these first two zones helps the government protect the third, much larger, restricted zone.

We began our trip into the rainforest by driving through the villages that surround Cusco. Each one is known for having mastered a local specialty like chicharones (fried pork), cuy (roasted guinea pig), or the large, round chuta bread. We made our first stop in Oropessa to watch the chuta bread being made in a local home--one of about 25 in the area that provide several hundred loaves each to Cusco on a daily basis.
By lunchtime, we had made it into the cloud forest, the portion of forest that sits on the foothills of the Andes and is cloaked in clouds most of the time. We later learned that many tours skip the cloud forest (in favor of flying directly into the rainforest), but the steep incline of the mountains gave us a fantastic view into the canopy immediately below and the animals that live there. We took several walks along the winding mud road, where we got up close to a number of birds and a family of wooley monkeys.

The next morning, we woke up before sunrise to go to a lek where the Cock of the Rock birds congregate at dawn. The male Cock of the Rock --the national bird of Peru-- is a large, bright red bird with the shape and grace of a giant pigeon. At this time of year, Mitchel told us, few females come to the lek. But like bars all over the world, the males keep showing up in the hopes a potential mate will drop by.

After breakfast, we stopped to watch some hummingbirds and a series of other birds I can't seem to remember.

In the afternoon, after driving down to the base of the mountains, we left the car, Guillermo and the cloud forest behind. We boarded a motorized canoe and began our journey into the rainforest...