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A pilgrim in Peru: Part Three, arriving in Machu Picchu

by Don George on

On my third day in the Sacred Valley, I awoke at 5:40 to bird trills and wood smoke-scented air. I could hardly contain my excitement: Today was a day I’d been waiting for most of my traveling life: We were going to Machu Picchu!

We hit the highway at 6 am, passing sheep, pigs and cows being herded into pens and villagers in brightly woven capes and great hats walking along the side of the road. After 25 minutes we arrived in Ollantaytambo, where porters in bright red ponchos waited for Inca trail trekkers; too pressed for time to make the four-day trek, we were taking the quick route: a storybook blue train to Aguas Calientes, the town nearest Machu Picchu, where a bus would wend to the base of the site.

On the 30-minute train ride, Manuel pointed out where bridges had been washed out or railroad tracks twisted and tossed into the river by the raging floods of a few months before: stark reminders of nature’s raw power. This train, he said, had restarted operations only three months earlier. I thought of the Inca temples we’d seen and of Manuel’s words from two days before: “The Spaniards called them idolators and maybe they were — but I think they did very well; they had a big respect for nature.”

Then we reached booming, ragtag, pizzeria-and-hostel Aguas Calientes, where we walked through a maze of market stalls and boarded the bus for the 30-minute back-and-forth bounce up the dusty road to the ruins.Here’s the thing about Machu Picchu: No matter how many photographs you’ve seen, stories you’ve read or posters you’ve absorbed, nothing can prepare you for the surreal whoosh of actually being there. From the spot where the bus drops you, you walk up some narrow stairs and some winding paths, the sun beating on you, the sweat starting to trickle down your back, and then you reach a level area and take a few more steps and – whoosh! – suddenly there it is, spreading out before you, the gray granite walls and poky roof remains and green open lawns and jungly green rock-thrusts just beyond. Suddenly it hits you: Machu Picchu – I’ve arrived!

For a while you just stand and stare, absorbing it, letting it seep into you. Then eventually you become aware of the other travelers, some as stunned as you, and you decide it’s time to head into the ruins. And then time suspends, and you spend two, three, four – you don’t know how many – hours wandering, letting your hands trail along the rock, smelling the grass and the granite baking in the high-altitude sun. You visit the agricultural sector and the industrial zone, the Temple of the Three Windows and the Temple of the Condor, the Sacred Square and the priests’ chamber, the House of the Virgins of the Sun, the Watchman’s Hut, the cemetery, the Temple of the Sun and the sun dial. But what you are really doing is walking through time.

You’re imagining what it was like 500 years ago when a thousand people lived here – their woven clothes, the potatoes and maize they grew, the grain they stored, the granite they dragged laboriously from the quarry and the gold and silver and chisels, the wood and water, they used to break down and shape the stone. You imagine the runners arriving from Cusco, the robed priests, the weavers and warriors, the singers and teachers and pottery-makers.

And then you’re imagining what it was like 99 years ago, when a 12-year-old boy brought a discouraged Hiram Bingham to this rocky revelation. What must it have felt like to gaze on this tumble-jumble of intricately wrought walls and plazas, trees and vines? You imagine the crescendo of emotion and astonishment, the arc of enlightenment, as Bingham gradually realized what he’d found, what he called the Lost City of the Incas.

And then you think about what this discovery set off, a succession of events every bit as tangled and dramatic as those ruins: A foreigner recognizes the significance of this remote site, clears and plunders it, and in so doing creates a global icon that is responsible for sustaining as much as 80% of the local economy today, and that has literally put Peru on the international tourist map. This eventually encourages the Peruvian government to reallocate significant resources to study and preserve other ancient sites and artifacts in the area. The ever-swelling procession of Machu Picchu pilgrims, even as it underpins and integrates the local economy, threatens to undermine and disintegrate the site itself.

You recall what Manuel said on the train, how the torrential rain and floods of earlier this year dramatically demonstrated just how economically fragile the economy of the Sacred Valley is, how much it depends on this one site: From February to April, when floods took out those tracks from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes, 78% of visitors to the region canceled their trips.

So visiting Machu Picchu is, like the site itself, multi-layered: There’s the historical backstory, the cultural backstory, and the economic backstory. And then there’s the pure human experience of being present at Machu Picchu. All of this roiled inside me as we roamed the ruins. I felt a pulsing presence there, but something wasn’t quite connecting, somehow it wasn’t getting through to me. Before the thought formed in my mind, I knew it in the pit of my stomach: I had to come back at dawn.

Manuel and I returned to Aguas Calientes late in the afternoon and I settled into the Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel, a glorious world of its own at the far end of town, all gracious adobe-walled rooms set among lush gardens with an outdoor sauna, pool and hot tub perfect for a post-Machu Picchu muscle-soothing soak. After a pisco sour welcome in the main lobby, I repaired to the dining room overlooking the Urubamba River; in a grand setting of exposed wood beams and flagstone floor tiles, with exquisite ceramic figurines decorating the walls, I slowly savored every bite of grilled Creole chicken with cassava croquette, washed down with an excellent Argentinian Malbec. The food was tasty, the setting artful, the service attentive and enthusiastic, and Machu Picchu soared in my head: All was aligned in my Inca cosmology. I looked at my watch. The sun god was approaching: Time for bed.

Previously:
A pilgrim in Peru: Part One, Arriving in Peru
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Two, visiting Moray, Pisaq and Ollantaytambo
Tomorrow: A pilgrim in Peru: Part Four, visiting Machu Picchu at sunrise
Related: How to hike the Inca Trail

This trip was hosted by both LAN and Geographic Expeditions, but the opinions, joy, and amazement concerning the people and ruins in Peru are purely my own.

A pilgrim in Peru: Part Two, visiting Moray, Pisaq and Ollantaytambo

by Don George on

On my second day in the Sacred Valley, I awoke to clear mountain air, the faint sweet scent of distant smoke and the green and bright-blossoming grounds of the Hotel Sol & Luna. Manuel met me over cafés con leche in the hotel’s breakfast room, unfurled a map and traced our itinerary for the day: The Sacred Valley is a swath of level land bordered by the Urubamba and Vilcabamba mountain ranges and threaded by the Urubamba River; the distance from the endpoints of Ollantaytambo in the northwest to Pisaq in the southeast is about 70 miles. Strung throughout this valley are some two dozen towns and villages, as well as the grand capital, Cusco. On our first full day here we would travel the length of the valley and visit three ancient sites: Moray, Pisaq and Ollantaytambo.

A couple of what would become recurring themes emerged on our morning visit to Moray. The first was that archaeological tourism and archaeological stewardship are still very new in Peru. As we gazed over the site’s mesmerizing sunken circular terraces, Manuel said, “No one is sure when it was built, but many people believe it goes back to 1420s, 1430s. And it was no more than five years ago that the government really started paying attention to what had been done here. Farmers had been using this as a corral before that. And if the government doesn’t pay attention, people will just take these stones and use them for themselves.”

The second was just how technologically sophisticated the ancient settlers here were. Moray’s multi-tiered amphitheater was a laboratory where agricultural experiments were performed to see what kinds of crops would grow best at what altitudes and under what climatic and meteorological conditions. Each terrace represented a different temperature and ecological level. “The Incas were trying to domesticate crops that didn’t grow naturally here,” Manuel said. “For example, cotton seeds have been found on the site. This shows that the Incas were not only expert building engineers and hydraulic engineers; they were also great genetic engineers. Some people think this is where potatoes were domesticated. Think of it. The potato is probably the number one crop all over the world, and it may have been introduced here.” He shaded his eyes from the sun and stared at the grassy circles. “Five grains that are now used all around the world also came from here – who knows, maybe they did that work right in these terraces before us.”
Pisac, 60 miles to the southeast of Moray, had even more impressive terracing – ribboning up a towering slope crowned by a complex of reddish rock ruins. As we huffed and puffed up in the afternoon sun, the view of golden valley expanses and distant brown mountains became more and more impressive. The panorama from the top was breathtaking: Terraces descended like waves below, with the modern town of Pisac to the right, behind us a lush green gorge and across it a cliff wall pocked with ancient tombs. The site’s significance as a strategic watchpoint and easily defensible fortress was clear, but as we poked around its walls, windows, entranceways and alleys, its everyday significance came to life as well: A family had cooked and slept here, stored their grain and housed their livestock there; we could identify courtyards where religious ceremonies had been performed and guardhouses where lookouts were posted.

As the day cooled in the waning afternoon light, the thin sound of an Andean flute floated up from below; a little shiver – the breath of an Inca messenger? – fluted along my spine.

Moray and Pisac were illuminating and impressive, but the highlight of the day was Ollantaytambo, 60 miles northwest of Cusco and the last big town before Machu Picchu. As we bumped along its cobbled streets, Manuel said, “Ollantaytambo was very important because of its location – the way the valley narrows, anyone traveling to Machu Picchu or beyond had to go through here. So Ollantaytambo was important economically and strategically. We call it a living museum – many people here are descendants of the original Quechua settlers and are living in houses with Inca foundations that were built at least 500 years ago.”

An impressive fortress-like pile of rockwork that ranged from rough-hewn to astonishingly smooth, the ancient temple-fortress of Ollantaytambo rises like a juggernaut out of the valley floor. “Look at this!” Manuel exclaimed after we’d ascended a stony stairway to the main temple area. The rockwork here was so smooth and perfectly pieced together it almost defied comprehension. “How did they cut these rocks so smooth?” Manuel said, echoing my own thoughts. “Maybe they had a wire made of gold or silver and they used stone chisels – but it’s amazing that they could make such quality. And look at the sizes of the stones!” The biggest stones were easily 12 feet high by 8 feet long. “Some of them weigh 80-100 tons. The quarries were over there,” Manuel pointed to a hillside across the Urubamba River, perhaps two miles away. “They had to move the stones downhill, get them across the river, then bring them uphill. Yes, they had stone tools, but you know, the best tool they had was men. They must have had thousands of men working here.”

Manuel turned to me. “I believe the Incas must have had a writing system to do this work. We know they had a counting system, and I’m sure they had a system of measurement and a writing system too. How else can you explain this perfection?” The Incas must have written down their methods of transporting heavy stones and piecing together the intricate picture-puzzles of their massive, masterful monuments; surely such a sophisticated civilization had developed an efficient way to transport information as well as materials all along the Inca trail. As we walked around the site, Manuel gazed over the valley. “You know, people today feel more safe to build houses on Inca terraces than on plains built by modern engineers.”

Later we walked through the cobbled streets of the endearing town, past 21st-century dwellings built on 15th-century foundations, 15th-century canals irrigating 21st-century crops, past and present interwoven on a Quechua loom.

A final highlight of the day was something much more mundane – a stop at a roadside chicha establishment. Chicha is a fermented beverage made from corn. Manuel took me to a place he favored – signified, as with all such establishments, by a red flag hanging jauntily on a pole outside the shop. After admiring a basket of multi-colored ears of corn which the proprietress brought out to illustrate the source of the brew, we sampled two kinds of chicha: the traditional straw-colored drink, which was a little bitter for my taste, and a pinkish one that had been flavored with strawberry, known as frutillada, which tasted like a mildly alcoholic smoothie.

Manuel said that after a hard day of work in the fields, locals would repair to the neighborhood chicha place, down a few brews, talk and unwind. I cannot imagine a better way to end a hot Peruvian day. As we drank our second round of frutilladas, Manuel introduced me to the traditional game of sapo which often accompanies chicha-quaffing. Sapo involves a somewhat desk-like piece of furniture with about half a dozen holes in its top plane and a golden frog perched with its mouth open. You set the desk about eight feet away, then take a round brass piece about the size of a silver dollar and toss it at the desk. You get points if your piece lands in one of the holes and even more points if you manage to toss it into the frog’s mouth. How did I do? Well, I probably won’t be invited to join the Peruvian national sapo team for a while. But I did hit the desk a couple of times – and as further frutilladas slid smoothily down, even that seemed pretty special. And I managed to avoid hitting Manuel and John. So all in all I considered it a pretty successful chicha stop. And I’m happy to say no frogs – golden or green — were harmed that day.

Manuel and John dropped me at the Sol & Luna, where that night I feasted on mushroom consommé with chicken-filled ravioli and grilled local king fish, all enhanced by the hotel’s handsome, mural-graced circular dining room. Then I retired to my tiled cassita, admired the handicrafts artfully arranged throughout – like lodging in an exquisite handicrafts boutique – and took one last walk through the crisp Andean air, under the star-skeined Inca sky.

Previously: A pilgrim in Peru: Part One, Arriving in Peru
Tomorrow: A pilgrim in Peru: Part Three, arriving in Machu Picchu

This trip was hosted by both LAN and Geographic Expeditions, but the opinions, joy, and amazement concerning the people and archaeology in Peru are purely my own.

A pilgrim in Peru: Part One, Arriving in Peru

by Don George on

I got up at dawn and made my way in the crisp Andean air through the warren of just-opening stalls selling booklets, blankets and bug repellent, to the Aguas Calientes bus stop. With about two dozen Peruvian guides and Western and Japanese tourists, I piled into the bus for the weaving 1500-foot ascent to a place I’d been dreaming of visiting for decades: Machu Picchu.

I had to get there for the sunrise. I wasn’t sure why, but for years I had felt that something was waiting for me at Machu Picchu, that something would be revealed to me there. I’d tried to play down this feeling, not wanting to freight my experience any more than decades of posters and travelers’ tales already had, but as the bus jounced and switchbacked through the lightening dawn, it weighed undeniably in my stomach and my head: a yearning, an expectation.

For decades, Machu Picchu had been at the top of my Places to Go list, but somehow, in 30 years as a travel writer and editor visiting more than 70 countries, I still hadn’t gotten there. In the spring of 2010 I was beginning to despair that I ever would.

Then an invitation arrived from LAN Airlines, via the San Francisco-based adventure travel company Geographic Expeditions. LAN was inaugurating non-stop service from San Francisco to Lima and was looking for a few journalists to host on the inaugural flight. Friends at GeoEx offered to make my longtime dream come true: I could fly to Lima and then Cusco with LAN, take a special six-day GeoEx tour of the Sacred Valley, culminating in a visit to Machu Picchu, and fly back on LAN eight days later. I leapt.

My pilgrimage began in unexpected splendor. Minutes before boarding the LAN inaugural I was upgraded to business class, where I happily sipped champagne, dined on grilled salmon with lemon risotto and sautéed snow peas with mushrooms, and played with the amazing Transformer Seat, which offered dozens of body configurations, including my all-time favorite – the fully flat, 180-degree, lie-down-and-sleep-like-a-baby recline. That and “Would you like some more champagne, sir?” and I’d found heaven at 33,000 feet.

We landed shortly after midnight. I was blearily greeted by a GeoEx representative and guided literally across the street to the Ramada airport hotel, where I fell into a deep sleep, then walked back across the street the next morning for the 9:35 LAN flight to Cusco. Soaring over seemingly endless Andean crenellations and jagged snow-swept peaks was the first revelation of my trip.

When the lush gold and green expanses of the Sacred Valley suddenly appeared, it was a visually stunning lesson in just how remote and isolated – and idyllic – that valley is. We landed over the terra-cotta roofs of Cusco a little over an hour after we left Lima, and I was met at the airport by Manuel, my guide for the next six days, and John, our driver. And then the adventures began.

We drove first to Cusco’s Central Market, where I had a glorious baptismal immersion in the Sacred Valley. Our first stop was an extremely eye-opening stand where a jolly, stolid middle-aged woman was lifting slick, loopy intestinal parts from an industrial-size bubbling pot. “We have liver, frog from Lake Titicaca, crab, octopus, fish, and the most important ingredient, bull penis,” Manuel translated with a big smile. “Many people start the day off here,” he said. “This soup is good for headaches, vision, asthma, epilepsy, prostate – many things.” Nodding at me, the woman ladled out a long puckery octopus appendage and another thick looping body part I didn’t even want to think about.

She passed me a bowl and encouraged me to dive in. I took a deep sniff. It did not smell like chicken soup.

We walked along the slippery aisles past scurrying dogs and slurping patrons and a dizzying succession of stands. In one area fresh cows’ heads were lined up invitingly. “These are used in offerings to the earth mother to help sick children,” Manuel said. “Sometimes we use just the nose, sometimes the teeth, sometimes the horns – it depends on the illness.”

We passed huge hanging pigs and glistening fish and rainbow-colored tumbles of grains and fruits and vegetables. “In Peru we have more than 100 varieties of corn,” Manuel said, and then, waving at a stand overflowing with white, black, brown and yellow potatoes, “and more than a thousand varieties of potato.” We walked past sweet-scented flowers in a riot of colors, bright shawls and beans and beads, festival masks, great wheels of bread and cheese, and neat plastic-bagged packs of coca leaves. “Welcome to Peru,” Manuel smiled.

The market was equally fine for people-watching, including the distinctive hats that many Peruvian village women still wear. A friendly bean and coca vendor posed in her handsome white mestizo hat; a few stands later, a bread-seller proudly showed off a high-topped cream-colored headpiece dashingly encircled with a wide pink sash.

We motored on to Cusco’s central Plaza de Armas and the inviting Inka Grill, where I had the first of many delicious meals: ají de gallina, shredded chicken with nuts, cheese, and chile peppers. After lunch I began to feel a little woozy and lightheaded – Cusco is perched at 11,000 feet, after all – but Manuel passed me a packet of coca leaves and told me to chew a mouthful. The coca had a not unpleasant earthy taste, like a mix of green tea and maple leaves, and after a few minutes of concentrated chewing the lightheadedness passed. John set off, expertly threading though Cusco’s traffic-clogged streets, and in perhaps 15 minutes we were surrounded by rolling green-brown hills and terra cotta-roofed homes, many made of neatly stacked brick blocks. Beyond the grasslands and hills, snowy mountains shimmered, and in the distance a glinting river sinewed through – a landscape of breathtaking beauty I was entirely unprepared for.

As we drove, Manuel delivered a crash course in Peruvian political, cultural, and religious history: “Manco Capac is generally considered the first Inca king; he ruled the area around Cusco at the end of the 11th century. We can say that the Inca empire really began in the 15th century, under the great ruler Pachacutec, who conquered rival tribes in the Sacred Valley and established Tawantinsuyu, or ‘the united four provinces.’ ” The expansion of the empire reached its height two rulers later under Huayna Capac, who aggressively extended its reach all the way from present-day southern Colombia to north-central Chile, encompassing much of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northwest Argentina. This was the greatest empire in pre-Columbian America, and it lasted until Francisco Pizarro arrived with a ragged band of armored and equined soldiers in 1532. Within a year Pizarro had murdered the then-ruler Atahualpa and installed Atahualpa’s half-brother, Manco Inca, as a puppet ruler. In 1536 Manco rebelled against the Spaniards and retreated to a jungle stronghold called Vilcabamba, where he resisted and raided the Spaniards for 36 years. In 1572 that last Inca redoubt was conquered, and the last ruler, Túpac Amaru, Manco’s son, was captured and executed.

“All the colonial churches we’ve been seeing,” Manuel continued, gesturing at a distant cathedral spire, “were built by the Spaniards after they took control of the country; they were meant as a sign of power and control – the Spaniards were trying to disappear all evidences from Inca times. When the Spaniards arrived, Incas didn’t want to join them to be Christian. Thousands were killed. Finally they had to accept it when they were under Spanish control. Today 75-80 percent of Peruvians are Catholic. But of course we have the freedom to choose whatever religion we want to be.”

“What did the Incas worship?” I asked.

“When the Incas were in power,” Manuel said, “they worshipped nature: sun, moon, earth, mountains, also the puma and the condor. The Spaniards called them idolators and maybe they were — but I think they did very well; they took care of the environment, they had a big respect for nature.”

Soon we turned off the main road in a village called Chinchero, where Manuel took me to an adobe home-cum-workshop where members of an extended local family – ages 6 to silver-haired – were waiting to demonstrate the traditional way of making textiles. Strikingly dressed in red and green capes and black skirts with upturned red-brimmed hats, they showed how wool from sheep or alpacas is washed and formed into thread, how the thread is dyed using flowers, minerals and fruits (and how adding salt or lemon can dramatically change a dye’s color), and how these multi-colored threads are painstakingly handwoven into artful creations on venerable looms.

Manuel spoke with the family patriarch, who explained that his workshop is affiliated with an organization called the Centre for Traditional Textiles in Cusco. His family has been engaged in this practice for 13 years, the patriarch said, and their workshop gets an average of 30 visitors a day. “Our goal is to keep the area’s traditional textile-making alive,” Manuel translated. “In Inca times, textile-making was second in economic importance only after farming in this region. Each town has its own textile techniques, colors and designs, and many of these have historical or legendary meaning. They are very important to each place’s character and continuing.”

After the demonstration, I admired the bright hats, sweaters, blankets and shawls for sale with a new appreciation of the effort, time and skill they embodied. Though I’m usually an adamant anti-shopper on the road, I happily bought two long, intricately patterned, red, green, white and purple scarves. Sometimes shopping is just the right thing to do.

As we left the family’s compound, I reflected on the day: bull penis soup, shredded chicken, coca leaves and textile treasures. The Andean expanses of the morning’s flight seemed more than half a day away.

I glanced at my watch. It was only 4:30, but the sun was already beginning to disappear behind the mountains. Night came early and quickly here. We waved to the weavers and left in a dusty trail for the town of Urubamba and a gracious, gardened enclave called Sol & Luna, where I passed a blissful night in cosseted casita splendor.

Tomorrow: A pilgrim in Peru: Part Two, visiting Moray, Pisaq and Ollantaytambo

This trip was hosted by both LAN and Geographic Expeditions, but the opinions, joy, and amazement concerning the people and food in Peru are purely my own.

Women adventurers heed the Call of the Wild

by Kraig Becker on

With the adventure travel market continuing to grow at an astonishing rate, women only adventures have become an increasingly popular option as well.These trips generally offer all the same wild and challenging options that any other adventure vacation would, with perhaps a few creature comforts added in for good measure.

One of the top travel companies that specializes in women’s only travel is Call of the Wild, based out of Mountain View, California. The company first began organizing adventure vacations back in 1978 when founder Carole Laitmer was unceremoniously fired from her secretarial job. In order to make ends meet, she soon began organizing guided trips for women into the High Sierra Mountains of California, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Now in its 32nd year of business, Call of the Wild continues to organize some of the best adventurous getaways both domestically and abroad. For instance, some of their upcoming trips include hiking around Lake Tahoe to enjoy the Indian Summer, trekking in the the shadow of Mt. Everest in Nepal, and a weekend of snowshoeing in Sequoia National Park. Other trips will take clients to Peru, New Zealand, Guatemala, and beyond.

But just because you’re traveling to remote corners of the globe doesn’t mean you can’t pamper yourself at the same time. One of the hallmarks of any Call of the Wild trip is the gourmet cuisine and the company puts a great deal of thought, and effort, into planning a wide variety of healthy and delicious meals on all of their trips. Even their backpacking excursions offer fantastic meals on the trail thanks to fresh ingredients that are dehydrated prior to departure, and combined to make surprisingly tasty backwoods offerings. The ladies on these trips all agree, an amazing meal after a long and challenging day of trekking, can make everything feel better.

Many of Call of the Wild’s clients return for multiple trips, and often report making good, life-long friends on their journeys. These vacations allow them to get closer to nature and escape the daily grind, while putting some much needed adventure into their lives. For a complete list of Call of the Wild adventures and to choose one that best fits your style of travel, click here.

[Photo credit: Call of the Wild]

Nuts about Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve

by Laurel Miller on

Nuts–if you think about these things, which evidently I do–evoke blustery fall afternoons, or wintery evenings before a roaring fire. You bust out the nutcracker, and get to work. At least, that’s what my family did when I was a kid, even though I grew up in Southern California where, let’s face it, the weather is seldom blustery. Anyways, we always had a lot of Brazil nuts in the communal bowl, and consequently, they’re one of my favorites. They’re big and easy to crack, with rich, oily meat.

Nuts have been associated with the winter solstice since Medieval times (they provided much-needed fat and nutrients). What most of us don’t associate nuts with are steaming jungles, machetes, or endangered wildlife. I certainly didn’t, until I visited the Brazil nut camp in Tambopata National Reserve (TNR), in Peru’s Amazon Basin.

The Tambopata is a tributary of the Amazon, and the 275,000-hectare Reserve is home to some of the world’s most diverse and pristine rainforest. This conservation area, and the adjacent Bahuaja-Sonene National Park were designated by the Peruvian government to protect the watersheds of the Tambopata and Candamo Rivers. Rainforest Expeditions operates three Puerto Maldonado region eco-lodges within the confines of the Reserve: the Posada Amazonas and Refugio Amazonas eco-lodges, and the Tambopata Research Center. It’s at Refugio that one can visit the Brazil nut camp, and harvest the nuts (April through July).

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Even if nuts aren’t your thing, there are plenty of other reasons to visit. The area is noted for its wildlife, especially birds. If there’s an active nest, there are tours to check out endangered harpy eagles (they live in Brazil nut trees), or hike to clay licks teeming with macaws or parakeets. That may not sound thrilling, but it’s an amazing sight to see (and hear) that many explosively colorful birds in one spot.

Rainforest Expeditions integrates its jungle properties with educational/voluntourism experiences for adults and families. Besides the clay licks, activities include forest walks, wildlife viewing, philanthropic visits to local communities, seminars on the ecology and biology of the region, kayaking, catch-and-release piranha fishing, or cooking with the indigenous staff (an activity reserved for rainy weather, and something I really enjoyed, from a cultural standpoint).

Refugio is located in a 200-hectare private reserve (which is adjacent to the greater Reserve, you see). To get there, one must fly into the tiny jungle port of Puerto Maldonado from Lima. From there, it’s an hour drive to the boat launch in the indigenous community of Infierno, which works in partnership with the Posada Amazonas Lodge. The Refugio property is a two-and-a half-hour trip upriver, through a park ranger checkpoint.

The gorgeous, four-year-old, open-air lodge is built from traditional native materials such as wood, palm fronds, wild cane, and clay. It has a communal dining room with a bar (yes!), and clean, breezy rooms with gauzy, mosquito-netted beds. There are also luxe touches, like the pretty little guest soaps made of–wait for it–Brazil nuts. The food–a daily buffet of international and Peruvian dishes, and loads of fresh fruit, far surpasses what you might expect. Some of the produce comes from organic farmer Don Manuel, across the river. He grows tropical and citrus fruits, yucca, and chiles; on his farm tours, (if you love food, definitely go for it), you can sample Amazonian fruits such as cupuaçu and pacay.

Getting back to nuts, the brazil nut camp is a concession owned by the Peruvian government, although a local indigenous family has rights to the nut harvest. There are thousands of Brazil nut concessions in this region. They’re an important cash crop that provides the local families with income, which also helps to protect the Reserve from slash-and burn-agriculture.
The local Ese’eja, as well as other indigenous peoples of mestizo and Andean descent, live within four communities in the buffer zone of the Reserve. Many are employed by Rainforest Expeditions (the company tries to hire as many local people as possible), or harvest Brazil nuts during the wet season.

The nuts are technically an edible seed, clusters of which are found within thick seed pods. The trees don’t make good timber, although they are tapped for rubber in the dry season. They’re considered one of the most sustainable crops because their harvest and tapping have little ecological impact, especially in areas where hunting is prohibited or restricted during harvest season.

Brazil nut trees are an interdependent species, because they rely upon several animals to perpetuate their life cycle. Agoutis and other rodent species eat the nuts, spreading seeds in their droppings. A species of rainforest-dwelling bee is necessary to pollinate the trees, which is why they aren’t cultivated.

It turned out I’d just missed the harvest, but I walked the short trail to the deserted camp to check it out–basically, some leftover seed pods in a small clearing. Back at the lodge, however, Brazil seed pod cracking is like an Olympic sport, in part because it brings out the competitive spirit. They’re exceedingly difficult to open, necessitating a scimitar-like machete and serious hand-eye coordination- something I am seriously lacking. I finally managed to whack one apart without losing any digits, and made use of the lodge’s industrial-strength, communal nutcracker. You see a lot of people walking around, picking Brazil nuts or bits of shell out of their teeth.

The handsome, coconut-like pods turn up all over the lodge in the form of napkin holders, and votive-receptacles on recycled wood chandeliers. At the Puerto Maldonado airport, you can find Brazil nut candy, and oil, which is intoxicating, with a smooth, clean, complex flavor. Unfortunately, it has such a short shelf life that it isn’t suitable for the export market, but it’s worth bringing a bottle home with you (I honestly have no idea if Customs permits this, but that’s never stopped me before). Use it to dress salads, or drizzle on roasted potatoes or root vegetables.

Refugio and its sister properties may take some getting to, but if you’re looking for responsible, soft rainforest adventure, it’s well worth the trek.
All the more reason to load up that bowl with Brazil nuts.