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Tambopata National Reserve
Tambopata, Peru. |
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Three extraordinary, contiguous Amazon reserves lie only a 25-minute flight from Cusco - the great Tambopata Madidi Wilderness on the Peru-Bolivia border. Taken together, these parks are two-thirds the size of Costa Rica and protect the most species-rich natural habitats in the world (January 1994 and March 2000 cover stories, National Geographic Magazine). No other company can offer you as much wildlife viewing in the greater Tambopata-Madidi region.
The intimate Heath River provides the fastest and
easiest route to the uninhabited, unhunted core of these parks,
a vast 2.5-million-acre (one-million-hectare) wilderness full of
the five top predators of the Amazon--Jaguar, Giant Otter, Black
Caiman, Harpy Eagle, and Anaconda. The unhunted region of Manu (the
other great Peruvian nature reserve) is only 750,000 acres (300,000
hectares) and demands more money and time to visit.
The Heath River features the world's most accessible
large macaw lick, which has registered up to 260 large macaws in
one day, making it one of the five largest recorded macaw licks
in the world. Though all five of these licks are spectacular, the
Heath Lick is by far the most economical to visit, making it ideal
for a short Amazon itinerary to combine with the Inca sites of Cusco
and Machu Picchu. The Heath lick is the only one of the five that
can be reached the same day that you fly by jet from Cusco, thus
saving one or two nights over other licks.
Travelers enjoy warm pancakes and coffee while
viewing the photogenic Heath Macaw Lick from a comfortable floating
blind anchored only 100 feet (30 metres) away, a fraction of the
distance from which one views the more remote clay licks in Tambopata.
Finally, the rainforest on both sides of the Heath River is fully
representative of the world's most biologically diverse habitat--the
Amazon forest at the foot of the eastern slope of the Andes.
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