For seven days, we will be based at Amazonia Expeditions' award-winning Tahuayo Lodge, offering the only licensed access to the Reserva Comunal Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo. Together with Brazil's adjacent Vale do Javari Reserve, RCTT protects the largest contiguous fraction of the Amazon. Lodge cabins serve as home throughout the week we spend exploring the Amazon's wonders and natural beauties. As a major Pleistocene refugium, the Tahuayo region remained forested through the most recent Ice Age, when other rainforest regions transformed for periods into dry savanna. Designated a Peruvian reserve in 1991, Tamshiyacu-Tuhuayo protects the red uakari, the rarest and least known of all South American primates. More than 100 mammal species live here alongside nearly 1,000 bird species. In recent years, scores of previously undescribed organisms, including new fish, poison frogs, leaf frogs, and butterflies, have been discovered at the reserve.

Sunday, 3/12/06
Dr. Pereira e-mailed to say that they had made it safely to the Lima, Peru airport and were excited to soon be on their way to Iquitos. From the Iquitos airport they would head out on the river to the lodge. The 90-mile river trip (50 miles up the Amazon and another 40 up the Tahuayo) would take four hours. Remember that there is no contact by cell phone and no electricity, but an abundance of nature to enjoy!