Firstly, my apologies for a couple of months with no posts! Since returning from Peru at the end of November domestic life seems to have taken over a bit! We have some more life changes coming up soon which are also keeping us busy.
So, to Peru. Not having time to compose a full trip report I’ll provide the following link to my trip report on eBird. This will give all the details of species seen and where plus some photos.
https://ebird.org/tripreport/443687
To add a little more meat on the bones these are my views and thoughts on the trip as a whole, the country, travel etc
The tour was one I booked with Birdquest. It was the first time I have used them and I got the last available place on the tour. There were just 7 tour participants which made things reasonably easy in the field where there was often restricted viewing. It was a mixed bag of people but luckily I got on with everyone. Human nature meant I bonded more closely with some however and there were participants who didn’t really ‘participate’ at all, wanting the guides and other people to find all the birds for them. A broad church some might say!
I was warned beforehand that Birdquest tours are extremely full-on with sleep and rest not really on the agenda! And so it proved to be. The guides were extremely focussed on getting the birds (often showing great patience with clueless participants!) but sometimes to the detriment of people’s welfare. I got a severe stomach bug for the last few days of the trip and my health was hardly even considered by those in charge. My fellow birders showed more empathy!
We had 2 guides both of whom were great birders and a driver of our small minibus who was safe and very skilled. Rather necessary on some of those mountain roads! In the van we rotated seats every day so as to share the best and worst seats.
Accommodation was generally pretty good or adequate without ever being amazing. One place was particularly bad (and compared to a prison!) with my room smelling of piss and with black mould on the walls but it was a case of needs must as we were so far off the tourist trail there was literally nowhere else to stay.
Even though I only saw part of a large country the scenery in the High Andes and up and down the Manu Road to the edge of Amazonia was stunning. The high Andean passes above the treeline were particularly memorable - as was birding/walking at 14500 feet. The air is pretty damned thin up there!
Travel to and from Peru was relatively easy. I used KLM from Norwich - Amsterdam - Lima and then an internal flight with Peruvian Latam Airlines to Cusco. On both outward and return journeys I overnighted in Lima. There were however a couple hair-raising landings - at Amsterdam on the way out the tyres burst on landing and we had to make an emergency stop at the edge of Schippol airport! Then landing in Norwich at the death strong winds had me filling my trousers during a very iffy touch down. Not too difficult with my ongoing stomach problems!
