Amazon Basin
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Overview
The best-protected tract of the world’s most biodiverse forest, the strange, sweltering, seductive country-within-a-country that is Peru’s Amazon Basin is changing. Its vastness and impenetrability have long protected its indigenous communities and diverse wildlife from external eyes. Tribes exist here that have never had contact with outside civilization, and more flora and fauna flourish in one rainforest hectare than in any European country.
01 / Attractions
Must-see attractions
Iquitos
At the southeast end of town is the floating shantytown of Belén, consisting of scores of huts, built on rafts, which rise and fall with the river. During…
Iquitos
Moored below Plaza Castilla is the diverting Historical Ships Museum, on a 1906 Amazon riverboat, the gorgeously restored three-deck Ayapua. The…
Reserva Nacional Pacaya-Samiria
Amazon Basin
At 20,800 sq km, this is the most immense of Peru’s parks and reserves. Pacaya-Samiria provides local people with food and a home, and protects…
Amazon Basin
This vast national park in the Amazon Basin covers almost 20,000 sq km and is one of the best places in South America to see a stunning variety of…
Amazon Basin
About two hours beyond Paucartambo is the extraordinary jungle view at Tres Cruces, a lookout off the Paucartambo–Shintuya road. The sight of the…
Amazon Basin
Ostensibly, the Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm is a conservation and breeding center for Amazonian butterflies. Butterflies aplenty there certainly are,…
Río Madre de Dios Ferry Dock
Puerto Maldonado
This dock close to the Plaza de Armas is a cheap way of seeing a little of the action on a major Peruvian jungle river (the Río Madre de Dios), which is…
Amazon Basin
The wildlife-rich Río Tambopata is a major tributary of the Río Madre de Dios, joining it at Puerto Maldonado. Boats go up the river, past several good…
02 / Plan with a local
03 / Articles
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