Puerto Maldonado, Peru

21 July 2023

I didn’t know that visiting the Amazon was a childhood dream until I found myself walking down a forest trail.

Day 1

Corto Maltés Amazonia
Nature Walk

We departed Cusco at 6:05 am from Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport. We arrived in Puerto Maldonado at 10:40 am. There was a driver at the airport waiting for us with a sign bearing our names. He took us to the hotel office, where we checked in and had boat transport arranged. The driver took us to a small private dock on the river. After a short wait, we got in the boat and set off down the Madre de Dios River.

Corto Maltes is an ecoresort built on the banks of the Madre de Dios River in the Peruvian Amazon. It can only be accessed by boat from Puerto Maldonado. The boat ride to get there takes around 20 min each way, but doesn’t feel terribly far. There are many such resorts along the river’s edge, I saw on the ride over.

Corto Maltés Amazonia

When you get off the boat, you’ll be looking at the main lodge. I loved the building’s aesthetic. It feels like something out of a movie set. The building is made from wood, and there are mosquito screens everywhere.

Inside is the dining room, a bar area, and a small gift shop. Walk through the building to the other side, and you’ll see where we stayed. There are a dozen or two bungalows spaced a good distance apart from one another behind the main lodge.

The grounds are covered in close-cropped grass. I assume it is mowed, but I am not certain. There are aguti wandering the property, eating grass. They look similar to capybaras, but are the size of a chihuahua. There are three resident macaws with clipped wings that wander around. The blue-and-yellow macaw is mean and tried very hard to bite Indi’s toes. It’s possible he is a bully because the red macaws don’t like him much.

Inside our bungalow were a couple of beds with mosquito netting and a bathroom. It wasn’t fancy, but it had the same Amazon-shelter charm as the lodge. We didn’t have any bug problems when we were there, but there was a large frog inside.

Right behind the main lodge is the pool. I loved this feature so much. I wouldn’t have expected to use the pool, but there was an afternoon when I spent a lot of time in/by the pool staring up at the sky.

Set back a little further into the forest is a football/soccer field mostly used by the resort employees. Beyond that is a large, foreboding hut sitting by itself. This hut is used for Ayahuasca ceremonies. Maybe it’s used for other things as well, but I’ve never seen it used that way.

Upon arriving, we met our guide, Yon. There are freelance guides who work with the resorts to lead guests through the activities included in the resort package. He was a short man, and he was nice enough. He dressed simply in a long-sleeve t-shirt, baggy cargo shorts, and a machete strapped to his waist. He had a few gold teeth.

We were given time to wander the grounds and get settled. After a while, we met up at the grand lodge with Yon and the other members of our group. The other people in our group were a family from Belgium that mostly chatted among themselves in their language, but they were nice in the few interactions we had. Indi and I didn’t mind; there was so much to take in that we didn’t feel like we needed to chat, but it would have been nice, I suppose.

Nature Walk

From the lodge, we set out on a nature walk as a group. We walked past the soccer field and the ayahuasca hut into the forest.

Yan cut some small branches from a tree and said it was bug repellent. The mosquitoes aren’t bothered by your average bug spray, apparently. So, we rhythmically swatted ourselves with branches on our exposed skin as we walked.

We ate dinner in the lodge and the sun set over the Madre de Dios river. The sunsets over the river are among the most beautiful I have ever seen.

When it was totally dark, we walked to the riverbank and boarded a boat where a captain waited for us. He drove us along the river looking for caimans. We spotted one or two baby caimans. We wouldn’t see the big ones that day.

Day 2

Sandoval Lake

The next day, we left early in the morning to sail down the river for the main attraction of our stay, Lake Sandoval. Lago Sandoval is a large oxbow lake covering 310 acres, not far from Corto Maltes. It was cut off from the river hundreds of years ago. We got on the boat shortly before sunrise. The boat ride took about 20 min.

The Madre de Dios River is incredibly broad, and I could tell the current was stronger than it looked. I’m a strong swimmer, and I was trying to judge how good my odds were of swimming across the river, hypothetically. I asked Yan what my odds were, and he told me he wouldn’t bet on me making it.

I asked him what was most likely to get me, and I was surprised by his answer. It wasn’t caimans or piranas. He told me the animal that kills the most people in the water by far is the electric eel. I was very impressed by this information, but have since learned it’s not true. Yan may have had some anecdotal experience to lead him to believe that, but caimans have been recorded as having fatal attacks in the region. The most dangerous animal by far is the mosquito that transmits malaria, dengue, and yellow fever. There are also deadly snakes and spiders in the area.

Sandoval Lake

We disembarked on the riverside and started a 3km walk along a wooden boardwalk to the lake. We saw a lot of cool things along the way. I’m sure I don’t remember everything we saw. I do remember we saw a ton of blue-and-yellow macaws waking up and making a lot of noise. The most interesting animal we saw was hard to identify. We saw it off the side of the trail, walking on a downed tree trunk. It seemed to be eating termites or ants off of it. It had a small head, brown body, and red hindquarters and tail. Its tail was meaty and long. I learned that it is a kind of anteater called the southern tamandua.

At the end of the boardwalk, we arrived at a dock with long canoes tied up in the shallow water. We waited for everyone to arrive, then piled into the canoe with Yan. Indi and I sat in the back, right in front of Yan. The dock was unusual in that it was set in shallow water surrounded by trees. We had to paddle through a channel to reach the actual lake.

I cannot believe how much wildlife this lake sustains. This was a truly magical experience. There were all kinds of birds flying overhead from branch to branch and butterflies fluttering over the water. Almost immediately, we spotted a pack of giant river otters. They were mildly curious, and a couple poked their heads out of the water to stare at us.

We saw groups of squirrel monkeys and capuchins traveling together, foraging for food in the trees near the water. Yan let us borrow his binoculars for much of the trip. He pointed out bats nesting on a tree trunk and many birds in the trees. One strange bird we saw a lot was the hoatzin. It can’t fly well and instead waddles along tree branches, eating leaves. It’s so weird, look it up.

After a while, we stopped and ate our prepared breakfasts in the canoe. Yan told us to pinch off some of our sandwich and throw it in the water. It was quickly and violently attacked by piranhas.

Paddling on the lake was amazing and was over too soon. I wish so badly I had a wildlife camera set up. We rowed back to the dock and walked back down the wooden boardwalk towards the river.

The Amazon is incredible. On the way back, we saw howler monkeys moving slowly in the canopy. Later, we saw the acrobatic squirrel monkeys and capuchins jumping from tree to tree right above us.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out at the resort. A lot of that time we spent in the pool. Before we knew it, the day was almost over.

This particular sunset is in my list of top 5 sunsets of my life.

The rest of the night was a blur. We spent some time playing pool and chess in the lodge. We chatted with the son of the resort’s owner, George.

In the morning, we could have gone to a clay deposit to watch birds lick it. We were pretty beat and didn’t wake up for the 5:30 am activity. All too soon, we were in the boat heading back to Puerto Maldonado and then to the airport.