A Month In Northern Peru, Part 1: Introduction

Ever since wrapping up our extensive traveling last spring, Laura and I have been itching to get back on the road in Latin America. After returning to Ontario, finding a rental house and obtaining employment, our lives have been a little more grounded. I still have been on some international trips such as the tours I led to Sulawesi and Halmahera in September and Galápagos in October, but Laura hasn't had the same opportunities and has spent most of the past ten months living and working in Hamilton. 

We planned to take the month of February off for a vacation somewhere sunny with lots of birds, snakes and bugs. February is one of the most depressing months, in my opinion, as the festivities of Christmas are long gone and the optimism of the new year has waned. Southern Ontario is usually entrenched in the coldest stretch of winter and spring seems quite a ways off. This winter in particular has been especially gloomy with very little sun, so we were more than ready for our trip when the calendar flipped to February. 

We decided on northern Peru as we had unfinished business in this part of the country. In 2022 we visited Peru for almost three months, but we decided against exploring the north so that we could take our time and more thoroughly investigate other parts of the country. We figured we would return at some point to check out the north, and here we were, a year and a half later. 

Rufous-crested Coquette (from the 2022 trip)

We decided to split our ~26 days into two sections. For the first 16 days, we would rent a car and complete a big loop in the northwest of the country, starting in Chiclayo and continuing east over the Andes to the humid east side of the mountains, before returning to Chiclayo via Jaén. This is the "classic" birding route, and we would have chances at a high number of interesting range-restricted bird species including the Peruvian Plantcutter, Long-whiskered Owlet, Marvelous Spatuletail and the Marañón endemics. Unfortunately we only had so much time, and so we had to leave out some sites for a future trip. For example, we did not visit the Tarapoto area, nor did we make the trek to Plataforma to look for the Cerro Azul Antbird, Scarlet-banded Barbet and other specialities of this area. We also left out Sinsicap to the south (we had seen Russet-bellied Spinetail on our previous Peru trip), as well as the the long out-and-back drive to El Molino for the Purple-backed Sunbeam. We also cut out some sites to the north as all of the birds there can be seen in southern Ecuador - an idea for a future trip. 

Our birding route in NW Peru

For the last ~10 days of the trip, we would fly to Iquitos and visit some sites in the Amazonian lowlands. Unfortunately, it is not really possible to do this part of the trip independently or inexpensively, since everything is done by traveling along the Amazon River or its tributaries, and the best birding sites are the lodges. 

Normally, we are not the type to stay at ecolodges (when I'm not leading a tour, that is!) since it is difficult to justify the cost, especially if we are traveling for months at a time and trying to stretch every dollar. However, since this trip would be relatively short in duration and we would be returning to Canada to work afterwards, we decided to splurge on some lodge stays. We picked three lodges that are popular with birders: Explorama on the north bank of the Amazon for two nights, ExplorNapo on the Napo River for two nights, and Muyuna Lodge on the south bank of the Amazon for three nights. We also included a day to explore the white-sand forests of Allpahuayo-Mishana, located an hour outside of Iquitos and accessible by road, and home to the Critically Endangered Iquitos Gnatcatcher and other rare species. 

A tributary of the Amazon River near Muyuna Lodge

Very few birders seem to visit northern Peru in February, the reason simply being that this is the rainy season. We were prepared to lose a few days to rain, but in the end the rain hardly affected us and I don't think the weather cost us any birds. One benefit was that all of the birds in the north were nesting and so birdsong was abundant and birds were quite responsive. Other than a few photographers and one independent birder at the Owlet Lodge, we did not come across a single other birder! In fact I think these were the only non-Latinos that we saw as well, as northern Peru sees far less tourism than the Lima or Cusco areas. 

Fasciated Wren

We rented a small SUV from a local company in Chiclayo called 3B Rent a Car Chiclayo, and were pleasantly surprised to get upgraded to a Toyota Rav4. There aren't any of the big international car rental agencies in Chiclayo (or elsewhere in northern Peru), and the cost of the vehicle from 3B was a bit pricier than we would have liked, but we had no issues with the whole process. Having the high-clearance vehicle was very helpful at times, though every site we visited could, in theory, be navigated by small-car. 

Our rental 

Few birders seem to do the route in the north via rental car, but this worked out very well for us. We prefer to self-drive, as opposed to hiring a guide or a driver. Not only does it save costs, but it means we can go exactly where we want and when we want. Our Spanish is good enough that we don't need translation assistance from a driver/guide either. This worked out fine, and everywhere we went the people were very friendly, once they got over the shock of seeing a tourist, that is! 

Over the next little while I will be posting blog posts about our trip - stay tuned.