from: Dilwyn Jenkins: The
rough guide to Peru; Rough Guides, New York, London,
Delhi; 6th edition September 2006; www.roughguides.com
Jungle climate and national
reserves
Over 50% of Peru are rain
forest - destruction of the rain forest
The Amazon, the rainforest, the selva, the jungle, the green
hell (
el inferno verde)
- all attempt to name this huge, vibrant area of Peru. Few
people think of Peru in terms of jungle, yet well over half
the country is covered by dense tropical rainforest, with
its eastern regions offering unrivaled access to the world's
largest and most famous jungle, the AMAZON.
Whether you look at it up close, from the ground or a boat,
or fly over it in a plane, the Peruvian
jungle seems endless. In
fact, it is disappearing at an alarming rate. Campaigns
raising awareness of its importance as a unique eco-system
and as a vital component of the global environment (not to
mention the wealth of wildlife and sheer beauty of the
vegetation) have brought the issue into the international
spotlight.
Tropical climate and
animals in the rain forest
Of the Amazon's original area, almost four million square
kilometers (around 75-80 percent) remain intact, fifteen
percent of which lie in Peru, where they receive over 2000mm
of rainfall a year and experience average temperatures of
25-35°C (77z-95°F). It's the most biodiverse region on
Earth, and much that lies beyond the main waterways remains
relatively untouched and often unexplored.
Jaguars, anteaters and tapirs roam the forests, huge
anaconda snakes live in the swamps, toothy caimans (of the
South American
Alligatoridae
family) sunbathe along riverbanks, and trees like the
enormous shihuahuaco, strong enough to break an axe head,
rise like giants from the forest floor. Furthermore, there
are over fifty indigenous tribes scattered throughout the
Peruvian section alone, many surviving primarily by hunting,
fishing and gathering, as they have done for thousands of
years.
The different National
Reserves of the Peruvian selva
The Peruvian rainforest cover is not uniform tropical
woodland; mainly due to the influence of the Andes at the
jungle's western edge, Peru's selva possesses a wide a range
of ecological niches, each with distinct protected areas and
offering different possibilities to the visitor. In the
north, the main access point is the city of
Iquitos in the heart of
Peru's largest chunk of lowland jungle where the trees are
tall, the Amazon River already enormous and the flat land
along the river banks regularly flooded.
Further up the Río Amazonas, closer to the Andes but still
lowland forest you find the immense
Pacaya Samiria Reserva Nacional
(National Reserve), a little visited wildlife haven; and
south of here, in the central selva, the city of
Pucallpa which is also
in lowland forest, but unlike Iquitos, is accessible by bus
from Lima and the coast. At the southeastern limit of Peru's
territory, close to and accessible from Cusco and the
road-connected jungle city of
Puerto Maldonado, you'll find the greatest
biodiversity in three globally important protected areas:
-- the
Parque Nacional de
Manu, which runs from cloudforest on the slopes of
the Andes down to relative lowland forest
-- the
Reserva Nacional de
Tambopata, located at the foot of the Andes (p.497)
but in a predominantly lowland eco-niche
-- and neighbouring this the relatively newly formed
protected area of the
Parque
Nacional Bahuaja-Sonene, still rarely visited but
home to an exceptional variety of wildlife.
The different types of
Peruvian jungle
At about six times the size of England, or approximately the
size of California, it's not surprising that the Peruvian
Amazon possesses a variety of ecotypes.
Jungle type: Amazon basin
Since it's easier to access than many other South American
jungle regions, increasing numbers of travellers are
choosing to spend time here, and the tangled, sweltering and
relatively accessible
Amazon
Basin never fails to capture the imagination of
anyone who ventures beneath its dense canopy.
In (p.498) the lowland areas, away from the seasonally
flooded riverbanks, the landscape is dominated by red, loamy
soil, which can reach depths of 50m. Reaching upwards from
this, the primary forest - mostly comprising a huge array of
tropical palms, with scatterings of larger, emergent tree
species - regularly achieves evergreen canopy heights of
50m. At ground level the vegetation is relatively open
(mostly saplings, herbs and woody shrubs), since the trees
tend to branch high up, restricting the amount of light
available.
Jungle type: high land
jungle with oil
At higher altitudes, the large belt of cloud forest (ceja de
selva) that sweeps along the eastern edges of the Andes has
been the focus of significant oil-prospecting during the
last decade and has revealed some of the world's largest
remaining fossil-fuel reserves.
Rising Andes - Río Amazonas
changing the direction - the different rivers forming the
Amazonas
the biggest river in the world, the Río Amazonas originally
flowed east to west, but when the Andes began to rise along
the Pacific edge of the continent around 100 million years
ago, the waters became an inland sea. Another 40 million
years of geological and climatic action later saw this "sea"
break through into the Atlantic, which reversed the flow of
water and gave birth to the mighty 6500-kilometer river.
Starting in Peru as an insignificant glacial trickle on the
Nevada Misma, northeast of the Colca Canyon, the waters
swell as they move down through the Andes, passing Cusco
before gaining the name
Río
Tambo and cascading down through the cloud forest,
passing through the Toto, Santiago, Apurimac, Ene and Tambo
valleys until they reach the Ashaninka tribal territories in
the Gran Pajonal.
At this point, the Río Tambo meets the
Río Urubamba, the major
sacred river of the Incas that rushes past Machu Picchu down
through rocky canyons. When these two already massive
headwater meet, in the rainforest more or less directly east
of Lima in the heart of Peru, they form the much larger
Río Ucayali, which is
already less than 200m above the level of the Atlantic
Ocean, still many thousands of miles away.
After their merge point, at the insignificant jungle town of
Atalaya, the river
and its tributaries - still the basis of jungle transport -
are characterized by slow, wandering courses. Erosion and
deposits continue to shift these courses, and oxbow lakes
are constantly appearing and disappearing, adding enormous
quantities of time and fuel to any river journey in the
lowlands. In fact, as it languidly meanders past
Iquitos, an isolated,
land-locked, but passionate and vibrant city, on its way
towards Brazil and eventually the Atlantic, it's still at
least a two-week journey by boat to the mouth of a river
which, at any one moment, carries around twenty percent of
the world's fresh water. (p.499)