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)
