7 days/6 nights with Amazonia Expeditions

About the Trip

Experience the green paradise of the Amazon with Amazonia Expeditions. In operation since 1981, Amazonia’s lodge has access to Peru’s Reserva Comunal Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo. This reserve has been shown to have the Amazon’s greatest diversity of mammals, the highest number of primate species of any protected park or reserve in the world, and 529 species of birds. The lodge includes the longest canopy zipline in the Amazon, as well as an outstanding opportunity to swim with pink dolphins.

Includes: accommodation, customized itinerary with private guide, local transfers, and meals

Starting bid $500

4 days/ 3nights with Chachapoyas Tours

About the Trip

Northern Peru offers some of the world’s most extreme geography: with it’s rainforests, deserts, and mountains there are thousands of mini-ecological zomes with plants, animals, and people specific to each. Visit Fortress Kuelap, the largest building structure of the Americas with 4 levels of soaring walls and containing 400 ancient stone buildings. See the latest discovery of 30 sarcophagi. These resemble 6 foot high Easter Island Statues, except high on an inaccessible Cliff face. You’ll stay in the community lodge and in a colonial mansion while you enjoy the spectacle of nature in Peru.

Includes: accommodation, some meals, and local transportation

Starting bid: $200

About Chachapoyas Tours

We are the only provider with a mission to provide a sustainable tourist income to empower our village tourist committees to defend their ecological and archaeological sites.  For 19 years 100% of our donations and tourist income stayed in our zone to benefit its people and upgrade our zone.  Contrast this with the Cuzco zone where 85% of its income goes out through Lima.  We have the only lodges in the archaeological zone located in the cloud forest on tribal land.   These offer the best opportunity to provide contact with the communities and ecology and assures a well planned and an unforgettable experience.

Green Practices

• We have donated lodges to villages in our zone to create a sustainable tourism income from all the lodge’s income, to provide an incentive to preserve their archaeological and ecological resources.
• We donated a hydroelectric system providing 5 villages with electricity (4000 people), and a solar electric system for the Kuelap Archaeological Complex.
• Provided a ceramics factory for income to a village tourist committee to preserve their resources.
• Have formed village tourism committees for planning and zoning to protect their fragile ecological and archaeological resources in this newly accessible zone, endangered by run away development.
• Have hired the best-recommended biologist, tourist administrator, and Archaeologist from Peru’s best universities to create a professional staff for our sustainable tourism model that is the best model that we know, of despite other’s claims. All of our staff are Peruvians being trained to take control of this project, including the villagers that manage the lodges that we have donated.
• Our donated lodges were made from local materials as adobe & rammed earth, thatch roofs, etc., but with modern kitchens, bathrooms with hot showers, hot tubs, (a 3 star hostel level to attract group tourism).
• We have a program with our biologist to preserve the world’s most exotic species of hummingbirds that are estimated to only be 1000 in the world, and exist only in our zone and mostly near our donated lodge.

Learn more aboutChachapoyas Tours

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5days/4 nights with InkaNatura Travel

About the Trip

Explore all of the highlights and the best Peru has to offer when you stay at the Heath River Wildlife Center and Sandoval Lake Lodge located on the one of the most beautiful Amazonian lakes. You’ll explore the forest by flashlight in search of nocturnal wildlife, learn about flora used in the daily life of the indigenous culture, travel by motorized canoe, and hike to the largest undisturbed Savannah in the Amazon. Marvel at the cacophony of sound and color as red and green macaws perform their morning clay eating ritual.

Includes: accommodation, most meals, airport transfers and ground
transportation, several tours.

Blackout Dates: Book in advance to check spaces

Starting bid: $460

About InkaNatura Travel

InkaNatura Travel is the only leading tour operator in Peru owned by a nonprofit conservation group, Peru Verde, The mission of InkaNatura is to to provide the best travel services in Peru for those particularly interested in nature, culture, and archaeology. Our work is part of Peru Verde’s overall strategy to protect the country’s unique cultural and biological diversity. InkaNatura contributes heavily to the maintenance of national parks, reserves, and archaeological sites while at the same time treating local people with respect and dignity.

Learn more about InkaNatura Travel.

6 days/5 nights with Rainforest Expeditions SAC

About the Trip

Enjoy the splendor of Tambopata, Peru with one of Peru’s best-known ecotourism companies,  Rainforest Expeditions. Experience first-hand the world’s final biological frontier, ascend the rainforest canopy, and take a boat ride on an oxbow lake while you enjoy your two-night stay at Posada Amazonas which is jointly owned with the local community.  Then journey to Tambopata Research Center and spend three nights in one of the Amazon’s most pristine rainforests.  Visit the macaw clay lick and trek through the rainforest.

Includes: 6 days/5 nights lodging, boat ride, guided walks

Awards:

• UNDP Equator Initiative,  2002
• Ecotouirsm Excellent Award, Conservation International, 2000
• Ecotourism Award for Tour Operators, Conde Nast Traveler, 2000

Starting bid: $400

About the Organization

Rainforest Expeditions is a Peruvian ecotourism company founded in 1992 with the purpose of providing authentic educational experiences that support the conservation of the areas where we operate. Our two lodges, Posada Amazonas and Tambopata Research Center located in the rainforest of the Tambopata region of Peru reflect our philosophy and commitment to sustainable ecotourism. At Tambopata Research Center, we have been lodging tourists and researchers since 1989, watching the symbiosis between conscientious quality ecotourism and scientific research come to life. Posada Amazonas, inaugurated in 1998 has been recognized worldwide as a successful model of a private
sector/community partnership in ecotourism.

Posada Amazonas has produced sufficient economic and social impacts in the community of Infierno to effectively become an incentive to manage their forests sustainably. Around 40% of the community™s 130 families benefit directly or indirectly from day to day activities at Posada Amazonas. Aside from the twenty seven full time jobs community members occupy at the lodge (including seven bilingual guides), four small business from within the community now supply the lodge with handicrafts, fish, port services, and ethnobotanical tours. Moreover, community members have reinvested about 25% of their profits in the construction of a secondary school and a computer center. They are now working on a water tank and a conservation / ecotourism concession. In the environmental arena, species such as macaws, otters, harpies and other charismatic megafauna have become greatly important to community leaders. There are now regulations against hunting in certain areas of the community, as well as inappropriate uses of the habitats used by these species. Breaches are discussed openly as serious problems.

Green Practices

At Tambopata Research Center our efforts in conservation have been geared principally towards research. Our flagship research project is the fifteen year old macaw project, oriented towards the understandings of macaw ecology. Tourism impact on the clay lick is
monitored, geophagy is studied, population censuses are carried out, migration is mapped with radiotelemetry and macaw growth curves are recorded from natural and artificial nests.

A second major project has just fledged at TRC; the areas project. It studies the territorial needs and population ecologies of jaguar, white-lipped peccaries, macaws and cotingas. What do they have in common? They all require large territories. By proving to
governments that literally millions of hectares of continuous protected areas are required for the long term conservation of these species, they are not only ensuring habitat for these four species but for the entire community of organisms which require smaller
territories.

Learn more about Rainforest Expeditions SAC