Timpía and the Pongo de Maenique

This is what the upper Amazonian basin rivers are mostly like. Flat, calm, broad like the plains they traverse, they can be handled with tiny, unstable boats like this quetequete:


But to get there from Quillabamba, it is necessary to cross the dangerous (and beautiful, and wild) Pongo de Maenique:

People there do it fairly regularly, as there really is no choice and even in the rainy season it generally involves no more than a few crosswise waves (no pictures of that, sorry. I was protecting my camera):

These are the large boats that are used for long-distance travel on the Río Urubamba, which eventually drains into the Amazon River:


This is a Swiss biologist I camped with, on the farm of this wonderful family in Timpía:


We saw two species of monkeys, parrots of the genus Ara, and lots of other things that I just couldn't take pictures of because of low light, thick bamboo forests, etc.:


Another waterfall in the Pongo de maenique:


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