Here is our selection of the top ten Amazon lodges in Peru. The first five are Peru's best deep Amazon lodges suited to a tour of 5 days or more due to the time getting there and back.
If you have less time available to explore the jungle, we recommend some of the excellent lodges from Puerto Maldonado, such as lodges 3, 4 or 5 on this list.
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The Tambopata Research Center
View The Tambopata Research Center video
Puerto Maldonado, Peru
Accessed from Puerto Maldonado, and near one of the largest macaw clay licks in the Amazon Rainforest, the Tambopata Research Center is positioned inside the wildlife-rich Tambopata National Reserve. When you arrive, you will hear the sounds of birds and monkeys in the surrounding rainforest. You will first relax at the comfortable lodge and then begin your rainforest adventure with your skilled local guide.
This region of rainforest is part of one of the world's largest tracts of protected tropical forest. There are also more claylicks than anywhere else in Amazonia. You will visit these with your guide for incredible displays of sound and color as colorful parrots visit the licks.
These are areas of exposed clay where many different animals come to feed off the salt-rich and medicinal substrate. The most famous visitors are the large and colorful macaw parrots. These are often a favorite sight from Peruvian Amazon lodges. Macaws are thought to eat the clay to help obtain salts and detoxify unripe fruits and seeds they have eaten in the forest. At the Tambopata Research Center, you can enjoy spotting several species of colorful parrots visiting the licks, which are known locally as colpas.
For an example of the tour and wildlife you can experience at the lodge, you can watch the introductory video above.
Because of the lodge’s fantastic position, the Tambopata Research Center is also visited by researchers studying the macaws. At the lodge, enjoy talking with researchers to see what they’re doing and listen in on talks to learn a little about these interesting animals. In addition to the macaws, the lodge is one of the deepest in the Amazon and the surrounding rainforest is at carrying capacity for animals and plants.
This means you can walk the forest trails to see a fantastic amount of species, including many different rainforest monkeys. Enjoy guided tours to spot howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, capuchins, titi monkeys, tamarins, and spider monkeys. Also, because of the high amount of herbivores, around 20% of guests are lucky enough to spot jaguar on the riverbank. This is perhaps the best Amazon lodge in Peru for seeing iconic Amazonian animals.
You can message the lodge directly for activity lists and availability for your travel dates using the tour bubble below.
4, 5 days+The Tambopata Research Center
Puerto Maldonado, PeruPositioned in the middle of the wildlife-rich Tambopata National Reserve, near one of the largest macaw clay licks in the Amazon Rainforest, you will ...
- Deep Rainforest Lodge, Access to Tambopata's Macaw Claylicks
From $ 1,296
/ person -
The Tahuayo Lodge
View The Tahuayo Lodge video
Iquitos, Peru
What sets the Tahuayo Lodge apart from others on this list is the standard customized itinerary and private guide to experience the Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Reserve. This is another deep rainforest lodge and is about 150 km from the city of Iquitos in northern Peru.
The Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Reserve is a continuous area of rainforest with the highly regarded flooded forest of the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. However, the Tahuayo Reserve offers a higher amount of accessible non-flooded forest where you can walk and hike the many trails around the reserve. The reserve here is reported to contain a higher diversity of primates than many other Peruvian protected areas and you can see many of the different monkeys.
On tours of six days or more, you will spend time at both Tahuayo lodges, which are the main Tahuayo Lodge and the Tahuayo River Amazon Research Center located a little deeper in Amazonia. Behind the Amazon Research Center (ARC) is a 1000-acre primate research grid where you can spot howler monkeys, different tamarins, squirrel monkeys, curious capuchin monkeys, titi monkeys, and the tiny pygmy marmosets. The pygmy marmosets are easily seen from the main Tahuayo Lodge as well.
The Tahuayo Lodge itself offers the most itinerary options in Amazonia and you can also enjoy the largest canopy zipline in the rainforest. Spend your time in the rainforest walking the trails, canoeing the tropical environment, spotting poison dart frogs at Frog Valley, watching the small colorful manakins at the manakin lek, and boating around the protected area wildlife watching.
Because you have your own private guide and custom itinerary, you can enjoy exploring the reserve in your own time focusing on a general experience, photography, or a more adventurous tour. Choose to camp in the rainforest for one or two nights to get as close as you can to Amazonia or test yourself on a short Amazon survival course.
With the private guide, wildlife-rich rainforest, and friendly staff, the lodge provides a memorable experience of the Amazon and has a number of regular guests. The Tahuayo Lodge is particularly popular with wildlife photographers, nature lovers and guests wanting a little more adventure. You can contact the lodge for a detailed itinerary using the tour bubble below.
6 days+The Tahuayo Lodge
Iquitos, PeruFrom the Tahuayo Lodge, you will explore the Amazon Rainforest’s wildlife-rich Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Reserve with a private guide on a custom itinerary. ...
- Private Guide, Custom Itinerary
From $ 1,295
/ person -
The Refugio Amazonas Lodge
View The Refugio Amazonas Lodge video
Puerto Maldonado, Peru
A great choice for families, or for those looking for a short Amazon Rainforest tour of 3 or 4 days, the Refugio Amazonas Lodge is positioned right at the edge of Tambopata National Reserve. This is again accessed from Puerto Maldonado in southern Peru. Some unique features about the Refugio Amazonas Lodge to the others on this list are the larger spa area to enjoy a relaxing massage and the higher chance of spotting a harpy eagles. This is due to harpy eagle nests often being found near the lodge. The Refugio Amazonas also has the only children’s trail and playground in Peru’s Amazonia, which makes it a great place for a family adventure.
Aside from these features, the Refugio Amazonas Lodge is otherwise very similar to the Posada Amazonas Lodge mentioned further down the page. Both of these lodges are therefore offered interchangeably if one of the options is fully booked. From the lodge, enjoy guided walks on the Refugio’s different trails to find fascinating Amazon Rainforest wildlife, such as several different monkeys, including saddle backed tamarins, squirrel monkeys, brown capuchin monkeys, red howler monkeys, and dusky titi monkeys.
The 30 meter canopy tower then gives a great view of the forest where you have a good chance of spotting different colorful birds like toucans, parrots, macaws or mixed species canopy flocks. You will enjoy lake tours around Lake Condenado to see different lake living wildlife, such as hoatzin, caiman and horned screamers. There is also a small claylicks near the Refugio Amazonas where you can spot parrots and parakeets to watch these beautiful birds. If you want to see the much-loved macaws, you can add a day trip to Chuncho Claylick. While here, you can see hundreds of macaws visiting the clay.
There are also some great cultural activities to enjoy at the Refugio Amazonas. For cultural experiences, you can walk the ethnobotanical trail, visit a working jungle farm, and see a Brazil nut concession. You can also enjoy night walks and a menu of spa treatments.
4, 5 days+The Refugio Amazonas Lodge
Puerto Maldonado, PeruThe Refugio Amazonas Lodge & Spa is an Amazon Rainforest lodge located in the buffer zone of Tambopata National Reserve. Explore the surrounding rainf...
- Comfort Lodge, Short Travel Time
From $ 760
/ person -
The Posada Amazonas Lodge
A fantastic community owned rainforest lodge, Posada Amazonas Lodge provides a lodge surrounded by a high level of animals and plants very close to the base town of Puerto Maldonado. Puerto Maldonado is gifted with the Tambopata Rainforest less than an hour away.
This means it’s the ideal place for a short Amazon Rainforest tour of two or three days. The reason for this is because you won’t waste time getting to and from the lodge, which if you only have a few days available takes away a significant fraction of time that could be better spent watching Amazonian wildlife. After only 45 minutes traveling from Puerto Maldonado by boat, you will be at the Posada Amazonas.
On guided expeditions around the Posada Amazonas Lodge, you can see different monkeys in the forest, parrots, some mammals at the small claylicks, and giant river otters on tours of the nearby Amazonian lake. The Posada Amazonas has a 30 meter canopy tower for views over the rainforest to see some colorful birds, such as parrots, parakeets, macaws, and toucans. From the lodge, you will also visit an ethnobotanical trail and a working farm to see how people live in the rainforest. This makes the Posada Amazonas a fantastic choice for a short adventurous Amazon tour of 3 or 4 days.
Enjoy a balanced nature and cultural experience of Amazonia.
The Posada Amazonas Lodge offers a choice of very comfortable rooms, which all open out onto the rainforest to keep you connected with this incredible environment. Mosquito nets on all beds then keep you protected for a comfortable night. In addition to comfortable suites and beds to relax you, Posada Amazonas also offers a small spa whenever you would like a massage.
3, 4 days+The Posada Amazonas Lodge
Puerto Maldonado, PeruAt the Posada Amazonas Lodge, enjoy a comfortable experience of Peru’s Amazon Rainforest from Puerto Maldonado. Because of the position inside the Es...
- Comfort Lodge, Short Travel Time
From $ 760
/ person -
The Amazon Villa
The Amazon Villa is a great choice for a luxury experience of the Amazon Rainforest in Peru. The lodge becomes your own private rainforest bungalow located near the Refugio Amazonas Lodge at the edge of Tambopata National Reserve. Accessed from Puerto Maldonado, the Amazon Villa comes complete with a hot water bath, Wifi internet, a television to watch nature documentaries, a place for your laptop to catch up on work or view photos, electricity in the rainforest, and a refrigerator and microwave.
While enjoying your secluded visit to the Amazon Villa, you can enjoy your choice of rainforest activities, such as stargazing from the canopy tower, night watching for caiman crocodilians, night walks, and a sunset boat cruise.
In addition to these activities, you can choose from trail walks through the rainforest to see many different monkeys, including capuchins, titi monkeys, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, and tamarins. You can also choose to visit the beautiful Lago Sachavacayoc on a full day trip. If you’re interested in seeing the iconic macaws or parrots, you can visit the small nearby parrot clay lick. You can also choose to visit one of the largest macaw clay licks in the Amazon Rainforest. Travel 3 hours up the river to enjoy hundreds of colorful macaws feeding from the nutrient and salt rich clay.
To end your secluded experience at the Amazon Villa, you can enjoy a picnic dinner around a cozy fire in Tambopata’s rainforest for a truly memorable end to a wonderful stay in the Amazon.
The Amazon Villa
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The Manu Tented Camp
The Manu Tented Camp is a combination lodge offered as a package with the Manu Wildlife Center below. The reason for this is because Manu Tented Camp is a low impact lodge located within the boundary of the Manu National Park itself. This is the largest and more pristine national park in Peru. Because of the strict regulations for tours inside the park boundary, visitors are only permitted within Manu National Park for a few days. This means it makes a perfect combination tour with the nearby Manu Wildlife Center mentioned above. This also means you increase your chances of seeing the larger Amazon Rainforest animals. Enjoy a choice of package options to combine Manu Tented Camp with Manu Wildlife Center or to combine three Manu Rainforest lodges of the Manu Tented Camp, Manu Wildlife Center, and the Cock of the Rock Lodge, which is located in Manu’s cloud forest high in the Andes. The combination programs you can choose that include the Manu Tented Camp are the Manu Explorer, Manu Adventurer, and the Manu, Tapir & Macaw Clay Licks tour. On this combination tour with Manu Wildlife Center, you can see giant otters, tapir, several monkeys, macaw parrots, and even jaguar.
While at the Manu Tented Camp, enjoy visiting the oxbow lake of Cocha Salvador to see giant river otters and walk the different trails to see many of the Manu National Park’s 13 monkey species, the many colorful birds, and a diversity of tree frogs. While cruising the waterways, you’re also likely to see a capybara, the world’s largest rodent, walking along the riverbank.
Although the wildlife of Manu National Park is free to move around the continuous forest, such as the forest of the Amarakaeri Reserved Zone, the park itself contains a few more species. You will also visit the Manu Wildlife Center to enjoy the large macaw clay lick, tapir lick, and a higher chance of spotting wild jaguar. -
The Manu Wildlife Center
The Manu Wildlife Center is located at the outside edge of the famous Manu National Park and positioned in the Amarakaeri Reserved Zone. The Manu rainforest contains the highest diversity of life in Peru, including an incredible variety of colorful birds, monkeys, tree frogs, reptiles and butterflies.
The lodge was carefully positioned to maximize wildlife sightings and is located by one of the Amazon’s most photogenic macaw clay licks where hundreds of parrots come to feed from the salt rich and medicinal clay. In addition, from the lodge you can visit a nearby lake for chance sightings of giant river otters and enjoy a tapir lick to spot South America’s largest land-living mammal. From the Manu Wildlife Center, you will then enjoy expertly guided tours on the miles of nature trails winding their way through the forest. This is where you will see several different species of monkeys that call the forest home, such as howler monkeys, capuchins, titi monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and marmosets.
The lodge operates its regular departure program from March through December, and to reach the lodge, you will first fly into Puerto Maldonado located just south of Cusco. You will be met by the lodge staff and will travel down the mighty Madre de Dios River to the Amarakaeri Reserved Zone of the Manu rainforest and the Manu Wildlife Center to being your tour. -
The Heath River Wildlife Center
The Heath River Wildlife Center is another fantastic lodge from Puerto Maldonado where you have a higher chance of spotting South America’s largest land mammal, the tapir, and a great many colorful macaws. The Heath River Wildlife Center is located near another of the Amazon’s largest clay licks where you will view the parrots from the comfort of a floating hide. The floating hide means you can get a little closer to the clay licks for some fantastic photography opportunities. At this particular lick, 260 macaws at once have been spotted at the clay making an incredible display of sound and color.
The Heath River Wildlife Center is the only lodge on the Heath River, which runs between the highly diverse Tambopata National Reserve and the Madidi National Park in Bolivia. This is continuous forest and is part of one of the world's largest tracts of protected tropical forest. The protected areas that make up this section are the Tambopata Reserve, Manu National Park, Madidi National Park, and the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park.
Enjoy guided tours on the many different trails through the Amazon Rainforest to spot several different monkeys, such as the howler monkeys, capuchins, and tamarins. You will also see some other rainforest mammals and fantastic birdlife. What’s unique about this particular lodge is that you are also close to the savannah ecosystem offering a completely different set of animals and plants. This bumps up the biodiversity you can see from one lodge and they have just started seeing evidence of the elegant maned wolves living nearby.
From the lodge, you can also enjoy tours to the remaining Ese’Eja indigenous people and learn of their nomadic ancestors. As a great add-on experience, you can also combine the Heath River Wildlife Center with the Sandoval Lake Lodge to see three of the Amazon Rainforest’s most iconic animals of the tapir, giant macaw parrots, and then the much loved giant river otters at the beautiful Sandoval Lake. -
The Sandoval Lake Lodge
The Sandoval Lake Lodge is another great choice for a short Amazon Rainforest experience of 2 or 3 days. The lodge is nestled on the beautiful Sandoval Lake inside the highly diverse Tambopata National Reserve, which is very close to Puerto Maldonado in southern Peru. Because this is just a short flight south of Cusco, this is often the best choice for an add-on experience with Machu Picchu and there are some great combination packages with Sandoval Lake Lodge specifically.
Each morning, you will explore the lake aboard a small catamaran scouting the lake edges for forest life. This is perhaps the best lodge to see a diversity of monkeys on a short tour, as several different species visit the lake each morning. On Sandoval tours, you're likely to see titi monkeys, howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, capuchins and much more.
The water birds, including many different types of heron and hoatzin then patrol the lake boundary. Cormorants sit on the logs, and high on the trees you’re likely to spot toucans and macaws. Because of the many stands of palm near the lake, this is also a great place to spot the famed scarlet macaws.
However, the stars of Lake Sandoval are the giant river otters. Enjoy heading out searching for the resident otter family to observe these fantastic mammals playing, hunting, and communication with others in the group. These are a large mammal and one of the only social otter species. While relaxing after dinner, you can also watch a nature documentary on the otters filmed from the Sandoval Lake Lodge.
If you would also like to see a large clay lick and have a high chance of spotting tapir, you can also combine the Sandoval Lake Lodge with the highly regarded Heath River Wildlife Center to enjoy a high chance of seeing three of the Amazon Rainforest’s most iconic animals. -
The Cock of the Rock Lodge
The only lodge on the list for Peru’s fantastic cloud forest, the Cock of the Rock Lodge is accessed from Cusco and provides a wonderful experience of this highly threatened, incredibly diverse, and rarely visited environment.
The Cock of the Rock Lodge is positioned near the famous Manu National Park high in the Peruvian Andes. The lodge is composed of 12 comfortable double-occupancy bungalows with hot showers, flush toilets and private balconies overlooking the cloud forest.
From the lodge you will enjoy guided tours through the private cloud forest reserve to enjoy spotting fantastic cloud forest wildlife, such as humming birds, capuchin monkeys, and colorful butterflies.
It’s the birdlife of the Andes that’s spectacularly diverse and the Cock of the Rock Lodge is positioned near the lek of one of the most interesting birds after which the lodge is named. Peru’s national bird, the cock of the rock performs dance rituals to attract a mate and we can watch these fantastic animals performing their display. The birds have a bright red body and perform these elaborate rituals twice-daily right near the lodge.
In addition to tours of the lodge, you can choose to combine the Cock of the Rock Lodge with excellent lowland Amazon lodges in Peru to enjoy a stay at the highly regarded Manu Wildlife Center on the Bio Trip. You can also choose to combine all three Manu lodges of the Cock of the Rock Lodge, Manu Wildlife Center, and the Manu Tented Camp located inside Manu National Park on the Manu Explorer or the Tapir & Macaw tour option.
The Top 10 Jungle Lodges in Peru – Summary
Here is a summary of the top Amazon rainforest lodges in Peru.
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4, 5 days+
The Tambopata Research Center
Puerto Maldonado, PeruPositioned in the middle of the wildlife-rich Tambopata National Reserve, near one of the largest macaw clay licks in the Amazon Rainforest, you will ...
- Deep Rainforest Lodge, Access to Tambopata's Macaw Claylicks
From $ 1,296
/ person -
6 days+
The Tahuayo Lodge
Iquitos, PeruFrom the Tahuayo Lodge, you will explore the Amazon Rainforest’s wildlife-rich Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Reserve with a private guide on a custom itinerary. ...
- Private Guide, Custom Itinerary
From $ 1,295
/ person -
4, 5 days+
The Refugio Amazonas Lodge
Puerto Maldonado, PeruThe Refugio Amazonas Lodge & Spa is an Amazon Rainforest lodge located in the buffer zone of Tambopata National Reserve. Explore the surrounding rainf...
- Comfort Lodge, Short Travel Time
From $ 760
/ person -
3, 4 days+
The Posada Amazonas Lodge
Puerto Maldonado, PeruAt the Posada Amazonas Lodge, enjoy a comfortable experience of Peru’s Amazon Rainforest from Puerto Maldonado. Because of the position inside the Es...
- Comfort Lodge, Short Travel Time
From $ 760
/ person -
The Amazon Villa
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The Manu Adventurer
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Unavailable -
The Manu Wildlife Center
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The Heath River Wildlife Center
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Unavailable -
The Sandoval Lake Lodge
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The Cock of the Rock Lodge
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Ash
Tour Advisor at TourTheTropics.comAsh Card is a frequent visitor to the Tropics and has a passion for helping visitors get the best experiences from tropical locations. Ash is a contributor and tour advisor at TourTheTropics.com. Feel free to contact Ash for tour help in the tropics. When not helping tourists with tours and info, Ash can be found traveling, on wildlife tours or salsa dancing. Ash has completed a BSc in Biology, a Master’s degree in Zoology, and has undertaken a research scholarship at a world-class university on animal behavior. He has published scientific research in the Australian Journal of Zoology and the Journal of Behavioral Ecology. His goal is to help a global society live in balance with the natural world.