Tambopata National Reserve

The Peruvian Amazon's macaw spectacle. Lodges along the Tambopata River, reached by road and boat from Puerto Maldonado, take guests at dawn to clay licks where macaws and parrots gather to eat mineral-rich clay. Activity is never guaranteed, but on a good morning the riverbank turns red, blue and green. Choose by how far you want to go. Lodges an hour or two from town make a short trip easy, while the Tambopata Research Center sits just 500 meters from the Colorado clay lick, more than six hours by boat from the nearest town, where scientists study macaw behavior. The farther lodges are hotter, buggier and more basic, and they repay the effort with emptier forest.