When I was a child I used to watch a cartoon called Mysterious Cities of Gold. It was one of those huge multi-part cartoon epics like Dogtanian, Willy Fog's 80 Days Around the World and Ullysses. Of course, kids TV nowadays is all crap, but back then it inspired a generation to do great things with their lives, like becoming Musketeers, or travelling around the world dressed as a lion in a top hat. But anyway, Mysterious Cities of Gold was set in the Andes and involved two boys and a girl in search of a mythical Inca invention - a giant flying golden condor aeroplane thing. The series went on for so long that in the process my balls dropped and my voice broke, and by the end of it I was far more interested in my hidden stash of Razzle magazines and a pack of nudey playing cards smuggled back from a school trip to Calais (which had a picture of a woman fellating a pig), so I don't even know how Cities of Gold ended - I presume that they eventually found the big fucking condor and then lived happily ever after. However, the opening credits stuck with me, and every night since then I dreamed of throwing myself off the side of a forest clad slope only to land on my mate's head in a river. Well in our summer vacation/hardcore dawn-dusk birding trip to south Peru, my dreams were finally realised, albeit without the golden condor bit... and the throwing myself off the side of a mountain.

So here it is, the most mediocre trip report you'll ever read. Even if you don't read it then you should at least look at the photographs which are also mediocre.

Peru is very far away from anywhere. Look at a map - see what I mean? Yep, it's miles away. So you'll have to get there by aeroplane. You could go by boat but that would just be stupid. We flew from Manchester to Lima for £850 each. Even in the high summer season that's quite expensive; if we'd booked further in advance then we probably could have knocked £100-£150 off that. Our flight route was Manchester to Paris, at which point I informed the pilot that he was going the wrong way so he turned back and went to Bogotá. At Bogotá we had an 8 hour wait which could only be described as 'wank in the extreme'. Eventually we got to Lima some 9 days after leaving Manchester. The return journey was even worse - we managed to hit it during the extra security checks and ban on liquids because some fuckers were planning on blowing up a load of planes due to religious and cultural disagreements.

Having spent most of our lives in grotty, crime ridden cities we couldn't really be bothered visiting another, so we booked an internal flight from Lima to Cusco months in advance with LAN Peru over the intranet information super highway. This meant that we didn't have to leave Lima airport and could spend a few hours enjoying all the wonders of a departure lounge such as McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts.

The three lodges in Manu were booked well in advanced by email through their websites (listed later in the relevant sections). Full payments were made at the lodge offices in Cusco before we went into Manu which was great as we didn't have to take loads of cash with us - there is nowhere to change money/travellers cheques in Manu.

We almost did the whole trip without a guide, almost that is other than some very generous help at Amazonia Lodge from Kolibri guide Fabrice Schmitt and his Danish client Per Smith. At this point I could say that we had the immense satisfaction of knowing that almost every bird we saw we identified ourselves and that we didn't just walk around behind a guide all day hanging on their every word, but of course that would be a complete lie; we would occasionally bump into a tour group with a guide and then stand around chatting for 10 minutes listening to all about the 50 great birds we had just walked past. Just kidding, we had a great time doing it by ourselves, although our trip list was obviously much lower than if we'd gone with a pro. Another benefit of doing it independently is the unbridled joy of now looking back at how much it cost us compared to what you pay with a tour company.

$US American Express travellers cheques were easily changed in all the cities and towns. Get your notes in small denominations and keep hold of coins as though they are life giving elixir - nobody in Peru ever seems to have any small change.

Travel is easy and very cheap by bus. The Lonely Planet and Footprint travel guides were spot on most of the time. Try one of the new Royal Service buses for the sheer fun of it - they are the new craze in Peru with a luggage check-in, onboard stewardess, meals, drinks and a pirated English language movie.

Hotels are aplenty and all of them we stayed in were really good and mostly very cheap. The standard travel guides are your best bet.

During the austral winter the weather in both Cusco and Arequipa is hot and dry during the day and pretty cold at night but still relatively comfortable. Manu was mild up at San Pedro but boiling and humid down in the lowlands - that was until a friaje swept through and things cooled down a lot becoming much more bearable. Lowland river transport can get pretty cold. The coast was warm and dry.

In certain places the dogs can be a fucking nightmare. We had a number of bad experiences, the worst being on the beach at Paracas where we were set upon by a guard dog from one of the nearby luxury apartments, although in all fairness we were probably trespassing - however, a sign to let us know that we were on a private section of the beach would have been nice. Thankfully we were never bitten, however, you should expect some piss-ant bastard barking thing to have a go at you when you are near to a settlement, but they normally just run off when you go to pick up a rock. The dogs in Manu are very well behaved, I almost felt like giving them a biscuit for good behaviour.

Kids never gave us any hassle - Heaven! At most we only ever got a pleasant "Hola!" from them as they walked by. The locals appeared to understand why we were wandering about looking at trees and were always friendly and helpful. Whether you would have the same response away from the well trodden tourist/birding routes I don't know.

We both had ticks, and I don't mean, "Wow, look, a new bird for our birdspotting tick list." No, I mean the other ticks which give you Lime disease. Sarah's tick was under her arm and mine on the end of my penis - read that again... I kid you not. I would have laughed if I'd been able to find absolutely anything funny about the situation, which I didn't; although I seem to remember my travel companion deriving considerable mirth from my unfortunate predicament. Tweezers and courage were all we needed to be rid of them.

When we went for our jabs (tetanus, polio, syphilis etc.) the travel nurse reckoned that Manu is an area with increasing risk of malaria but not a high risk. We took some tablets but stopped using them once we chatted with locals and found out that the risk is negligible. Two different guides that we chatted to also told us that Manu is malaria free - for a start we only saw two mosquitoes. It's obviously better to be safe than sorry, but malaria certainly doesn't seem to be a significant problem in Manu.

Yellow Fever vaccination is compulsory.

Other than that we had no bad times other than some fatigue from the altitude (take it easy, it batters you) and the expected puking/shitting/both which afflicts many travellers at some point regardless of your budget.

If you don't speak some basic Spanish then, quite simply, you're fucked; I can't put it better than that. Even in big places hardly anyone speaks English so do some swatting up before you go. My B in GCSE Spanish proved invaluable, although in Ollantaytambo I did tell a taxi driver that, "I am going to travel 100 kilometres along this road and I shall write to you when I get there," when I meant to say something compleeeeeeeeetely different.

All good, but the obsession with carbohydrates is interesting: one meal consisted of rice, chips and pasta on the same plate with a side plate of bread. Lomo Saltado was one of the best Peruvian dishes we had, and in Paracas the fish is great. In Arequipa near the cathedral on Mercaderes there is a brilliant Subway-type sandwich shop called Mumbo which you should visit for the beef and cheese bocadillo. Pisco Sour cocktails are mucho fantastico! But too many at altitude are not fantastico - remember that at over 3000m your hangover is multiplied 3000x. Cusquena beer is brilliant, as is the rival Arequipena. Bottled water is pretty cheap and sold in even the tiniest of places. Despite the appearance and taste, you'll find yourself quaffing gallons of Inca Kola (la bebida de Peru!) and driving yourself mad singing the catchy jingle Inca Kola yeeeeaaaahhhh! Inca Kola yeeeeaaaahhhh! which you'll hear absolutely everywhere.

This was our first trip to South America and almost everything was new; at times it seemed like we were starting birding from scratch. I knew that much of it was going to have to be done by ear, so well in advance I began gathering recordings (commercial and also from the magnificent xeno-canto website) of many expected birds and committing songs and calls to memory. I found it useful, from a memory point of view, to write out the calls and songs phonetically. I concentrated on gamebirds, nightjars, owls & potoos, rails & crakes, woodcreepers, anything with "Ant" in its name and then any other specific birds that looked a bit pretty. With hindsight I really should have done more revision with flycatchers and stuff like spinetails/foliage-gleaners etc, and sacked off the rails & crakes as we hardly heard any. As a result our list of 100% confidently identified flycatchers was extremely poor (our list of 'almost identified' was enormous), but our woodcreepers and Ant-things lists were great.

I must have gone through 100+ trip reports on the usual websites (Surfbirds, Travelling Birder etc...) and then developed a coding system which I scribbled by each bird in the Clements & Shany field guide that told me where a bird was found and the likelihood of it being seen. It's too long-winded to explain here but actually worked really well in the field, with location (especially altitude) often being a good way of narrowing down an identification. Email me if you would like the key to unlock the code, but I should warn you that it may induce a coma from being so pathetically anal and boring.

The most useful trip report for independent birding was by Charles Hesse from part of his mega tour of Latin America.

We took the Clements & Shany Peru field guide and the Greenfield & Tudor Ecuador field guide. Although much of the Peru guide is clearly not up to current expected standards you really wouldn't want to be without it, even if you use it solely as an illustrated checklist. The Ecuador guide was fantastic and invaluable for certain things, but the weight made it a bit of a burden. Thomas Valqui's Where to Watch Birds in Peru fully deserves the praise that has been poured on it and the sensible size and weight made it very practical - don't go without it.

We took a scope and never once used it in Manu, but it was essential for Huacarpay and Paracas.

Torch - take a good one. Owling and Potooing were one of the highlights of the whole trip.

MP3 player and speaker. Depends on your ethics about playback, but you simply won't see certain things without it. We used it sparingly and sensibly, at least I hope we did.

You should obviously take more stuff than just the above things. Clothes are an excellent idea. Binoculars might be useful as well. Sun cream is essential.

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The following is mainly lists with a bit of crap thrown in for good measure, but there's also a preamble before each list about getting to places, how much stuff costs and blah blah blah... The photos were taken with a camera. They are all scenic photos because digi-scoping would have entailed carrying a scope around, and carrying a scope around would have meant certain death by dehydration and exhaustion. I did get 6 hours of video including some good footage of stunning birds such as Amazonian Antpitta, Cock-of-the-Rock and Rufous-crested Coquette, however, seeing as this report has taken me 5 months to write, the chances of me editing and uploading all the video clips within this century is about as likely as something that is really, really unlikely to happen.

I imagine that only a few of our birds will be of interest to birders with South American experience, but hopefully the neotropically inexperienced might find some stuff of use. There are also some glaring omissions, especially when it comes to raptors and flycatchers, I'm afraid stuff like Elaenias (of which we probably saw another 3 species) and Phaethornis hummers (aarrgghh!) will just have to wait for another trip - there were more than enough brightly coloured or easy to identify birds for us to enjoy. Note that terms I use like 'common' and 'rare' are based on superficial perception over a short period of time and simply how often we saw them, certainly not an accurate population estimate! I'd like to believe that everything listed was identified with 100% accuracy, but you may come across something and think to yourself, "What the fuck? They saw that there?" in which case we may have made some fuck ups. Indeed, looking back through my notes I'm beginning to worry at just how many different species of Woodcreeper we had at Amazonia Lodge - we may have set a new world record. Or not. But that's life. No it isn't.

All in all I can't recommend the place enough - what other country could give you the world's largest flying bird (allegedly Andean Condor unless you're reading something about Wandering Albatrosses) and the world's smallest passerine (Short-tailed Pygmy-Tyrant)? What other country offers the biggest ocean, the driest desert, the deepest canyon and the biggest rainforest all relatively short distances apart? We had masses of fun and a brilliant time from start to finish, with very little disruption to our schedule and hardly any unpleasantness (save for the dogs and dysentery). On top of all that we saw some of the greatest birds and places that I imagine we'll ever see. Feel free to email me at:

tommckinney1979 (AT) yahoo.co.uk

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Our itinerary, based around the Gringo Trail, was as follows:

* Cusco (Huacarpay, Sacsayhuaman, Machu Picchu, Aguas Calientes & Ollantaytambo)
* Manu (Pilcopata, Lower Manu Road, Amazonia Lodge, Pantiacolla Lodge, Pilcopata & San Pedro)
* Arequipa (our base for the Colca Canyon)
* Paracas (sun, sea, sand and Shags)

Click on the locations above to be transported by the wonders of internet hyperlinks to that area's very own trip report.