Early mornings, so the theory goes, are always something of a struggle. The first of the two mornings I spent at the Manu Learning Centre [MLC] in the midst of a hot October (not that any month can be described as “cold” in the tropical depths of Peru) certainly felt like a battle with one of the more niche areas of the clock.
No light yet visible beyond the mosquito net. The relative stillness of a rainforest in night mode. The confusing chill of the small hours in a region which leaps into sticky heat as soon as the sun thrusts itself into the sky.
But I tumbled from under the covers, fumbled for clothes in torchlight, slipped on shoes with eyes half shut. “Just after 5am,” the watch advised. I had no choice but to believe it.
Coffee – that jolt of caffeine utterly essential. A huddle of people in the lodge’s main communal area. A slight stirring of conversation, sleepy words and half-heard sentences.
And then down to the waterline, stepping carefully on the damp, dewy grass. If the human inhabitants of the rainforest – those merely passing through; those born to its sinuous embrace – are happy to sleep, the river, of course, is not. There, in tireless flow, under a silver streak of moonlight, was the Madre de Dios. Seen at this uncertain hour, it seemed far more mysterious than when watched under an umbrella of sunshine – ever intent on its long journey to the broader Amazon River, and the vast swirl of the Atlantic.
A boat out into the shallows, a short ride against the push of the current, a bumpy landing on a pebble-strewn sandbar. And then the wait. Huddled under a meagre lean-to shelter, all eyes gazing east at the burgeoning glow on the horizon – from a low yellow to a brighter orange. And a grey and a white as the light spread and morning sidled into focus.
Then, there they were – these fluttering reasons for this end-of-night shift, for making the alarm clock work overtime. Just two at first, flitting from branch to branch. Then two more. Four chestnut-fronted macaws, their name thoroughly deceptive – barely a patch of brown on them, feathers a cocktail of green and red. But magnificent even in this identity crisis – darting wings and insistent calls; a blur of motion above the clay banks of the Madre de Dios. Two more, and two more. Quite a party at so young a moment in the day.
But then, you learn quickly, in the jungle, that to snooze – as the cliché runs – is to lose. After an hour gazing at these fine feathered beings, it was back to the MLC for breakfast – the filling simplicity of scrambled eggs. And then on, again, into the forest, for spider monkeys in the canopy – and hard, mean, black bullet ants posing defiantly on fat leaves.
The alarm would ring again the next morning at an ungodly minute. But then, there is nothing ungodly about this glorious treescape, smeared across the South American torso.
‘Early’ is all a matter of opinion.
Chris Leadbeater is British Consumer Travel Writer of the Year 2012-2013. Follow him on Twitter to read more of his travel writing: @LeadbeaterChris