Conservation Lodges

Machiguenga Center

Sandoval Lake Lodge

Cock-of-the-Rock Lodge

Pantiacolla Lodge

Manu Wildlife Tented
Camps

Heath River Wildlife
Center

Hyacinth Valley and
Cliffs Camps

Machiguenga Center (MCTS)
Activities & Accommodations

The Pongo de Mainique is a 50-yard-wide, two-mile-long canyon through which flows the mighty Urubamba River on its 451-mile path north from Cusco and the Sacred Valley to a convergence with the Apurimac River. This canyon is the only break in the Vilcabamba Mountain Range. The Vilcabamba Range arises from the southwestern edge of the Manu National Park, swinging west to the cut formed at the Pongo, then continues west and finally north flattening out into lowland Amazon forest.

All water from the greater Cusco/Machu Picchu region flows through the Pongo. As the 300-400-foot-wide (91-120-m-wide) Urubamba River enters the canyon, it narrows to 130-150 feet (40-47 meters), creating large standing waves and class I and II rapids. Special, high-prowed motor canoes are required to navigate the Pongo safely during high water, but during the dry season (May-October), the river normally is low and peaceful. In the transition months (April and November), the Pongo can become more exciting but normally remains navigable. Even during the rainy season, the Pongo is usually, but not always, navigable, and the waterfalls are much fuller and more impressive. Photographers especially love the clouds and mist of the rainy months, which make the Pongo look appropriately brooding and mysterious.

The Pongo de Mainique, which Peter Matthiessen wrote about in his book "The Cloud Forest", is the most dramatic pongo in Peru's Amazon forest and one of the most scenic and mysterious locations in all of South America.

A visit to the Machiguenga Center includes a day playing in and around the Pongo, where you can play in 30 waterfalls that cascade down the black rock walls. Each rainy season (December-March), a few raging floods scour the rock clean to a level 50 feet (15 meters) above low water. At the upper edge of the floodline, a riot of exotic ferns, orchids, and moss-covered trees take over, festooning the canyon walls to an elevation 1000 feet (300 meters) above the river. Fasciated Tiger-Herons fish patiently from rock perches at the edge of the swift water. Acrobatic, secretive Black Spider Monkeys hang precipitously at the lower edge of the trees and ferns to eat clay out of a hole tucked into the Pongo walls. Globally-endangered Military Macaws swoop through the canyon in search of fruiting trees and roost in cavities in the rock. Rare Woolly Monkeys dangle from branches over the river.

Research near the Pongo suggests that the forests within fives miles of this canyon may harbor more species of plants and animals than any other similar-sized area on Earth. This abundance of life stems from the enormous elevational changes near the Pongo, with cloud forests and lowland forests lying within just a few hundred meters of one another. Warm Amazonian winds continually bathe the lower slopes of the Pongo with moisture. As a result, the forested slopes just above the river are overflowing with orchids, mosses, and bromeliads typical of mid-elevation Andean cloud forests that normally occur 3,000 feet higher. Endangered Spectacled Bears roam the mid-and higher-elevations of the Pongo.