Located a 25 minute motor canoe ride down the River Madre de Dios from Puerto Maldonado, Sandoval Lake Lodge is perched above what many rainforest specialists feel is the most attractive lake in Southern Peru, if not in the entire Peruvian Amazon.

The whole complex is housed in one structure and includes 25 double occupancy rooms (all with private baths), hot showers, and a spacious dining room overlooking the lake.

For a more relaxed, complete introduction to the rainforest, we recommend a two night stay. However, with the easy access from Puerto Maldonado, for the first time it is possible to spend only one night in the rainforest and still get a good preliminary idea of the splendor of the Peruvian Amazon.

Transfer from Puerto Maldonado airport to the river port on the Madre de Dios River. A 25 minute journey down the Madre de Dios River by motor canoe brings you to the end of the trail going to Sandoval Lake Lodge. From here the trail takes you on a 2-mile walk or rickshaw ride through secondary forest, until we reach a small canal where we board canoes and are paddled 220 yards through a flooded forest of 100-foot tall Mauritia palms. As the canal opens onto the shimmering surface of the lake, we transfer to a catamaran and are leisurely paddled across half the lake to the lodge. After lunch and a brief rest to avoid the early afternoon heat, we once again board the catamaran and set off to explore the entire west end of the lake. Here, in the flooded palm forest we drift to the sounds of hundreds of Red-Bellied Macaws as they return to the palm forest for the night. We return to the lodge around nightfall for dinner. After dinner we will return to the canoes to look for the large and extremely rare Black Caimans. If it is a clear starlit night, we will also be able to float in the middle of the lake and marvel at the brillance of the sky.

A pre-dawn wake-up call will enable us to be on the lake for sunrise and a hopeful encounter with the family of Giant Otters which frequent the lake and are most active at this time of day. Most of the fish-eating water birds around the lake actively fish in the early morning as well, and this outing should provide excellent views and photographs of the prehistoric-looking Hoatzins. After returning for a late breakfast we set off into the cool understory of the tall virgin forest near the lake to see some towering wild Brazil Nut trees and a demonstration of how our hosts collect, open and commercialize this important natural product. After lunch and an hour or so to relax, we once again board the catamaran to explore the eastern part of the lake, where we might see one or more of the five species of monkeys which live in the forest near the lake, such as the Brown Capuchin Monkey. There is a final chance after dinner to try and spot some Black Caimans on the lake, or to go on a short night walk through the primary forest.

After a dawn breakfast we take a final, shorter paddle around the west end of the lake to try and glimpse the Giant Otters before returning to Puerto Maldonado to catch the flight to Lima.