Welcome to Peru! Your adventure starts with very short walk to our hotel conveniently located at the Lima Airport. A meet and assist at the hotel is included for everyone, regardless of which flight you arrive on today

Our adventure begins with a flight over the Andes to Iquitos, the gateway to the Amazon River. The local team in Lima will assist with flight check-in today.

On arrival in Iquitos, we have a welcome lunch with all guests before boarding the Zafiro – a premium riverboat and our home for the next seven nights. The crew will be waiting to welcome you on board, and help you settle into your cabin and get familiar with the boat. All suites have 100 percent Peruvian prima cotton sheets, comfortable beds, bathrobes, air conditioning, and floor-to-ceiling windows for that all-important view.

After a welcome pisco sour (the national cocktail), enjoy your first stargazing and storytelling with the naturalist guides while cruising slowly on the Amazon River toward the confluence of the Marañón and Ucayali rivers.

Spend the next six nights aboard the Zafiro, navigating deep into the tributaries of the Amazon – a web of forests and lakes that pulsates with a chorus of birdlife, the calls of primates, and flashes of colourful butterflies.

More than 1,300 bird species, 40,000 plant species, and grey and pink river dolphins inhabit this lush, ever-changing rainforest known collectively as the Amazon.

Enjoy unprecedented access to three habitats: varzea, igapó and palm-flooded forest, including the deep reaches of the protected Pacaya-Samiria Reserve. There is a huge diversity of possible wildlife sightings here, including blue-and-gold scarlet macaws, hoatzins and horned screamers. Traverse the waterways aboard sturdy excursion boats to areas where you may find marsh birds such as oriole blackbirds, green ibis, yellow-headed caracaras, black-capped donacobius and white-headed marsh tyrants. Night excursions may reveal caimans, capybaras, common potoos, frogs and other nocturnal wildlife. Periodically throughout the year, guests may even release turtle hatchlings.

Daily excursions include early morning birding, enriching presentations, visits in local villages and even piranha fishing. Learn about the lives of the Ribereño people as we visit riverbank villages. This is a fantastic opportunity to stroll through their gardens and learn about medicinal plants from a local shaman.

Pointing out details no guidebook could provide are the onboard team of world-class naturalists, while the attentive crew ensures exceptional service in the wild.

Please note, our navigational itinerary will have some seasonal variations depending on the water levels.

This morning, we disembark the Zafiro, waving goodbye to our excellent crew and guides. En route to the airport, we can visit the Amazon Rescue Center, where biologists and volunteers care for manatees before release. Following this excursion, we transfer back to Iquitos for our flight to Lima.

Upon arrival back in Lima this afternoon, it’s just a short walk to our premium airport hotel. Most guests stay overnight and depart on day 10. If you have a tight schedule, you could use the hotel as a dayroom to freshen up before connecting with independent overnight flights (from late evening onwards). Please discuss with your sales representative whether your flight times will work.

You are free to depart Lima at any time today or consider extending your stay to spend more time discovering Peru.