A Journey to the Montane Forest of Northeastern Peru

The Fernando Belaunde Terry Highway is an irregular and lethargic snake with views of the montane forests and turfy hills prevalent in northeastern Peru. After traveling several kilometers towards the Corosha district in the Amazonas region, our eyes paused at the uneven heights that drew the hills. It was night when we reached the district of Pedro Ruiz and several hasty trucks dodged us as we halted on the marginal road. From the vast gloomy fields a gaunt, stunted man approached the driver’s window and handed him a bunch of carachamas; tattooed and prehistoric fish that minutes later sat with us on the route.

By the time we arrived at the secluded village of Beirut, a few hours away from the city of Jaen, our bleary eyes couldn’t make out anything beyond dark shades of land. I climbed out of the van to realize I had underestimated the cold and couldn’t help but feel I was entering into an obscure passage whose end was at the beginning of the next day. Fortunately, a local woman greeted us into her home and served us some freshly baked arracachas, yellow-colored roots that tasted like sweet aromatic carrots. 

I spent the night in the home of Lizzet García, one of the nine local women that provided a room in her home for visitors of all kinds; travelers, biologists, photographers, and adventurers who had come to follow the five-hour hike to the Private Conservation Area of Hierbabuena – Allpayacu. Despite our varied backgrounds, we all had one thing in common—we were motivated by the presence of a golden spectacled bear—and groups of endemic woolly monkeys.  With the help of the Peruvian NGO Yunkawasi, the rural community of Beirut has been seeking to promote sustainable tourism in their district.

Photo: Michael Tweddle

I met my travel crew at the main plaza located in the middle of the village. From far away, I spotted our expedition guides, a group of local men who call the forest home. Minutes later I was riding a black horse with no name escorted by Victor Ramos, a local farmer, guide, and chaperon. He would lead the way through the magnetic hectares of montane forest to the area of Copal; from there it would be another two hours (on horseback and by foot) to the Private Conservation Area of Hierbabuena – Allpayacu.

Passing the Goquete ravine the horse pushed itself up the steep incline, near trails of brimming green that bore no trace of human life. Victor stopped to fix my saddle while the exhausted horse’s flaring nostrils inhaled the air frantically. By the time we reached San Juan, a sublime expanse of grass and meadow, I noticed I had fallen behind the rest of the travel group and felt some sort of relief. There truly is something endearing about riding a horse across a vast forested path in solitude, needing only to focus on the flecks of blue that filter through the branches. The trees seem tall from ground level, but when you’re riding horseback, you feel tall too. Maybe my faithful horse detected my contentment because as I pulled the bridle to slow him down, he lowered his long narrowed head and gently neighed.

Photo: Michael Tweddle

As I woke from my contemplation, Victor walked by my side and told me a story. Weeks earlier he’d been making his way through the forest, riding the very nameless horse I now sat upon, when he spotted a light golden pelage shimmering under the sun. “I’ve seen lots of ‘negritos’ but to see the golden one is a matter of God,” he told me. That golden spectacled bear, referred to as “Paddy” after it was caught by a camera trap in this territory, is now the symbol of the Beirut community and one of the reasons why the locals have decided to protect their biodiverse forest.  The idea of encountering such a creature prompted me to hasten uphill. As we left the mellow prairie-like forest and labored up a sheer rocky terrain, Victor asked me to dismount. I grabbed my gear and started walking at the pace of my heartbeat. It felt good to change perspectives and stretch my legs, but as the trail transformed into a floor of thick sorrel clay, I felt my rubber boots sinking. At one point my guide had to rescue me from being sucked down.

Photo by: Michael Tweddle

We left the gritty muck behind to find an acclivous path of stone steps leading to a drastic variation of terrain; from humid elevated forest to boundless pasture fields. We were seconds away from Copal and at that moment I felt triumphant, disregarding the long trail that was yet to come. My traveling crew had reached the observation point at the top of Copal’s mountain long before myself and their vigilant eyes were already hidden behind their binoculars, tracking the ghostly steps of the golden bear.

“Generally, we would need to stay here for at least a few hours to have a slight chance to see a regular spectacled bear,” said Michael Tweddle, as I approached the group. Michael has been photographing wildlife for more than 30 years and leading international tourists on photo safari adventures around the world, from Pantanal to Copal. He has photographed and seen grizzly bears in Alaska and Yellowstone and has lived in the Appalachian Mountains on the edge of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee surrounded by black bears. And this time it was clear we needed to rush uphill a few more hours in order to hit our refuge before dusk. Maybe this time we would not see the bears.

By the time I was back on my horse, laboring up the imposing hills, I realized the journey to Hierbabuena was as ambitious for us as for the equines. The steep relief and frequently unstable slope overlaid by forests took us to some precipitous terrain. I had to grab strenuously to the horse’s mane and play some inner mental games to overcome my fear of falling over into the abyss. But once on the mountain’s summit, the mesmerizing view of swirling, bulging clouds that hid the grace of the landscape below paid off.

The next day Lucas Guivin, a guide who’s been following the endangered yellow-tailed woolly monkeys since he was a child, woke us up at 5 am. Dark and numbingly cold outside, Lucas led the way as we moved through the dusky shade of the dense thicket canopy, stepping over mossy barks and crackling leaves along the way. As we descended deeper into the forest, the epiphytes and lichens clung to the trunks as if they had arms that seized the trees. Once again I let the silent procession move forward and stayed behind with Victor and his companion guide Demetrio Reyes whose cheek was puffed up with a saliva-soaked ball of coca leaves. “Miraculous plant,” he said as I asked questions about the powerful alkaloid that acts as a stimulant. “No hunger and no thirst,” he added.

We walked at our own pace, bushwhacking and lifting our heads to track the agile monkeys’ steps.  Minutes after, we spotted a group of three primates mirthfully swinging on the summit of the branches. The deep mahogany color of their bodies, covered in dense fur, began to glimmer as the sunlight stroked through the boughs. I was amazed by the spectacle.

The yellow-tailed woolly monkey is one of the largest and rarest primate species living in the high-altitude forests of northeastern Peru. According to Mongabay, “the IUCN lists the species as Critically Endangered, but the number of yellow-tailed woolly monkeys remaining in the wild is unknown.” Despite the efforts of the Corosha community and Peruvian primatologist Fanny Cornejo and her NGOs to protect these rare species of primates, they still face several menacing threats such as immigration, animal trafficking, and deforestation. We stared at them in awe for hours, feeling a liberating sense of solitude as they maneuvered and lazed over the tree’s arms above us. 

Even though we weren’t lucky enough to encounter the golden spectacle bear during this expedition, we learned he had been roaming the achupalla fields all along. Only Michael, who went back over and over again was able to catch sight of this charming character—named after Paddington Bear.