It steams, it’s as if you can see the great forest breathing, with massive green lungs sighing after a brain pain rainstorm that has left the towering cascades of leaves exhausted and beaten. You are drenched, and it’s not warm, but then what do you expect, it's a rainforest isn't it? It’s that sacred thing you've heard about since you were a child, and for all the statistics you've learned about its size, its scale now confounds your imagination. As you slip down the bank into the motor boat to head back to the lodge you feel like a little wet ant, the Amazon humbles you, you are nothing here, tiny and vulnerable and right out of your 'civilised' element.

The launch chugs slowly along the wide listless river and everyone is silently looking for the thirsty Jaguar they have all been fantasising about, the one that morphs out of the inky shade, pads down the sandy beach and crouches to sip the ochre water. You look until the dark eats your eyes and you see nothing more, no cat or caiman, and then it's the sounds that take over. This is actually a bit of a relief, to be freed from such a visual assault. Although the whoops, whistles, screeches, screams and whines vie for the weirdest and most inexplicable things you've ever heard and while you cannot possibly know whether it's a bird, insect, amphibian or a mammal, at least you can relax one of your battered senses. You can read all the books, you can watch the TV programmes but nothing can adequately prepare you for this slice of experience. Of all the portions of experience I've enjoyed, this remarkable hotspot has no equal.

We grow up and live in cool-temperate Britain. We have fifty odd butterfly species, about the same number of mammals, around two hundred types of breeding birds, it’s great, we love it, but it’s not a lot. In this, the richest place on earth for living things, there are a thousand species of birds, two hundred mammals and a staggering fifteen thousand different varieties of flowering plants. And the insects. . .

The slightly odd thing is that the vast majority of life occurs at relatively low densities so it's the opposite experience to that you might enjoy on South Georgia, a land of thousands of just a few. What it means is that every time you go out you see something new, if not the elusive Jaguar then a clear winged butterfly, or a bizarre orchid, or a bug that looks like a thorn. And if you can stay at The Manu Wildlife Center, then you will have no fear of missing much because this is eco-touristic paradise. On offer are daily lake trips to see Giant Otters, a floating hide that drifts right in front of a clay bank visited by hundreds of parrots and Macaws, a simply magnificent platform right at the top of the canopy and a nocturnal Tapir lick. Plus good food and well maintained accommodation. And very knowledgeable guides. Overall, it's a ten.

If you drive from Cusco then you can stop over at the Cock of the Rock Lodge, a modest set of cabins that has a bird table the likes of which I've never seen the equal of and an early morning audience with the places namesakes, which frankly is to die for. You creep into the forest in darkness and as it lightens, the most extraordinary sounds draw closer until in tantalising murk these wacky birds squawk and flutter in the throes of their insane displays. When it’s finally bright enough to see them, they are the argon orange inventions of the devil’s milliner, amazing! The whole event only lasts an hour at most but it leaves you a little unimpressed the next time a Robin jumps up to sing on your fence. Then to try and separate individual spectacles in this arena is fairly artificial because it's the whole that is truly most impressive and you come away stunned and scheming a means of immediate return.