A couple in a dugout canoe paddled purposefully past, kingfishers flashed by almost touching the miso-soupy brown water, and every now and then something smooth and grey surfaced for a second, causing a flurry of leaping fish.

It was the dawn of my first morning in the Amazon and I had stumbled bleary eyed from my cabin to the little wooden bench in the prow of the boat, roused by the twitters, whistles and screeches coming from the thick green rainforest. And there I sat, taking in the sounds and swatting the odd lingering mosquito as we made our gentle progress upriver.

I had always associated the Amazon with Brazil, but here I was, a speck in the Amazon Basin that makes up 65 per cent of Peru, and on my way to the Pacaya-Samiria national reserve. The 20,800sq km (7,700sq m) reserve, home to rare river dolphins, endangered jaguars and countless species of birds, is bosrdered by the Ucayali and Marañón rivers, and where they join, the mighty Amazon's 3,800km journey to the Atlantic begins.

By flying 1,000km north from Lima to Iquitos - a ramshackle rubber-boom city on the Amazon, with a population of almost half a million - I managed to get well off Peru's usual tourist trail of Machu Picchu and Cuzco, Lake Titicaca and the Nazca Lines.

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El Delfin (“the dolphin”) is one of just a handful of tour boats in the region, and has only seven guest cabins. Topped with a thatched roof, she had the appearance of an eccentric high-rise houseboat, and at first I wondered how she managed to stay upright. But she proved perfectly stable on the calm river, and although I never quite got over her comical appearance, I soon came to love her.

Every morning and afternoon our guides, Ado and Luis, local men raised on the river, took us out on two light motor skiffs. As we explored the creeks, channels, lagoons and tributaries, their sharp eyes and ears picked out iguanas catching the sun on high branches, the call of red howler monkeys, sloths in tight balls in clefts of tree trunks, while we sat back, cameras and binoculars poised.

By imitating the call of a harpie eagle, Ado got a sloth to turn his head. Blue morpho butterflies, with wings the size of my hand, flitted over carpets of water hyacinths, spindly-legged wattled jacanas ran across giant water-lily pads, and squirrel monkeys scampered from vine to vine. Parrots and toucans flew overhead, and we saw courting horned screamers, the largest birds in Peru, and the hoatzin, a prehistoric-looking bird whose chicks have claws on their wings to climb back into their nests if they fall out.

After dark we saw pink-footed tarantulas, four varieties of bats, and were offered the chance to hold a baby caiman dazzled by a flashlight and hoiked from the water by fast and fearless Ado. Not for me thanks.

A more distant but meaningful encounter with river life was in a large lagoon called Yanayaku (“black water” in the Quechua language) by the local fishing community. After a swim in the cool tannin-stained water we sat quietly on the skiffs watching the fins, and occasionally heads, of pink river dolphins as they fed near by. Too heavy and ungainly to leap out of the water, they co-exist with the smaller, more agile grey dolphins that I observed on my first morning. The dolphins are protected - not by law but by superstition. Luis told us: “If I kill one, my next child will die at birth, if I eat it, I will become impotent.” Used to being left alone by humans, they ignored us.

The next morning we went fishing for piranhas. We cast our rods made from horsehair grass stalks with hooks baited with beef. To my amazement I caught five of the red-bellied creatures with mouths full of fearsome teeth, although Raul the boatman threw most of mine back, too small for the crew's fried-fish supper.

We were four degrees south of the Equator and the humidity was 88 per cent, but the top deck of the Delfin was open-sided, so here we would flop on sofas before and after lunch. Delicious dishes made from fish, fruit and vegetables were prepared by two chefs in an open kitchen, and served on tables decorated with banana leaves, exotic flowers and raffia mats.

The dozen all-male crew, led by the Delfin's glamorous limeña owner, Lissy Machiavello, who bought and refurbished the boat two years ago with her former banker husband, were highly attentive. After a skiff outing, I would return to my cabin to find my scattered possessions in neat rows. Naturally untidy, I found this a pleasure to behold, but over dinner a fellow guest did mention that she felt that carefully folding her knickers was a service too far.

Carlos the barman mixed a knockout pisco sour - I had to have a lie- down between happy hour and dinner in my simple, but comfortable cabin (which had air-conditioning and a hot shower).

It was the end of the rainy season (November to April), and the water so high and the jungle so thick I can quite believe the guidebooks when they say that you can be 15m from a jaguar and not know it. Often, as we sailed by, I gradually realised we were only a few metres from a whole village of thatched huts. On the final afternoon our feet touched dry land for the only time when we went on a stroll through Yanalpa, a community with about 100 children, almost all of whom turned out to greet us when we reached the village green.

On our walk there along a narrow concrete path we saw abundant fruit and medicinal trees, greeted a young woman cleaning fish on a stone, and were ushered by Luis into a hut on stilts housing two families.

As six of us huddled between a hammock containing a sleeping toddler, and the kitchen table (with hens roosting beneath it), Luis showed us the simple cooking range and fishing spears balanced on the rafters.

The baby woke up and bawled, the chickens flapped off and the two householder sisters sat impassively on the wall outside. The village, which is supported by the Delfin with medical and other supplies, is used to the ship's weekly visits.

Before we left, the children lined up in a crocodile to sing us the Peruvian national anthem with their hands on their hearts, and receive one sweet each, bought by us. Before landing we had been told to bring change to buy sweets for the children, and I had been muttering about responsible tourism and the lack of dentists. But the children were so charming that I found myself chipping in and helping with the handout.

River life has its own rules.

NEED TO KNOW

Cox & Kings (020-7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk) has a nine-night tailor-made trip of seven nights on Delfin and two nights' B&B at the Orient-Express Miraflores Park hotel in Lima. The cost is from £2,930pp, including flights with KLM via Amsterdam, and LAN Peru, full board and all excursions on Delfin, city tours in Lima and Iquitos, and private transfers.

The Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel (00800 325 35353, www.sheraton.com) has rooms from £133.

Further information www.peru.info.

Reading Peru (Lonely Planet, £14.99).

Read Inka Kola: A Travellers Tale of Peru by Matthew Parris on his backpacking adventures (£5.99 from www.amazon.co.uk).

Watch Amazon with Bruce Parry: The adventurer continues his epic journey following the world's largest river from its source in Peru through Brazil and on to its mouth on the Atlantic (Mondays, BBC Two, 9pm).

Pack Full-size waterproof binoculars, such as Opticron Verano 8x42, £299 from In Focus (www.at-infocus.co.uk).

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