Paradise Amazon Lodge & Adventure

Fantastic stay at the lovely lodge. Rooms were very comfortable. Food excellent. Activities very well planned - particularly enjoyed the Lake Sandoval tour and the zip-line. Our guide Franklin was superb, very knowledgeable, excellent English and a dry sense of humour. He also made sure we were on time for all our activities. On the last day we had JJ as our guide, who was also superb. All in all a very good value lodge with excellent guides.

We booked the 4D 3N Tambopata Clay Lick tour through Palotoa Amazon Travel, and stayed at the Paradise Eco Amazon Lodge & Adventure for 2 of those nights (I have reviewed Palotoa and the other lodge, Collpas Tambopata Inn, separately). This is a decent lodge and we recommend it. However we felt there are a couple of things that could be improved before it deserves 5 stars - we have had the good fortune of doing an Amazon tour in Brazil, which was cheaper and better, and this forms the basis of our comparison and how this tour could be improved. First though, the good things; the activities were all good. First day involved the canopy bridge walk & zipline, followed by a visit to Monkey Island (a conservation project that releases previously trafficked / illegally kept monkeys into the wild), and then a nighttime caiman search on the boat. Second day involved an early start to go to Lake Sandoval in search of giant river otters - unfortunately we didn’t see any, but we did see a caiman and lots of birds. A chilled afternoon was followed by a night walk in search of bugs! Improvement 1: communication between host/guides and guests. For example, there was no introductory talk (this was saved for the tidal wave of local day guests who come for the canopy walk & Monkey Island) so nobody told us the power goes on and off at random times. I was having a shower when the lights went out at 9pm; this also meant I couldn’t charge my phone/camera for the next day (luckily I had a power bank)! Another instance was on our way to Monkey Island; we were invited to kayak on the unfortunately ugly Madre de Dios river to get to Monkey Island. About 15mins after setting off, our boat called us over and we were informed other guests (the tidal wave of day guests) wanted to give kayaking a go. Ok fine, but why didn’t you tell us we would be swapping in and out? Also the amount of guests on the boat - about 20 - meant not enough life jackets. A final example involves the visit to Lake Sandoval - after a meagre 5am breakfast, nobody told us there would be opportunities to buy coffee and snacks by the lake; obviously I had left my wallet back at the lodge. Improvement 2: consistency of meals. Some were amazing and plentiful, but others were a bit disappointing and left us feeling hungry after only an hour or two, meaning we had to pay out for the expensive snacks on offer. Overall, we stayed positive and still had a good time. But we couldn’t help wish for our Brazilian Amazon adventure at times, and we were left wondering would a different Amazon experience from another lodge in Puerto Maldonado have been better?