When visiting Peru, the Amazon rainforest is only a 25-minute jet flight from the Inca capital of Cuzco, and once you land, the wildest, most remote, yet accessible Amazon destination in Peru is the Heath River, which lies two hours from the Puerto Maldonado airport in the lowland rainforest at the Peru/Bolivia border. This sinuous, 80-meter-wide, tropical river flows out of the heart of the world’s largest uninhabited, unhunted tropical rainforest: the two-million-hectare (five-million-acre) rainforest wilderness of the Tambopata National Reserve and Madidi National Park.

The only lodging on these five million acres is the intimate Heath River Wildlife Center, which features the world’s only private, close-up viewing of a large macaw clay lick, two wildlife-rich oxbow lakes, and an extensive trail system that leads to a private, wild tropical “pampas” or savanna covering 13,000 acres. In addition to the spectacular macaws and parrots at the clay lick, a visit to Heath River Wildlife Center offers a very good chance of seeing both Giant Otter and Jaguar, and the savanna harbors endangered Maned Wolves, the world’s tallest and most elegant wild canid. Other attractions near the lodge include a roofed viewing blind above a natural clay lick that is visited almost nightly by Brazilian Tapirs, the largest land animal of South America, and a large, double-decker canopy at 100 feet up in a gigantic Cotton Kapok Tree. Electric fans make for a comfortable rest deep in the wilds.