The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
25 ways to ramble in the jungle
From gorilla encounters in Uganda to ancient Mayan ruins in Belize, Richard Madden has the experience for you
Jungles can be magical places. Unforgettable memories come instantly to mind. Sifaka lemurs dancing across the forest floor in Madagascar; a giant silverback gorilla cradling his infant offspring in the mountains of Uganda; shafts of sunlight, like spotlights on a stage, piercing the rainforest canopy in Costa Rica; gazing out over the junglecovered Sierra Nevada mountains from the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) in northern Colombia.
But jungles can be scary places, too. I remember once losing my bearings in the rainforest of Belize while exploring a Mayan temple. Then there was the time I came face to flicking tongue with a black mamba in Tanzania and that strange mixture of excitement and terror on a night walk in the Amazon. But perhaps most intimidating of all was being surrounded by a group of chimpanzees on a “border patrol” in the Kibale Forest of southern Uganda.
I was taking part in a project habituating chimpanzees to visits by small groups of human visitors. Bipedal, screeching demonically, and with their fur standing on end, they charged within a few feet of us towards a rival group hidden in the undergrowth. All memories, scary or heart-warming, that I wouldn’t change for the world. And perhaps this explains the current surge in popularity for jungle getaways.
Even the brief disappearance of Benedict Allen in the jungles of Papua New Guinea sparked a debate in which many people empathised with the celebrity explorer’s need to swap the material comfort of the urban jungle with the self-reliance required in the world of a real one.
The term “jungle” itself is sometimes loosely defined. After all, when does a forest become a jungle? Yearround warmth seems to be the defining factor, along with the regular deluges that make the world’s rainforests some of the most biodiverse habitats on the planet. Diminishing at an alarming rate, the largest concentrations of pristine rainforest are to be found in Central America, the Amazon basin in South America, Central and Western Africa, south-east Asia and the east coast of Australia.
Understandably on a hard-earned holiday, most of us prefer to enjoy our jungle adventures in the safety of a guided group, while staying at a comfortable ecolodge. Here we can safely immerse ourselves in nature while enjoying the antics of exotic monkey species on walks with the possibility of sighting rare species like a quetzal, the long-tailed multicoloured bird that once provided the feathers for the headdresses of Mayan chieftains, or jungle cats like jaguars.
I came relatively late to the attractions of the world’s jungles. But when I did, I was hooked. My revelation occurred when I was asked to present some episodes for a travel series called Trailblazers made by the Discovery Channel.
One of my briefs was to explore the rainforests of Costa Rica. During three weeks on the road in a crew of five, we travelled from the Caribbean coast to the Pacific coast taking in such gems as the central Monteverde Cloud Forest and the Parque Nacional Corcovado, which covers much of the Osa Peninsula in the west. This is home to such inhabitants as the highly endangered giant anteater, tapir, harpy eagle and almost all of Central America’s cats, namely jaguars, ocelots, pumas, jaguarundi and margays.
Along the way I rode horses, trekked through the jungle, sighted a quetzal, canoed along jungle rivers and caught a record-breaking tarpon (being on TV, I still have the evidence).
I played trumpet with a mariachi band, strode manfully along the beach where Columbus first landed in the Americas and spent a night in the canopy of the rainforest meeting nocturnal inhabitants that included the wide-eyed kinkajou (aka the “honey bear”). Any visitor to this country can replicate these activities – with the exception, perhaps, of that obliging mariachi player.
Synonymous with the term “eco”, Costa Rica leads the way in providing sustainable holiday options and is home to some of the world’s best jungle ecolodges. It seemed entirely appropriate that the ubiquitous Costa Rican greeting of “pura vida” means, in its literal sense, the wish for a pure or simple life.
More energetic jungle experiences include trekking the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, where the Australians famously fought off the Japanese attempt during the Second World War to capture Port Moresby.
Rising and falling 20,000ft along the 60-mile (97km) route, it has been described as “the devil’s design, the ultimate military obstacle course”, a tortuous switchback of steep ascents and treacherous drop-offs, swollen rivers, huge rocks and tangled roots. Nevertheless, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life.
The same applies to the shorter, but nonetheless challenging, trek to the Ciudad Perdida in Colombia. Hidden under the jungle until 1976, it was once the sacred city of the local Tayrona people whose descendants, the Kogi, still live in the mountains. The trek so inspired me that it later provided the setting for the children’s adventure novel ( Mission Survival One: Gold of the Gods) which I penned as a ghostwriter for the TV adventurer, Bear Grylls.
The possibilities for life-enhancing jungle experiences are many and varied. When managed responsibly, they can also help preserve fragile ecosystems and fund conservation projects by providing employment to locals. My choices on these pages include versions of all my experiences above and many more besides.
Pura vida a todos!