Peru

Peru is the Amazon at its most theatrical, and you don't book a room here so much as a package. The jungle splits into three pockets: the lowland forest of Tambopata in the southeast, reached through Puerto Maldonado; the deep river country around Iquitos in the far north, a city with no roads in, only flights and boats; and the Andean cloud forest strung along the Manu road out of Cusco. Macaws gather at clay licks the locals call collpas, and the noise they make at dawn is the closest thing the jungle has to a brass band.

Getting there is half the trip. You fly domestic to PEM, IQT or CUZ, then hand yourself over to the lodge — a road transfer, then a motorized riverboat that can run two or three hours upstream. Iquitos is the extreme case: you reach it only by air or river, never by car. The Manu lodges sit at the end of a long 4x4 drive that eats most of a day. Almost nobody sells a single night; the model is all-inclusive multi-day, meals and guided excursions bundled in.

Dry season, May to October, is the reliable window for wildlife and trails. The wet months, November to April, are cheaper, and around Iquitos the high water from December to May actually helps — boats float deeper into flooded forest you'd otherwise walk past. Wildlife is the whole point: giant river otters, pink and gray river dolphins, capybara, howler and squirrel monkeys, and up in the cloud forest the absurd scarlet Andean cock-of-the-rock putting on its morning display.