Who we are
Tanager Tours is a leading birding tours operator to birdwatching trips to Peru and other South American destinations; at the same time we are specialized Butterfly tour, photography, wildlife, nature and cultural trips in Peru. Company’s name alludes to the magnificent colors and diversity of South American tanagers and symbolizes the richness and variety of our tours.
Active in Peru since 1999, we trademark is a high degree of reliability against relatively low prices. We offer tailor-made tours as well as standard routes.
Our company has the best staff of professionals bird guides, logistic, drivers and cooks, who love birds and nature in general, enjoying our birding tours this passion makes this human group voyages of exploration and training looking for new routes to the delight of our customers.
We have a small but stable staff working exclusively for our company, this makes our services of exceptional quality and comfort for our customers.
All of our birding trips and tours have been well designed to maximize viewing bird specialties by area. Our staff are constantly exploring new remote areas and improving our tours to give you the best and true birding experience.
Tanager Tours is a small but stable travel agency. Our staff consists of excellent guides supported by reliable drivers. Our guides have extensive language skills, speaking Spanish, English, and Dutch. We have minimal overhead and advertising costs: Tanager Tours’ philosophy is that our customers will find us because we offer quality tours that result in satisfied clients.
Our quality is based on the use of reliable and robust equipment and keeping group sizes small – generally between 2 to 7 clients. To back up these strengths, our drivers are not just good chauffeurs, but also skilled mechanics.
We are realistic in what is possible when birding – although we also do our utmost to show our customers as much as possible of Peru’s splendour and do all we can to answer the clients’ wishes for endemic or difficult to find species, we do not build castles of air. Our strategy is to make a realistic plan, based on thorough correspondence, to attain our clients’ targets. Tanager Tours’ guiding principle is that our tours should surpass your expectations, not to evoke unrealistic expectations that we cannot substantiate. After all, birds remain birds, and that is exactly their attraction.
Tanager Tours offers a variety of birding tours in Peru, visiting an astounding diversity of habitats. Please have a look at the bird tours Peru page to get an impression of what is possible. It goes without saying that the various itineraries can be adjusted – the itineraries presented are based on the minimum number of days to make them successful, but adding days increases chances of finding hard to see or rare species.
These itineraries form templates for our Customized Tours and Fixed Departures. Most of our trips are small groups of birders who ask us to build itineraries for them, often using our standard itineraries and adding days where they have particular interest. The sky is the limit for these tours – we have the necessary experience in Peru to advise you as to what is feasible and how best to achieve your wishes, be they a long list of difficult endemics or a relaxing holiday in a birdwatching paradise. We vary our fixed departures from year to year, mostly based on previous successes and client feedback, but also because our guides are passionate birders, not simply list-builders – they truly enjoy birdwatching in all its variety, and it shows during our tours.
Not all of our clients are dawn-to-dusk birders – we regularly include visits to Peru’s many cultural attractions in our tours. We have two such itineraries, combining relatively relaxing birding with visits to Incan, Chachapoyan, and/or colonial historical sites. They can be found on our Nature / Culture Tours page. Of course customized tours in this vein are also possible.
During any journey, food it’s very important and Peru has an excellent cuisine, that’s why we have our own cook and equipment (chairs, tables, porcelain tableware)
An specialized member of our crew, will prepare meals for you during any of our tours offering a fresh, clean and taste food, this makes our tours more comfortable and enjoyable and we avoid a typical box lunch or sandwich everyday.
we avoid to have Driver-chef, this can be not safe for you, depending of the tour, we have long drivings and add extra responsibilities to one single person would be risk for everybody.
another advantage is; we can have breakfast and lunch, anywhere and anytime that we like, sometimes hotels don’t offer early breakfast, so we lost value time waiting for it, in some places, nowadays hotels offer early breakfast witch its good, but sometimes is not pleasant to eat early in the morning, so thinking in those details we offer breakfast and lunch on the field, this give us more chance to get our target and we spend more time in the field, birding or enjoying the nature, surrounded by amazing landscapes, breathing fresh air, instead to be waiting in the restaurant.
Please see our photo Gallery
Occasionally, Tanager Tours organize research trips to deepen our knowledge or to explore previously unknown areas. On these trips, we cannot guarantee what we’ll see or what traveling conditions we will encounter, but they offer good value for the adventurous birder. We often undertake very long drives, spend many nights camping, and use rustic accommodations and restaurants. Those interested in this kind of travel should contact us to see if we have anything planned.
Tanager Tours started as a specialist in Peruvian birding, but the enthusiasm of its staff to visit other areas in South America has led to cooperation with similar agencies in other countries. In particular, we are active in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina in conjunction with other local tour companies, and are working on building a partnership to offer tours. In general, the other agency organizes the ground logistics while we provide the guide (mostly Miguel Lezama).
David has been leading birding tours since 2000, mostly in Peru but also in other Andean countries, especially Colombia. His knowledge of South American birds always impresses clients and he has become one of the region’s most popular guides. Recently he has taken a keen interest in butterflies and is quickly becoming an expert on Andean species. David splits his time between Canada, where he is working towards a biology degree, and South America.
Miguel is a licensed Peruvian tour guide who has been studying birds since 2007. He began work in the Manu area, and now leads bird-watching tours all over Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. He enjoys exploring remote areas for the most exciting and mythical birds to create new birding routes for our costumers. He is one of the main guides for our tours, leading butterfly tours too, his knowledge about culture, History and Nature makes Miguel the best guide.
Alex is Peruvian, He was born in Puerto Maldonado in the tropical rainforest, his birdind skills are naturally develop while he was growing, nowadays he is one of the Top guides of the country his knowledge is incredible, he can ID any bird call and find any bird in the dense vegetation making Alex a great unique bird guide.
Silverio Was born in the Ese’Eja Native Community in Tambopata province in South Eastern Peru, He discover his birding skills working in his Community’s Eco-tourism project, since then he lead few birding tours in the Tambopata National Reserve until he got the opportunity to lead Birding tours for different companies, nowaday he lead tours all over Peru and Colombia and Northern Chile, and he had guided to some of the best Top ten birders worldwide whos now a days are the current living world #1.
Henry, lives in Tarapoto Northern Peru. he is one of the few bird guide living in this region. He started to train as a guide since 2007 until the present time. He worked by NGO projects, one fo them searching Peruvian endemic species «White-Masked Antbird», bird migration monitoring projects to propose new conservation areas and Nowadays he is guiding birding groups and its part of our team.
Vidal was born in Cusco, studied tourism at the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco, and in 2007 began using his passion for birds in Tambopata National Reserve and Manu National Park. In 2011 he started guiding for Tanager Tours.
Actually he is one of our main Cultural Bird tour Guide in all over Peru.
Juve began work as a driver for bird watching groups a long time ago. In 2002 he formed Tanager Tours with Wim and David. Nowadays he has an unrivalled knowledge of nearly all the established birding sites in Peru. He functions as a driver as well as a second guide. Juve is able to find the real skulkers and hidden birds, even better than most of guides. For trips in Central and North Peru he often acts as driver and guide. His knowledge of English is basic, so this is only an option for customers that speak some Spanish or accept a simpler communication. He is a driver with extensive experience in the field of tourism he is working over 20 years with great skill and knowledge of mechanics makes it one of the brilliant people last years has been working with birdwatchers groups this has sparked his passion for birds and now is part of Tanager tours family
Juan is a driver with extensive experience in the field of tourism for over 20 years. His gentle manner, great driving skill and knowledge of mechanics makes him one of the best drivers for birdwatchers and Butterfly tours, who knows all birding and butterfly spots, Juan sometimes travel by himself with some intrepid birders and butterfly photographers.
