To reach Manú, Peru’s gloriously diverse but “highly inaccessible” national park, you’ll have to forget planes, trains, and automobiles and try pushing a boat up an Amazonian river. That’s how photographer Charlie Hamilton James reached the remote communities he documented while working on a National Geographic assignment there. “It was the stuff you get excited about when you’re a kid,” Hamilton James says, “but the reality of it is that it’s a real pain.”

Manú might be hard to get to, but its remoteness is part of the reason it’s remained so pristine. (The park is also a biosphere reserve and a World Heritage site.) "Although lots of places claim to be the most biodiverse on Earth, Manú is