Advertisement
Published: July 24th 2010
It's been a while since I updated the blog, but this week has been crazy. It seems like we've done too much to write it all, but I'll try to give some of the highlights.
We flew into Manaus, Brazil which is right at the heart of the Amazon. It was blazing hot and humid and exactly the climate you'd imagine here. We had a little over a week here and we really wanted to commit all of it to a hardcore jungle adventure and go as deep into the Amazon as possible. The first tour operator seemed great. It was everything that we were looking for. It began 100km from the city of Manaus in the Juma Reserve. They promised loads of hiking, camping, animals, and all the adventure we were looking for. They also said that we would go deeper into the jungle each day and so the longer we booked for, the deeper into the jungle we would get. The only problem was, it was a little more expensive than we were hoping.
We thought that we would be smart and at least talk to another tour operator to make sure that we were getting the
Canoeing through the jungle
You can see how the whole jungle was just completely floodedbest possible deal and the best possible tour. We quickly found another tour operator who also promised an amazing tour. The second tour offered seemed to include all of the same activities as the first. As a matter of fact, it seemed like the exact same tour just with a different company and slightly cheaper. There was only one main difference. It was on a different river. Manaus is located at the meeting of two giant rivers, the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, which come together and form the true Amazon River. The travel book has about one sentence mentioning that the Rio Negro has less mosquitoes, yet less animals as well. However, our tour guide assured us that there are the exact same animals in each location. It seemed to make sense to us since it was really just the same jungle and not really that far apart. So we ended up booking 7 days with the second company on the Rio Negro.
We left the following day with a young Dutch couple. We got on the boat to see the "Meeting of the Waters" where the two massive rivers meet. The two rivers have different sources, temperatures,
Sunset over the Amazon River
Here you can kind of tell how big the river is. pHs, colors, and speeds so they actually just flow side by side for miles without mixing. It was cool to see, but the English speaking guide that we were promised was not there and so we couldn't understand a single thing that our Portuguese speaking guide was telling us. The river was so much more massive than I ever imagined. It is several miles wide at many parts and there are massive freight ships all along the river. Just the river alone was spectacular to see. It really felt like we were in a black ocean.
We boated around the river for a bit and saw some massive water lilies that were about 4 feet across. We eventually met our tour guide who ended up actually speaking English. The only problem was he was just some American kid who had only been in Brazil for less than 3 months and didn't know a single thing about the jungle. When we went to the jungle lodge, where we were to sleep the first night, we chatted with a handful of other tourists that had already been there for a few days. They had all been promised about the same trip,
My baby piranha!
I swear there were some bigger ones. haha yet were receiving something drastically different. Apparently, everyone had just been doing little activities during the day and then been coming back to the lodge for lunch and dinner every day. There was a ton of wasted time just sitting in the lodge and waiting with absolutely nothing to do. We were pissed to find this out and the whole thing was quickly becoming a huge disappointment. Over the next 24 hours we: went piranha fishing without catching a single fish, went looking for the pink dolphins without seeing a dolphin, went caiman hunting without finding a caiman. We even woke up early to watch the sunrise but didn't even see that because it was too cloudy. Needless to say, it was a massive disappointment. The only good part of the trip was when we went on a hike and bumped into a tour from a different company and our American guide just told us to tag along with the other company. The other comany's guide was knowledgeable and taught us a ton about the jungle. Hesam and I, along with the Dutch couple we came with, were all fed up with the tour and decided to head back to
Manaus on the afternoon of just the second day. We figured, we didn't want to waste any more of our precious time on this pointless tour and planned on trying to get our money back and book another trip.
We got back to Manaus, and went back to the office to chat with the guy that sold us our tour. All four of us complained and told him all of the reasons why we were upset with the tour. He was actually very civil and said that he would have to talk with his boss and we would likely get some money back, but we would have to come back the following morning. In the meantime, we booked another trip with back on the Juma Reserve off the the Solimoes river like we had originally planned. We, unfortunately, couldn't go back the following day because we had to wait and get our money back so we had to kill a day in Manaus. While talking to the new tour operator, we heard some crazy stories about the first tour company including that they were all liars and schemers who don't pay their tour guides. We even heard that one
of them was recently shot because he owed money. We were skeptical about getting our money back the next day, to say the least. However, we showed up the next morning and, after a bit of arguing, got most of our money back. It was fair, but they were definitely worked up about the situation so we just booked it out of there the second we got our money.
We had to kill a day in Manaus that day and there isn't really much to do here so we were mostly wandering the streets and bored. At one point, I was messing with the settings on my camera and somehow (no joke) managed to accidentally delete every single photo on the memory card. That memory card had about 90% of the photos from our entire trip! I don't really know how it happened, but it did. Of course I was furious and panicked. However, after searching the internet, I found that there are programs to restore the deleted photos and that's actually what I'm doing now. It seems like it'll work, I hope.
That evening, we asked the guy that we bought the second tour from if he
knew of a cheap place to say that night because the place that we were staying at was horrible. He was super nice and actually offered to let us stay at his house for about 9 bucks a person. His place was clean and nice and his wife cooked us breakfast in the morning. It was pretty cool to stay at a local's house. The next morning we were off on our new 4 day jungle tour on the Juma Reserve. The second tour was absolutely spectacular. We did too much to tell it all, but I'll tell the best parts.
On the first day, we went fishing for piranhas at some random little spot along the side of the river. Our equipment was just a hook tied to about 6 feet of fishing line and tied to the end of a stick. We would bait the hook with a small piece of raw chicken and then drop the line into the water. Without fail, within about 10 seconds either the chicken was eaten off the hook or there was a piranha on the end of the line! It was crazy. We caught tons of them. However, there was
My weaving creation
It is a fish if you cant tell one problem. What were we supposed to do after we caught them? The ones we were catching were actually a lot smaller than I expected; only a between 4 and 6 inches long. Everyone was too scared to grab them to pull them off the hook. Finally, I mustered up the courage to grab one and unhook it. After this, I immediately became the official unhooker for everyone and had to take the piranha off of everyone's hook.
That same night, we went caiman hunting. Instead of going far from the lodge looking for caiman like you might expect, we actually just crossed the river and spotted one just 100 yards or so from the lodge. We went in the dark and, using a flashlight, the guide spotted the red reflections from the eyes of a caiman. He was fearless and just jumped in and grabbed it with his bare hands. It wasn't huge, probably just over 3 feet long, but it was pretty bold of him either way. He brought it back onto the boat and we took it back to the lodge so we could see it in the light. He explained all about caiman and then
we each got to take turns holding it and taking photos. Eventually, we thew it back into the water right in front of the lodge.
The following day we did a pretty standard hike through the jungle where our guide taught us all about the wildlife and the plants. We saw the rubber trees and learned how to make latex, made natural chewing gum from the sap of a tree, saw the tree that they use to treat malaria, plants used for incense, perfume, Vick's Vapor Rub, and tons more. It was pretty spectacular to see how many natural resources were found in the jungle. Along the way and throughout the few days, we saw tons of monkeys, sloths, tarantulas, iguanas and tons of other jungle animals. One tree he showed us had a giant nut that would fall from it. He broke open the nut and there were these giant worms living inside it. They looked like huge grubs about an inch and half long, white, thick, soft and disgusting. They weren't moving, but apparently they live in the nut. The guide told us that they are edible and claimed they tasted like "coconut icecream." I was disgusted,
but had to try it. When I bit it, the insides gushed out and got all gooey. It actually wasn't terrible tasting and did somewhat taste like coconut, but the texture and the thought of what I was eating was way too much to enjoy.
That night we camped out in the jungle. We strung up all of our hammocks under a palm frond overhang that was already made for us. Then we roasted chickens on the end of sticks over an open fire. The food was absolutely delicious. After dinner, we we made some caipirinha from the cachaça. It was basically a delicious cocktail made from a Brazilian liquor. We made one huge helping of it in a big cooking cauldron and then just passed it around all night. It was Hesam and I, a British pair, a Dutch couple, a Brazilian couple, and a lady from Germany. We stayed up chatting into the night and it was a great ending to a fun day. That is, however, until about 4AM when we woke up and had to pee. At that time, it was still pitch black and the jungle was the loudest I have ever heard. I
would have been fine to go out and pee in the dark if it was just the regular sounds of birds and insects, but it definitely wasn't. There was this incredibly loud roaring that was echoing through the trees and I had no idea what it was coming from. I was way to scared to get out of my hammock. Finally, the Dutch guy woke up and we ended up going together. It was pretty hard to sleep the rest of the night with that mysterious sound.
The next day we went on another jungle hike, but much further into the jungle. After walking for a few hours, our guide showed us how the locals use the palm fronds to weave roofs and whatever else. We weaved little fish and fans and place mats, while he made whistles, pipes and cranes. When it started getting close to lunch time we decided to head back. It quickly became apparent that we were lost. We zigzagged through the jungle for an hour and a half or so without finding a single trail. Eventually he just left us and went looking for the trail on his own. A bit later, he came
back without finding it. We started walking again until we eventually found the trail and made it back to our boat. We were only lost for an hour and a half or so, but at the time, it seemed like ages.
After the hike, we went back, ate, napped, and then went off to set up our new camp. We got a late start because of the nap and getting lost in the jungle, so the sun set while we were on the boat still. Instead of getting to shore and setting up camp before we set out to do anything else, the guide decided that we should go looking for snakes before we set up camp. We canoed around through the flooded jungle, shining our lights into the trees to try to spot the reflections of the snake's eyes. It was pretty spectacular canoeing through the trees and through the jungle in the dark. Eventually however, a storm moved in. It's amazing how fast storms can move in in the Amazon. Either way, next thing we knew, it was absolutely pouring rain and we were stuck on that little canoe. That was one moment where it really hit
The last half of the group
This is also the river I swam in with the piranhas! They were catching them right next to the canoes. me how spectacular this trip is. We were sitting in a tiny canoe, paddling (not walking) through the thick jungle, in the dark, in the pouring rain, without a campsite to sleep at, while looking for snakes! We ended up not really seeing any, just a ton of caiman. We gave up, found a campsite, made an awesome fort out of the tarp, and set up our hammocks. It was still raining so it was too hard to make dinner and fire, so we just went to bed without eating.
The last day, we ate breakfast at a local family's house where we got to play with their pet monkey. It wasn't on a leash or anything. It was just a wild baby one that the father had rescued from the river. We saw a rubber plantation and then went back to the city. After that, we began our long trek to Cairo, where we just arrived. We took a 4 hour flight from Sao Paulo, then a 14.5 hour flight from Sao Paulo to Dubai. That was the longest flight I've ever been on. I watched 4 full movies, read half a book, ate two full meals, and still had time to sleep. We spent the night in the Dubai airport and then flew to Cairo. Tomorrow is pyramids and the oldest bazaar in the world!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.045s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0201s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Noreen
non-member comment
Fish
Hello, I love the pictures. Great story!! :) Noreen (California)