An Amazonian birthday

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There is so much variety in the cities of Brazil and I’ve travelled from the cool, edginess of Sao Paulo in the South, up through the chilled and beautiful Eastern coastal cities to the Northern tropical lushness of Manaus.

It’s from Manaus that we started our 2-day trip in the Amazon, to spend my birthday there. The river, and whole region, is absolutely huge. We took 2 buses and 2 speedboats, totalling 3 hours travel, to get to our jungle lodge. The lodge was beautiful and we had our own wooden hut with a thatched roof to spend the night in. It was an amazingly authentic experience as the lodge was run by a family that lived there permanently and we ate all our meals with them, as well as them accompanying us into the rainforest.

In such a short space of time we saw so much and did so many different things. I caught a big black piranha, and then ate it for dinner. We went Caiman spotting at night and Alex held one that our Amazon Green Tour guide, Elso, had grabbed straight out the river. We trekked through the forest and ate nuts and bugs on the way. I still can’t believe that in the 30 hours we were there we saw grey and pink dolphins, a 3-toed sloth, capuchin monkeys, a hummingbird, herons, vultures, an alligator, fireflies and loads of other insects, birds, butterflies and spiders. Truly amazing and very noisy.

I’ve loved every bit of the past 3 weeks. This country has the tastiest meat and street food, the yummiest caipirinha drinks, the best music and party atmosphere, amazing things to see and do every day and I don’t want to leave at all.

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Comments

[gibbo]

i have to say that picture is the best one ever!! total classic. i love your updates though they are making me seriously jealous!! xx

[anonymous]

I thought you were spending your b-day in Hawaii- what happened? Ahh the Amazon- so much fun! Did you not find Manaus stifling hot- I was sweating at night time- just wrong. xx

[rtwtravel]

Almost - I was meant to be spending my birthday in Mexico, but Mexico got cancelled, with Hawaii as a replacement. But, we're doing all of South America first, and then going to Hawaii for 2 weeks before coming home. Manaus wasn't too bad when we were there, no sweating at night, just a giant frog in the room!