Ibis Manaus

... plátano, cana de açúcar, coca e marijuana, tudo coisinhas orgânicas - eheh), foi colocado no mapa mundo por Pablo Escobar faz anos! Diga-se o que se disser do homem, culpe-se o mesmo por todas as tropelias e assassinatos a seu mandato executados, mas é ele a imagem da Colômbia! Certo, certinho que o grande homem por cá é mesmo o Venezuelano Símon Bolívar, afinal, foi ele quem começou a trabalhar na independência destes meninos e foi também o primeiro presidente deles (9999, ainda era ...

... small compared to the saltwater dolphins I&#8217;ve seen before, it was amazing to see them fishing for their dinner, sometimes jumping out of the water. We were lucky enough to see the pink river dolphins of the Amazon too, which were much bigger and slower, and do not tend to travel in groups like the grey ones.<br><br> Following the wildlife watching we headed to a nearby lake to do a bit of piranha fishing to see if we could catch ...

... relaxing, with no electricity. However, there were a noisy frog croaking during our sleep. Ok, I thought, I&#8217;m on the jungle!!<br>The most amazing thing on the tour was the overnight on the jungle. I went with more two polish couple, and the Indian guide. We two are Brazilian, with 24 years, but such two different lives! Starting for the language. The guy, Charlie was his name, spoke so great English, better ...

... was often smoked as a cigar type thing. We ate barbequed grubs buried in coconut seeds, and palm heart from one of the trees. Ceciliano and Herman made us bracelets from the bark of a particular tree, and crowns from the fronds of a type of palm. They also cut us spears from another type of tree. It was brilliant, but by the time we got back we were knackered and hot, and so went for a swim in the river to cool ...

... the river system, to a more remote part of the jungle. Once our guides had found somewhere suitable looking we set up camp. After an hour or so we had our hammocks up, covered by mosquito nets, under a palm leaf roof! We ate dinner at dusk surrounded by mosquitos, and headed straight to bed after at only 7pm, after seeing what might have been quite a dangerous snake when we were brushing our teeth!<br><br>Once we were in our hammocks, Herman told us some ...

... right on the trail where we were walking. For me, I felt far out of my comfort zone and quite scared. Worst point was when I had to go for a bush pee in the pitch black forest after this walk just before sleeping: this was completely terrifying! Luckily Cris looked after me very well, but I was extremely pleased when dawn came and we could leave the dense jungle. On our way back, one of the canoes submerged completely twice, leaving its canoeist swimming around ...

... of the reserve. In other Amazon reserves, local people typically have no incentive to abide by the reserve restrictions, so common Amazon practices of slash and burn clearing, logging, overfishing, hunting and dolphin killing still continue despite reserve restrictions. In these reserves, enforcement of the restrictions is left to underpaid rangers, who are often bribed or extorted into looking the other way. Not surprisingly, the Mamirua program ...

... went out in the motor boat searching for wildlife or to visit the lake and return late spot lighting. The spotlighting was great fun. The Caimans eyes in the spot light were like city lights as there were so many in the water, all glowing a bright menacing orange. We also came so close to the Caimans that as they rolled away they set the boat rocking. That and with fish jumping in our boat it kept us all alert. We visited a couple of research stations; firstly the Boto research centre, the ...

... living in the thatched roofs of our floating bungalows! - mainly bats, we discovered. The one thing which did not mke a lot of noise was the caimans (crocodiles) - lots of them around us! There is a wide variety of activities arranged - all accompanied by experienced, excellent and helpful guides. The main ones are walks of 3-4 hours in the jungle and rather pleasant canoe trips (rowed by the guide) and actually quite good for spotting ...

... and Kingsley even managed to get close enough to take a look. Feeling better, having managed lunch and having been bitten by numerous mosquitos; I decided that I should take another malaria tablet. We then set off for an afternoon canoe trip. We had a wonderful time. We saw two sloths. The first was climbing (quickly I must note) but up into the canopy after some food) and the second with baby in tow was in plain site and looked down at us with wise old eyes. We also saw ...