Amazon Village Jungle Lodge Amazon River

... dá-se ao kick, e siga de acelarador. E puff... mais um meio de transporte! Baptizei a coisa de Motrain, que vos parece? Claro que um, a certo momento da jornada, pára para pensar e questiona-se sobre como vai ser quando outro motrain nos surgir pela frente, tanto mais porque não estou para tirar o castelo de mochilas. Pareceu-me que quando tal acontece, é sempre a viatura mais ligeira a dar passagem, mas também pode ter sido porque eu ia na frente e pensaram que eram os conquistadores ...

... the rising temperatures and humidity but we learnt a lot about the jungle and had a lot of fun. Ceciliano led the way, carving out a path with his machete, and we stopped at various trees and plants when Herman would explain things about the plants properties and the indigenous people's cultures. One tree's sap smelt of deep heat, another was rosewood, one gave a gluey rubbery sap, and the small branches of ...

... stories about the jungle to pass the time, but I think we were both content just listening to the sounds of the rainforest, which comes alive at night. The loudest things were the many types of frogs and the screaming of howler monkeys. A number of times we heard some loud rustling noises close to the camp and our guides got up a few times to investigate, but we survived the night, in part due to Ceciliano's loud snoring probably scaring the animals away!

... cafeteria after dinner. Three days and pounds of spaghetti later, we arrived in Tabatinga, Brazil. A quick taxi took us across the border to Columbia whose ciity of Leticia had nicer hotels. From here, we planned to catch a flight the next day farther upriver to Iquitos, Peru and fromthere fly to Lima. We were happy to be off our beans, rice and spaghetti diet but sad to know, or think (see next blog entry), that our Amazon experience would soon end.

... and consistency.

We then were off for a 2 night stay in a Jungle lodge in the Amazon. There have been huge floods in the Amazon recently which have been the worst since 1953, we got told the lodge we were staying at had been affected quite badly with around 80% under water. After about an hour journey through the river in a dug out canoe (sore butts yet again) we arrived and understood what they meant, the whole kitchen and dining area of the ...

Landing in Manaus was incredible. I had no idea before just how many rivers are flowing together there, nor many of the amazing statistics we were constantly told about the Amazon over the next week or so.

We spent a few days in the city here which was also surprising with 2 millon people living in a huge place in the middle of the jungle making tvs and stereos to be shipped everywhere. Seeing oil tankers 5 days from the sea that can go up to the Peruvian border was also a ...

... wrecked to pieces so you've got to travel for days on end to reach some REAL jungle, time I didn't have, and I had had my true jungle experience in Bolivia anyways, where it's more pristine and still not so far out of civilization, simply because the country isn't as industrialized as Brazil. But there was this one place I knew I wanted to see in Manaus, which is a very unique experience - "The Meeting of the Waters" or Encontro das Aguas. I had read about it and ...

... Brazilian girls, Juana (12) and Luiani (11) who loved to follow Kylie, Trudy and I around the boat. They even brought out their school book that was supposedly teaching them Spanish and English - although to me the English seemed quite hard. A beginner doesn´t need to know that the plural of knife is knives do they? We were surprisingly close to the bank and could watch the jungle and pastures go by. Indigenous kids would row canoes out to the boat (they looked ...