Into the Amazon...

Mike of the Jungle...arghhhhhhhhh
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Well, we finally left the lovely (though sometimes slightly intimidating) Rio after a lovely final day on the beach and headed off to the airport. Arrived in Manaus to pouring tropical rain thinking – uh oh! We were met by our guide for the jungle trip, Eddie and then met the rest of our group – Mark, Dave, Ashley and Scott who were visiting from the USA. What a great bunch of people to spend our journey with – we really were lucky! We got a taxi then a boat that took us down the Rio Negro to the Ecopark lodge. It was hammering down with rain and we had tarpaulin down so you couldn’t see much at first! We arrived at the beautiful lodge in the rainforest with a sandy beach onto the river and after a bit of time to sort ourselves out headed straight out with Eddie and the gang to see monkeys and do some piranha fishing! The monkeys were more than we bargained for as they were in the mating season and the males were very aggressive…not so cute and cuddly when they attacked one of the guides and bit his leg then nabbed his big stick themselves! So we made a hasty retreat to the boat and headed off to see if the piranhas were friendlier!

me Jane...
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We really got lucky – Mike caught a piranha first then me a few minutes later – the guides were quite adept at it but we were really pleased we both got one! Their teeth are sooo sharp! We also found a metre long Caiman lurking in the trees in the flooded forest so the guides started chucking in meat for him too!

tarzan style

Our journey continued the following morning when we entered the rain forest with our guide. Amazing place…found a tarzan style vine and swung from it, put our hands on a ants nest, letting the ants crawl all over our hands, then squishing them, smelt like perfume (local hunters cover themselves to disguise their scent from the jaguars). Thought we’d try out some hammocks back at the lodge, however the large red macaw parrot had other ideas, as I very nearly lost a digit as it went for my toes!!!!! Then on to the tribal village, bit touristy but they painted mad’s face and then made her dance around the room, oh the ammunition!! Some amazing views as the sun set over the rain forest! We braved the dark on a quest to find caiman’s and headed out in a leaky paddle canoe, well just look at the pictures for the vicious angry beasty we found!

clubbing...amazon style
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The next day we headed out on the river boat in the sweltering heat to the meeting of the waters, where the rio negro meets the amazon river, pretty cool but a long trip. Managed to spot the elusive pink dolphins surfacing in the river, very exciting as sightings are quite rare!

We headed out the next day for our final trip before we headed for the airport, back to monkey island, yes after only one person got bitten last time we thought it would be an excellent idea to offer ourselves up once more!!! They were calmer on this occasion and all was well. Mad was hugged and I was jumped on by monkeys, very cute! One even looked like phil Mitchell!!! A fantastic end to our amazon adventure! Onwards to Bonito…