Amazon Adventure

We flew to Manaus and spent 2 nights at the wonderful downtown oasis, Hotel Villa Amazonia. We needed a chill day and we got it. Let's face it, Manaus is just another ugly, Brazilian city that doesn't warrant much of a stop. They are trying to gentrify the colonial centre but we were done in an hour or 2. We did enjoy dinner at Caxiri Manaus and on the second night we ate at Fitz, our hotel's on site restaurant.

Finding the right Amazon tour is tough. Many of the lodges closer to the city aren't even in the jungle anymore and lower end boat trips have you sleeping in hammocks or pitching tents.

In the end we paid quite a bit for Juma Jungle Lodge but it was worth it. Boat, Bus, Boat to get to the wooden lodge,  built on stilts in the river.  We loved our room and the view. The food was good, as were the cocktails. We did our birding and sightseeing trips by boat, loved seeing the river dolphins, including the pink dolphins and enjoyed more piranha fishing. The jungle walking was also good. The tour to a cultural village was condescending and we skipped the night caiman spotting trip. Back to Manaus for a night, then on to Sao Paulo and back to Johannesburg.