visit the Amazon rainforest

Trip to Brazil booked

I’ll be in Peru and Chile starting in February and wanted to visit the Amazon. Time isn’t really a big factor and my friend and I speak English and Spanish. We want to do the trip relatively inexpensively, but with a guide and including a lot of hiking/backpacking. Any advice on such things as which city to start in (Manuas, I’m guessing), how to find a good guide, what to see, which parks to visit, would all be very much appreciated.

Just imagine what it would be like to be there. Total inspiration all the time. Natures wonders!

I spent a couple of weeks in a jungle town in bolivia and did a couple of expeditions, one to the pampas (wetlands) and one ot the selvas (rainforest).

The pampas were awesome, we had a couple of aligators in our camp that would hide behind the toilets at night, monkeys we would feed pancakes too, and at night we even had a couple of bats in our room. Going to a bar at night in our canoe was also fun, as well as meeting the family that lived there. The highlight was wakeboarding down the amazon river on the back of a dug out canoe :)

After that I did a trip to the selvas whcih I knew would suck a bit, especially in wet season. we hiked for an hour and a half to ge tot camp, wading through 3ft deep fast moving rivers and being eaten alive by insects. I did see some interesting stuff, but I was glad to leave, possibly the group I weren’t the best.

The town was cool, I ended up stuck there as the airport closed. the river got too wet, and the roads washed away. Us backpackers whiled away the nights in the bar in town.

In August 1005, I spent 16 days in Peru of which eight days were spent in the Amazon rainforest. First was a plane trip from Lima to Iquitos, the jungle city which cannot be reached by road. Then, I traveled on a speedboat 50 miles up the Amazon and 40 miles up the Tahuayo River to the rainforest lodge run by Amazonia Expeditions owned and managed by Paul and Dolly Beaver. It sits adjacent to the Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo Bioreserve, one of the most diverse reserves in the world.

It was a super trip! I swam in the Tahuayo, Rio Blanco, and Amazon rivers (with pink dolphins!), paddled a dugout canoe, hiked the jungle every day seeing all sorts of interesting flora and fauna, went 100 feet into the canopy on a zipline from tree to tree three times, held a young anaconda, several woolly monkeys, a baby peccary, and an agouti, visited several Ribereno indian villages, was blessed by a medicine woman, and enjoyed meeting people from all over the world. It was the fulfillment of a dream I’ve had since childhood.

Dr. Paul Beaver of Amazonia Expeditions is the only person whom the Peruvian government permits to escort people into the bioreserve. It’s a reputable tour company that I would highly recommend. The cabins are comfortable and the food plentiful and delicious. One of their features is daily laundry service and the best was that I had my own guide to personalize what I wanted to do each day. I am so happy I went and would encourage you to fulfill your dream too.