Welcome to the Jungle

When I was seven years old, I was obsessed with a computer game called Amazon Trail, which involved canoeing down the Amazon River and taking photos of exotic animals like capybaras and toucans. Ever since then, I’ve dreamed of visiting the Amazon Rainforest and living out the game. My dream came true in February, when I headed to the Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, Brazil, for a four day boat/jungle tour.

Upon arrival in Manaus, we hopped on a boat and traded this: 

For this:

That picture is for real. We stayed in a floating jungle lodge, which is basically a giant log house with no electricity or lighting. The lodge floats up and down with the water level, which rises 14 meters higher during wet season (I’m finally learning the metric system!). 

The above home is not the exact one we stayed at, but it is a close approximation. Each day, we would go on a tour of the rainforest or the river, returning to our rooms at night just to eat fish by candlelight. 

We trekked through the forest, and I was attacked by fire ants despite my efforts to jump and tiptoe along the ground. 

Our guide, José, showed us how to tap rubber from trees and explained the medicinal purposes of all the plants. He also showed us how to climb up an açai tree in 20 seconds. On the boat on the way to the forest, I sat next to José and he told me his life story about growing up in a village in the rainforest with only two other families. He left Brazil to become a drug trafficker in Colombia when he was 14. After a few years, he had to flee from FARC and escaped to Venezuela, where he lived with an indigenous tribe for six months. He eventually returned to Manaus to learn English and become a tour guide. 

Among the animals we spotted (or rather, José spotted them for us): tarantula, anteater, monkeys, various birds, snakes (sadly no anacondas), and lizards.

This dog kept following us. I fell in love with the monkey riding on his back. Click below to read about how we almost died camping in the rainforest:

One night, a native guide took us into the forest, where we planned to spend the night in hammocks. I found this banana tree on the way.

We built a fire so we could roast chicken, despite the fact that it was pouring rain. I guess that’s why they call it the rainforest.

In our group were four Americans, three Germans, and five Russians. The Russians, true to stereotype, proceeded to open a bottle of caçacha and start drinking while the rest of us set up our hammocks in the forest. The guide built a log structure and we tied each end of the hammocks to a log.

Me, smiling, in my hammock. Unfortunately, when all of us climbed into our hammocks, the log structure collapsed under the weight. 

My friend Ricky and I, ensconced in mosquito nets on the ground after our hammocks fell out from under us. Our guide couldn’t reconstruct the structure in the rain, so we hiked out of the forest in the dark and slept on floor mattresses at his little house on the edge of the forest. I should mention that the Russians were drunk and refused to leave the forest, so they slept on the dirt, in the rain. They asked the guide for his machete for protection, but he knew better than to give it to them. I slept like a baby, and in the morning we took a boat back to the jungle lodge. Part two: water adventures is up next.