AMAZING AMAZON ADVENTURE

Stacey shares her experience discovering the incredible Amazon, including once in a lifetime moments!

A Bucket list tick for me was the Amazon Rain Forest, I finally made it there after waiting many years, in April 2023! I absolutely love my plants and animals  (I have a house/property full of both) so naturally the Amazon Rain Forest was going to amaze me!

I was in total awe however, words cannot describe this magical place/experience.

We arrived in to the local airport at about 11am and got picked up by the company Amazon Rain Forest Expeditions; we were greeted warmly and headed off in a van with 6 others to the main headquarters to regroup, travelling with me, it was myself and my best friend Caroline.

Once at the headquarters, we waited for everyone to get sorted then we were off on our way, 40 minutes in the van, then we arrived at the Amazon River!

We walked down a wooden plank and were guided into the wee motor boats, the guides helping us in; think long like a waka but narrow – only1.2 m wide. We had 8 guests on board and our 3 guides. There was 11 passengers in our boat, once seated that’s it – you do not move! Don’t rock the boat or you’ll all be in the water!

We meet our guide Louis – he was dedicated to the two of us 24/7 for our trip and his main goal was to ensure we had a great time and to get us out of the Amazon alive.

After hopping in the boat with a rich brown river beneath us, the motor was started up and we were off.

We meet numerous animals along the river on our way such as capybara, caymen, otters,  etc the guides pointed everything out, in case we hadn’t spotted something yet- we all had our binoculars looking in the tress for wildlife as well. The boat would stop and everyone got a closer look – about 1 -2 metres away from what we were spotting.

All this excitement and we hadn’t even got to our accommodation yet! My camera was already going non-stop.

After 60 minutes we arrived to our accommodation, we watched a welcome video, got our room keys, and dropped our bags off. Louis asked “ok, the schedule is up to you two what would you like to do? Rest? Eat? Have a look around? Or go straight out and walk in the Amazon and spot wildlife?”

We didn’t have to be asked twice – lets go walking in the Amazon and start seeing the wildlife!

This was approx. 2pm in the afternoon, a sunny day and 34 degrees. We had a quick change and checked out our room, got our back packs and water bottles/snacks.

We were out for a few hours walking in the massive Amazon jungle, it was just incredible – we saw several types of Monkeys, lots of different types of spiders, beetles, frogs, flowers, and plants. The most important rule was – DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING! Plants, insects, trees everything and anything is poisonous you don’t touch a thing.

There are huge ants, the biggest I’ve ever seen around the world, and if they bite you, you could be dead within 2 hours – we all kept our distance!

Once we got back to the Lodge it was dinner time, we had a lovely buffet meal and headed out again for a walk, we went up a high tower, round and round lots of steps walking up very high, got to the top just before darkness , we could hear the howling monkeys, see other monkeys in tree tops and see the view over the whole Amazon rain forest including the river snaking through the bush, so many amazing animals and insects coming out in the dark that we got to see.

 By 10pm we headed back, time to catch some sleep. One big difference to most accommodation I have stayed in – our rooms were missing a wall! They built all the rooms to have the wall missing on the outside closest to the actual Rain Forest which was only 4-6 metres away. How cool, to experience the true feeling of being in the Amazon Rain Forest and to hear/see all the animals we were surrounded by.

Our room had a very comfy hammock in it, I had a rest in there whilst unpacking a few things to get organised for bed. We had  cold showers- something had gone wrong in our room but that wasn’t a bother for us as it was so hot. Not a problem!

We had nets over our beds that were to keep anything we didn’t want coming in and sleeping with us for the night! I did wake to hear something heavy with wings banging into our wall, not sure entirely what it was, but I was sleeping with 1 eye open from that point!

The next morning up  and at breakfast for 7am, we had our backpacks ready and off for a walk, back to the lodge for lunch then more exploring before and after dinner.

We were lucky the weather held out and didn’t rain during the day, which was great-we did get heavy rain overnight this night from midnight till 5am – lovely to listen to while resting in bed.

Our last day was much the same – more exciting walks with lots to see, we saw lots of birds, very pretty toucans, macaws, mealy parrots, parakeets, king fishers, herons, hawks, eagles, vultures, hummingbirds, hoatzins, owls, and many more.

We had been supplied with sheets of all the animals/birds/insects etc that you could see in the Amazon from the little souvenir shop at the lodge – we marked down all the animals we saw. a good way to keep track of all the names and what we saw,.

We headed up both ways of the Amazon river, during the day we also went on a smaller raft where we went bird watching – all was very quiet so we could see/hear them. After a few hours bird watching we were at a “quiet/safer” spot where we were able to have a go at catching a piranha! This is something I wanted to do, love a bit of fishing! Visiting the Amazon and getting a piranha on my line was an experience I wanted to have a shot at – I wasn’t going to miss out. Out of the eight of us on the wee raft five gave it a go, a young boy who was 8 years old got the first one! We were fishing the Amazon way with a stick as a rod which was hilarious, I have grown up fishing lots but with a rod or a hand line that’s on a small round hand reel so I knew I could make this work. The guides showed us the exact way to catch a piranha as its completely different to how you normally would fish, another 20 minutes went by without anyone catching anything – my bucket list goal of catching a piranha was slipping away…at this rate I was going to have to take a photo with the young boy’s piranha!! Low and behold while I was panicking about this I managed to catch one!! The screams and shouts on the boat caused the otters to go running for the hills, it was great. I got to hold my fish for the photos, the guide put a brown leaf in his mouth which it immediately snapped  at and left his bite mark on it, definitely a sign to put my catch of the day back in the water, off back to the lodge then for a quick afternoon walk.

   

In the afternoon, we had the choice to go on a sunset boat ride which we choose as there was a higher chance by the river to see other animals we hadn’t got to see yet. We brought the bar tender along on our boat ride of coarse and us two enjoyed some refreshing cocktails while looking at awe across the Amazon River into the sunset. What a moment!

We headed back for our last dinner which was served when we got back, amazing food throughout the whole trip. Kept our energy up and tummies full.

After our last night we packed up and headed off at 7am the next morning, we had the 60 minute boat trip, then the drive back to headquarters, then straight to the airport for our flight at 1pm.

We had left our main big backpacks out our hotel in Cuzco, Peru – you are only allowed one small bag  5-15kgs which they put in a waterproof bag for the duration on your travels in the Amazon (you can leave your main big bags at the headquarters in the Amazon.)

What a trip! The Amazon is definitely in my top 5 favourite places around the world. I was really hoping to spot a jaguar but was unlucky this time, that’s ok though -a great excuse for a return trip!