Our journey started when we loaded into the van Sunday afternoon
to leave Lasell. The first flight to Miami went by very quickly, we landed
around 9:30 pm and stopped for dinner before spending all of five hours in the
hotel. We woke up at 4:30 the next morning to catch the shuttle to the airport
but the check-in process went quickly so we were two hours early. During the
flight, it was very different for all of us because we were the minority and all
instructions were first announced in Portuguese. We finally landed after five
long hours, only to be stuck in customs for another two. Our guide Leandro met
us at the entrance of the airport in Manaus, Brazil where we took another
shuttle for a two and half hour ride to our Jungle lodge. On the way, we got to
drive across a four km bridge that was only opened six months ago. Before the
bridge was built, the van would have had to wait for a ferry that would have
taken an hour to cross the huge river.
Once we arrived we got a tour from an employee of the lodge that
started with some great freshly squeezed juice from local fruits. Then we had
our first view of the Rio Negro from the lodge and a great tower on the lodge
property that was built for viewing birds and the scenery of the Amazon. All of
these facilities are available to us 24 hours a day. We then broke off into our
pairs and went to our cabins to get ready for dinner. Dinner was amazing and we
all tried different foods that we had never heard of. Our favorite was a
dessert; passion fruit mousse. We then got our cameras and hopped on our first
boat ride out on The Rio Negro where Leandro used a flash light to spot eyes of
different animals from a long distance. We saw a night jar, caimans, and moths.
Our two most exciting sightings were a sloth that we got right underneath. The
female three-tow sloth was looking straight down at us which made for some great
pictures. The second was a tree boa which is a non-poisonous snake that some of
us even got to touch. It was surprisingly smooth! We are looking forward for our
hike tomorrow and what lies ahead for the rest of the week!
What a great experience. Thank you for keeping us informed of the adventure and look forward to hearing more.
ReplyDeleteYeah a sloth! I was hoping you would see one. One member of your group was occasionally accused of moving like a sloth during her high school years. Hope you were able to get great pictures.
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