Arrived early yesterday morning and spent the day getting oriented around town and lazing by the pool. We took a boat tour around the Parnaiba Delta today. It is the 3rd largest delta in the world after the Nile and Mekong. It was a pleasant trip - we enjoyed a good dip in the sea (great surf and extremely strong currents), cruised through the mangroves and we had a few crab and monkey sightings, and we finished with a walk on the sand dunes. The sand dunes ar...

We arrived in São Luis 2 days ago, and headed straight for the historical town center where our guesthouse is located. The Pousada Portas da Amazonia (Doors of the Amazon Guesthouse) is on Rua do Giz, the most photographed street in postcards, with its cobbled streets and beautiful facades of the colonial buildings lining both sides of the steep streets. São Luis is the only city in Brazil that was founded by the French (who befriended the Indians with their gi...

We arrived in Belém yesterday morning. I thought it was a reasonably pretty town, with quite a few colonial buildings preserved. All the shops were shut as it was a Sunday, but the markets were open, and we managed to get a few bargains at the market. Zema had cautioned us about safety in Belém, that we should stay in groups and not take our camera (I could not leave my camera behind, so I tucked it into my pocket). As we wandered around the city center in sear...

We boarded a boat for the 4 day / night trip down the Amazon from Manaus to Belem, a 900 mile (1,500km) trip downriver, stopping at multiple towns en route. Most of the passengers travelled on hammock class, where they basically strung their colourful hammocks alongside each other on the deck, and their personal belongings strewn on the ground - there was zero privacy and zero security. They shared communal facilities: showers, toilets, etc …. and these did no...

We started our 3 day trip into the Amazon jungle, with 4 other travellers - Kelly and Jess (English), Madelon (Dutch) and Kurt (Curacao). The boat took us to the meeting of the waters of Rio Solimoes and Rio Negro, which joins up with the Amazon River. Rio Solimoes flows from the Andes, is a muddy brown, is cooler with a pH level of 6.4, and flows at 6 kmh. Rio Negro starts in the Amazon lowlands, and as its name implies is black from the decomposition of leaves ...