Before arriving in the Amazon, I imagined this part of our trip would be very similar to our safari in Tanzania with lots of amazing animal sightings and incredible photo opportunities. In reality, the two destinations couldn't be more different.

First of all, there is a HUGE difference between a driving safari and hiking through a rain forest. (Go ahead, you can say it… "duh!") While the terrain is fairly level, this is still some of the most strenuous hiking I've ever done. The air is so humid it feels like you're walking through a lake and there's really no such thing as a defined trail so you're constantly climbing over fallen trees and dodging hanging vines. Beyond the physical aspects, it's also mentally exhausting looking out for perfectly camouflaged animals that can cause you some serious pain, or worse. Our leading guide actually stepped right past a juvenile pit viper camouflaged amongst some leaf litter in the middle of the trail, yikes! Luckily, the second guide spotted it before the rest of us got too close. We weren't quite so lucky later in the week when I got stung a couple times by a paper wasp and our guide got stung by a bullet ant, so named because it feels like you're being shot with bullets. Given a choice between the two, I would definitely take the wasp!

With all this hard work, I think it's fair to say we earned our animal sightings! We saw more species of birds than I can remember, an insane number of insects (most of them the non-dangerous variety), several reptiles, and even piranhas. I didn't expect to find many mammals, but we actually saw 3 species of monkeys (red howler, squirrel, and capuchin), a couple tamarins, a sloth, and a group of wild pigs. Unfortunately, most of these animals will have to live on solely in our memory because unlike the open African grasslands, taking photographs in a dark dense forest is near impossible!

If it sounds like I'm complaining, let me set the record straight: the Amazon is amazing (pun fully intended). There's nothing quite like waking up to the sound of howler monkeys in the morning, bird watching from the canopy of a kapok tree after a rain storm, or looking for glowing red caiman eyes on the river at night. So while the Serengeti may have been a luxurious experience and a photographers dream, the Amazon was truly an adventure!