We cruised on the black waters of the Rio Negro to our Amazon Resort. We upgraded our stay in the Amazon so we could get the full jungle experience on this trip. Trust me when I say an "upgrade" in the Amazon is no luxury suite at the Hilton. It was more or less a luxury "experience" - and a room without bugs, snakes, and water (see below) would be icing on the upgrade cake.
Welcome to Ariau Amazon Towers. This place has been host to Bill Gates. Jennifer Lopez. Dolph Lundgren. And, the film crew of Survivor (season 18).
We were informed that this was the end of rainy season in the Amazon. Unfortunately, this season they experienced the second most rainfall since 1958....causing massive flooding around the area. Parts of our resort were basically underwater when we arrived. The rain had dumped an additional 30 feet of water above normal levels at the resort this year and they had to construct walking planks for guests to move from building to building. At normal water levels guests could walk freely around the resort through the jungle and on resort pathways. Due to the rainfall, there was no land in sight. I'm not sure you can quite comprehend the situation by looking at our pictures below....but it would be quite an experience over the next 3 days.
And, to top it all off....there's nothing quite like coming face-to-face with a wicked looking reptile while walking back to your room. Due to the increased levels of water around the resort....many of these critters could swim right up to the level of the walking planks we used to get to and from our room.
This resulted in an old fashioned cowboy vs. cowboy stare-down, of sorts. Of course, this cowboy didn't have a gun....and if they refused to move out of the way, we were definitely not getting to our room!
***Before leaving Manaus for our Amazon resort, Leonard's luggage finally arrived....but Jenesa's didn't.
Luggage score (Leonard = 1, Jenesa = 0)
0 comments:
Post a Comment