The bus is safe, it's a little bit difficult to get on if you have big baggage though, as there is a turnstile at the front of the bus, which is typical in Brazil. As recommend by this forum, I booked Del Rey hotel through their on-line chat, you can request to pay cash when you arrive, so you don't need to provide your credit card. I got a double room with 80R/day + 2R/day for using safe, for this price range I would expect a better hotel. It's inn/motel grade, with small and clean room, it's hard to get hot water from shower as they heat up the water directly from the shower head, look like it's common in all small hotel in Brazil. Del Rey has good services at front desk, and we got answer for all the questions we asked.

To be honest, if you have limited time in Iguacu falls, Del Rey might not be a good choice for you because it will take 30min + wait time between the falls and Centro. However, if you want to travel to Argentina side and the itaipu dam, then Del Rey has a convenient location because it's 2 min from the Centro bus stop and 20min bus ride to the DAM.

We took a bus to Iguacu falls right after we settled down in Del Rey. Bus is every 20min and take 30min to get to Brazilian Iguacu falls entry point. Once we arrived the entry of Parque nacional do Iguacu, we purchased the ticket (40R) and get on another yellow bus, there are big locker in the entry plaza so you can lock your baggage if you have limited time in Iguaza fall area. The first two bus stop is for activities like safari and boat trip, the third one is the start of the Trilha das Cataratas, which is a trail that bring you to Garganta do Diable, it should take long for this trail, 30min for average walking speed. At the end of trail there is the best photo spot for Diable, the beginning of the wooden walk will give you the best photo view of the falls. There is a Panoramic elevator, but the view is not that spectacular.

Walked up to the main road, you will see a bus stop on your far right hand side, souvenir shop and food court is over there as well. We had a simple lunch at the food court, it's very pleasant to sit outside if you don't care about the fries and mosquito. There is lunch buffet restaurant with reasonable price, i guess around 20R per person, but we don't want to waste our time there.

If you really has limited time for the Parque nacional do Iguacu, the last bus stop of yellow bus will bring you directly to the Panoramic elevator, so you skip the trail.

The yellow bus brought us back to the entry, and then we walked to the Parque das Ave, which is a bird park for most Brazilian bird. i recommend this park because you can't really see that many bird even in the amazon area, it's expensive 46R, but worth the price. When you exit the Parque nacional do Iguac entrance, Parque das Ave is on your NW direction, around 400m.

Again we took the bus and back to Del Rey around 4pm, stocked up some water and snack from the supermarket (1 block away from the centro bus station), had dinner in a kabab ad bbq restaurant.

A side story, Brazilian is actually very discipline because I walked across a "do not enter" road inside centro bus station, and I got catch immediately by an army or police. He needed me to leave the bus station and enter from the correct sidewalk. I felt bad because new yorker never follow instruction :-)

The next morning we had a good breakfast and then headed to Itaipu dam by bus. Bus stop is across the centro bus station, on av Juscelino Kubltscheck army base side. We waited for almost 30min, and the bus took another 25min to reach Itaipu dam, because the bus has a stop in the Paraguary-Brazil border bridge. If you take a taxi, it may only take 5-10min for the dam.

We joined the 1 hours exterior tour 30R, there is a 2 hours tour that cover more but we don't have time. Night tour is only available in the high season I believe, i don't see that option in July. The bus stop on the dam peripheral for picture, and then stop on the top of upper dam. It's huge and quote similar to Hover dam in vegas.

Return to centro, we get on the bus to Argentina 4R 30min. We skipped the stop at the Brazilian custom and stop only at the Argentina customm, which proved it's wrong, we have to stop on each side to get the stamp. Usually the bus driver will wait for you to get your passport stamp and exchange money, but there is no guarantee, worst case you have to wait for the next bus.

The bus finally brought us to Puerto Iguazu. At the bus stop you will see there is a building complex with some restaurant and travel agents office, you need to go inside and cross the connection bridge to the other side, you can buy the bus ticket to Parque Nacional Iguzu at the first shop on your right (10B/person round trip), they will sell you the package for safari or fast boat tour, but you can buy it inside the park, you never know if you have time or not. It takes around 30min to the park entrance.

We lined up to buy ticket, this time it's 60B per person, quite expensive huh? again worth the price. At first I though the trail sign was clear enough, but unfortunately the spanish name of the trails were that similar and we walked in the wrong way towards the most difficult 6 hours trail, I was wonder why there were no one coming alone with us, luckily I realized earlier and we didn't waste too much time.

Finally we get on the train and began our iguaza falls journey, we went to the Del Diablo first (30min train), and it took around 20min fast walk from the train station to reach the Diablo viewpoint, it was amazing view, you never believe it's so close to the Diablo, it's just like right next to you, but u can get all wet if you stay there for 5min. There was a lot of butterflies along the walk and train trail, you won't miss this colorful little guys.

And then we took the same train and back to the Estacion Cataratas, where you can find the starting point of upper and lower trails, we picked lower trails as it's recommended by everyone. The whole trail will take your a good 45min to reach the pier to San martin, and you can purchase boat ticket near the end of the trail, cash only though, and it's a must do activities to prove that you have been to Iguazu falls, 75B or 45R per person. After we got the boat ticket, we only have 5 min to walk to the pier, but there were a old couple ahead of us, turned out the last boat to San martin was gone before we arrived, the last departure time is 3:30pm :-(

We missed the San Martin island, but we still had a fast boating waiting for us. They provide a dry blue bag which you can put all your belonging and shoes. Don't even think you can keep any part of your body dry, you will be ALL WET!!! I regretted I didn't bring any dry clothes with me. I originally planed to walk the upper trail as well, but it's too late, we decided to skip.

We returned to Puerto Cataratas, had a quick sandwich and caught the 7:00pm last bus (3R) to go back to Foz de Iguacu. Custom for Argentina side was smooth, but the Brazilian custom held us for 15min and questioned us why we didn't get a stamp when we departed Brazil. To be honest, as a tourist that doesn't speak Portuguese, it's very hard to do it right the first time. Luckily there was another foreign student that questioned by custom for other cause, so the bus driver waited for all of us. Arrived hotel at 8:15pm, the first task was to dry all the wet shirts and shoes....

The next day we took a bus to airport and the next destination is Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil trip report #4: Rio de Janeiro, Windsor Martique, Centro, Maracana

Brazil trip report #6: Manaus, Amazon Part 1

Amazon

Amazon was the most exciting part of the journey, I wouldn't forget the beautiful scenery, the native people and mosquitoes.

I saw some good comments of the Amazon Gero tours, so i contacted Gero through email, and he quoted me 160R/night per person for a private room with fan. I didn't need to pay in advance and he offered free pick from the airport as well. I am satisfy with the tour overall, to be honest it's really a canned tour, standard activities, you can't expect too much. I do have some comments about their arrangement though, will talk about that later.

It's around 3:30am when we arrived Manaus airport, please note that there is one hour different between Rio and Manaus. After we picked up the backpack, we met with the representatives from Amazon Gero tour. The rain was pretty heavy when we stepped out the airport, there was another couple from Ireland who joined us to the Hotel 10 De Julho . I originally asked Gero to book the Hotel Brasil for me, because I read some really bad story about Hotel 10 De Julho, however, Gero said that most hotel in Manaus were full, we had no choice but 10 De Julho.

We really had no choice at 4am, what we wanted to do was take a shower and then sleep, so we accepted the room with 70R/night. It's a very small room with private shower, and a window that facing the hotel corridor, sigh. If you ask me to pick one hotel in Manaus, I will pick Hostel Manaus for sure, it's definitely the right price and right place for backpacker. Btw, I did meet Gero when we arrived Hotel 10 De Julho, because Amazon Gero tour has an office right next to the hotel and they has a small service desk inside the hotel as well. We discussed the itinerary and confirmed to start our tour at 7:30am next day, yes 7:30am, we had 3 hours to rest.

The breakfast was very simple. I then walked to a nearby supermarket to get some cash from ATM, my card in HSBC didn't work so I have to walk far away. One of the staff from Gero tour then got a taxi and sent us to the port, he also picked up James from another hostel, he is a Londoner traveled 8 months in south America already. At the river port Ceasa to Careiro we met a lady from Amazon Riders tours, she had a 3 people group from Rio. From this point, we were really taken care by the Amazon Riders tours, I am not sure if they are the same company, or they just combined tours in low season, but anyway we are okay as long as the tour is good.

We total 7 people got into a speed boat, and after 10min drive we saw the meeting of Rio Negro and Rio Solimoes, it's like a boundary on the sea, while black color water on the right and the light brown color water on the left, because the water density and temperature is different, they won't mix immediately, it's actually the point where the Amazon River begins. We reached a another small river port in around 30min, from there we changed a small minivan for another hour drive on Porto Velho highway, finally it's another hour of small boat on the Araçá River before we reached our jungle lodge Ararinha Jungle Hotel, around 2.5 hours in total. The whole trip was very natural, we saw a lot of birds around the amazon river.

To be honest the Ararinha Jungle Hotel look a lot different from the photo, we stayed at the central lodge which has 2 floors. The ground is pretty much like a dinning area with a few long tables, and our guides will sleep there over the hammock, 2 toilets and 2 showers at this floor as well (only 1 toilet and 1 shower open during our visit). On the 1st floor it has 5 to 6 private rooms, with beds and fan. On the 2nd floor it's a single 3 beds room with shower and toilet. The hygiene level of the toilet are poor, I know they try to keep it clean, but in the middle of jungle, low down your expectation.

There is one more thing that our guide told us, the current river level of Amazon river is the highest since 1953 flooding. We saw flooding everywhere, even though in the river port, people has to construct a wooden bridge to connect to different shops over the water. A lot of local houses were destroyed as well, only those floating shelter can still survive in this flooding. The same situation apply to the jungle lodge, a few of them was total lost, maybe that's why they combined tours. Local said that it's very abnormal to see this river level over their whole life, please note that the average age of Amazonian is 60. People blamed it's the climate change which caused the flooding, but what caused the climate change is pretty much human, globally deforestation, pollution, modernization, etc. It seems like every time we visit a new place, people told us the climate is unusual, Amazon, Iceland, Finland, etc. The earth is not gonna die, but it's sick.

Back to the journey, we arrived the lodge around noon, we had some free time to walk around the lodge or swim around the river. We couldn't get into our room immediately because all the room were still occupied, the arrangement were quite messy indeed, we waited for 2 hours and then we just moved our backpack into one of the empty room, don't expect anyone will clean the room or change the bed sheet, the rooms were more like "first come first serve". The room condition was acceptable, with two little beds, one fan and one light bulb, minimal mosquitoes.

After lunch we went to Piranha fishing and watched the beautiful Amazon sunset with James. The activity usually accompany with one English speaking guide, and one local people. The fishing part was not as easy as I thought, it's just a stick with a fishing wire, then we hooked a small piece of chicken. The guide tried a few places but he still couldn't find a good spot for fishing, he told us that they fished 0 Piranha in the last 5 days, so our chances were..... but we are lucky, the local finally got one Piranha after an hour of fishing, we are excited because it's the first time we saw this creature out of the fishing tank, its teeth are so sharp that you will understand why they can eat a whole person. However, not all the Piranha will attack human unless they are very hungry, also the redness Piranha are more fierce that the other peers.

The fishing technique is that you need to hit the fishing rod a couple times on the river surface, this make the Piranha believe that something drop into the river. After 2 hours, we had a very good result, the local got one, our guide got 2, James got 2, Jessie got 1 and I got 1. It's quite dangerous to get the Piranha off the hook, so our guide handled all of that for us, and he also showed us a special skill to kill the Piranha immediately, he had a bite between the fin and the eyes, it's sounded like eating an apple, but the Piranha will die right away because that area is its brain.

After that we went to a peaceful lake to watch the Amazon sunset, a lot of birds returning to their nest around that time, so you will see birds around all trees. The sunset was very colorful as you can see it from everywhere, but with the amazon river as backdrop or "frontdrop" to be more appropriate, the picture was amazing.

It's almost dark when we returned to the jungle lodge, we had dinner and changed long sleeve and pant. I forget to talk about the lunch and dinner, the food was about same in the new few days, it's a fish or chicken dish, rice, bean, vegetable, watermelon, pineapple, orange. Caipirinha is available whenever the local make it.

We went to Cayman Spotting on the first night, the guide just use a flashlight to spot the Cayman's red eyes. Whenever he spotted a Cayman, he rafted the boat toward there and caught it by bare hands, sometime he need to jump into the water and use a rope to catch them, but you know it's not always work that smooth, he tried to catch a 2 meter Cayman, but it run away a couple times. The biggest one he caught was around 1 meter long, it's only a baby cayman from what we can tell, I hold that baby cayman and told picture with that as well :-)

After an exciting day, we back to a real jungle. There were no electricity, only candle and flashlight, so don't even think about the fan. The worst thing was that we have no water for shower or washing hands because the bump was out with no electricity. As you can imagine, a whole day of activities under 35 degree Celsius, you couldn't take a shower or at least clean yourselves, and now you tried to sleep while sweating in a small room at 35 degree too. It's a very painful night, especially it's only the first night, I though about to return to Manaus the next day. Things look much better when the electricity resumed around midnight, nothing was more delightful as a working fan.

We started day 2 with a refreshing shower, I finally backed to my comfort level. The breakfast was egg and fruit, after that we had a morning jungle trek with explanation about medicinal plants, survival techniques and flora. It's the first time we ever got into the real jungle, the tree were tall and huge, all bugs and insects were bigger too. We saw a lot of termite mount when we walked into the jungle, some of them were taller than a human. Our guide taught us a trick to prevent from mosquitoes bite, it's to put my hand on the termite mount, let a hundreds of termites climbed onto my hand, and then killed them right away. It left a special smell on my hand which similar to herb.

Our guide also used a stick with human sweat to attract the spider from its hole, the spider was bigger than my hand, the teeth were sharp and looked poisonous. We also saw some tree frog which was smaller than a penny. Before we reached the lodge, it's another thunderstorm, we were all wet by the time we arrived.

To talk about mosquitoes, it's not possible to aviod them in the jungle. We used the military grade 3M Ultrathon bug repellent, however, it's didn't help a lot. One time when I killed a mosquitoe on my arm, it had so much blood which liked I had a cut, but it's quite disgusting that the blood might came from me, other human or even other creatures. I was glad that I took the yellow fever shot :-) Mosquitoes are one thing, I hate the "cold fly" more, because it's really hurt when they bited you, but it's almost impossible to kill them.

On the afternoon we canoeing through the creeks, we spotted the Capuchine Monkey, huge lizards, a lot of birds and insects. We supposed to camp inside the jungle that night, but after the morning trek we decided to stay at the lodge one more night. Even though we have mosquitoe net in the camp, but from the experience of other visitor, it's really painful to keep them out of your body, you most likely stay awake all night in the jungle. On one hand it's really a special experience to camp in the jungle, but on the other hand, I don't want to become a night time snack for the bugs, maybe I will come back with a stronger bug repellent few days later, you never know.