Day Four – Another day in the jungle

The Natives’ Villages:
After breakfast, we headed out to an indigenous village, where we learned about how the people in these villages lead their lives. The main economic activities are farming and fishing, and some of the more organized villages operate also as a collective in which they contribute to a pool of money and the villagers can borrow from the pool. Electricity is often available only with a generator, so the times the generator operates is regulated. Also, the regional governments usually subsidize the cost of gasoline for these generators.

Some of the villages have a school, and at times the teacher has to take a boat to collect the students from their homes or from neighboring villages. The stark reality of these circumstances are such that instruction happens only on Monday through Thursday, and the people that can found to teach under these conditions are often the ones unable to get a teaching position elsewhere. The schoolhouse we visited (see picture above) reminded me of something out of Gilligan’s Island, with a palm-thatch roof and unscreened, open windows.

Some of these villages are vestiges of settlements of the workers who harvested the latex from the rubber trees, back in the late 1800s when the Amazon was the only place that rubber trees growed and Brazil enjoyed a monopoly. After the British smuggled rubber tree seeds out and began cultvation in Malaysia, the Brazilian monopoly ended and the rubber-fueled economic boom disappeared overnight.

We saw how latex is collected from the trees and then processed into hard rubber by vulcanization, changing the composition of the latex into rubber more from the smoke than the heat of the charcoal fires. The milky substance in the little can is fresh sap from a rubber tree 10 feet away being poured onto the already-vulcanized rubber ball and smoked it. Alex got to try on a little rubber boot made from the process that was demonstrated.

More Piranha Fishing
After lunch, we headed out for another round of piranha fishing and got served a tureen of piranha soup at dinner (yum! – not!), but fortunately there were other items available.

We happened upon this toad while we were in one of the villages, which provided a cute photo op for Lilly, who was careful not to touch it...

Getting to the Ariaú Hotel:
This place is not easy to get to, and you should budget a full day (or more) to get there, and a full day to get back just for travel. In our case, frequent flyer miles took us to São Paulo (free tickets for 4 to Brazil - cha-ching!) but then we had to back-track 3.5 hours when there are actually direct flights to Manaus from Miami and Atlanta (maybe other places). Once you're in Manaus, try to get the earliest boat to the hotel in the morning so you can make use of the afternoon that same day.

Recommendation: Use Travel Agent
Perhaps the most important tip I can provide is perhaps to use a travel agent to book your trip, because the rates we paid were about half of what was quoted on the Hotel Website and we were not able to deal directly with the hotel before our trip, whereas our agent was very accessible. We found our agent on the Web, and then felt more comfortable when they were mentioned in Lonely Planet Guide/Brazil and Fodor’s Guide/Brazil. Plus, our agent was fully bilingual in English and Portuguese (both email and phone) and took the step of advising us in advance via email that the hotel was partially submerged due to record flooding.

I have no hesitation recommending Viverde Travel and Luciana Kalvon Pedroso. Call her in the office at: 011-55-92-3248-9988 or her cell phone at: 011-55-92-9996-1832. Their contacts are on their Web site: http://www.amazonastravel.com.br/ They have a secure Site for payment via credit card, but you may have to alert your card company first to expect a large charge from a Brazil (we needed to). You will see other jungle lodges as options on their Sites, but I cannot comment on any of them. I can say that the Ariaú Amazon Towers was a great choice.

NOTE: If you are traveling with children, there are discounts at the hotel for ages 10-11 (50%) and age 9 and under (free). TAM Brazilian Airlines also has discounts (50%) for children, and I can't recall the age cut-off but it's on their Site.