Pooh

My husband and I are trying to decide where we want to travel to next year. We found a site on the web through Travelzoo that is offering a trip to Brazil: Amazon & Rio de Janeiro next February and March. This is a 8 day trip that is advertized as being for the highly adventurous. It would include 3 nights at Amazon Eco Park Hotel, 1 night in the Amazon Jungle (while in the jungle we would go through a survival seminar and sleep in a hammock, I believe that is optional), we go to Native's house, Monkey Forest and the Meeting of the Waters, alligator spotting and piranha fishing, 3 nights at Luxor Regente Hotel, visit the statue of Christ of Redeemer and H. Stern Jewelry Museum.

Has anyone done anything similar. Do you know of these hotels? Do you know how they are rated? We are wondering about the mosquitoes in the jungle. Are they awful?

Any information you can give us would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Pooh

cariocagirl

The Luxor Regente Hotel is a comparison to a Best Western (maybe a bit nicer). Its not bad for the buck. I think the rate is about $70 per night.

http://www.brazil-travels.com/Rio/Luxor-regente.htm

I don?t want to talk bad about tours because if you like direction that?s great. I think its greatly overpriced.
I would try and price it separately before you book a package. It might work out cheaper. Varig Airlines has very good deals on airfare (don?t know where you are flying out of). Also you can purchase a Brazilian Airpass for about $300 to $400 dollars which you can make fours stops with in a region of Brazil.

My first time to Rio I paid almost $4000 to stay at a hotel for two weeks w/ airfare and breakfast. The hotel was OKAY. Next time I rented an apartment for 21 days w/ airfare for two and it cost $1800. Food is cheap and in all the trip cost us $2400 and we stayed longer!
I?ve never been to the Amazon that only for the adventurous. But I could give you some tips on RIO. If you take a side trip to rio I would go for the weekend. Arrive Thursday and leave on Monday. The lower end hotels are pretty decent. I would try for one in Ipanema. Hotel Vermont located at Rua Visconde de Pirajá 254
Ipanema Tel. 247 61 00 oder 521 00 57 oder 522 00 57
Fax 267 70 46 is a decent hotel. Its about $55 per night. I stayed two store down from this hotel ( in a flat) and saw that it is a great bang for the buck. I asked some travelers and they said it was a clean hotel. Its two short blocks from Ipanema beach. You can take the local bus to the Foot of the Christo. Local Bus # you can get at the hotel. The train up the hill to the christo is a nice scenic ride and worth the $15 USD. From there you can walk up the steps to the top. Or you can hire a cab at the bottom of the hill and negotiate a price. I liked the train. See my picture. You can also take the bus (last stop) about 15 minutes to the Sugar Loaf Mountain. I forgot the price to acend but if you do it alone its much much much cheaper. At night you can find lots of places to have drinks, etc. On Sunday is the Hippie Fair. I like this because it has great souvinerr, bags, clothes, pocket books, home items, paintings, you name it its there. I would also try and make it during the day (Mon-Fri business hours) downtown. Its great to see how the Brazilians hustle and bustle to work. Also there are hundreds of stores you can shop. At the Acoverde station get off and it is right in your sight.

For the Amazon, I have seen many people suggest the Ariaú Amazon Towers. http://www.ariautowers.com/us/index_us.html


email me if you have any other questions

KiwiChick

Interested in your questions as we returned from almost the same trip at end of July. We stayed at Amazon Eco park Lodge for 3 nights and found that this was great for a glimpse at the Amazon area. The trip to the meeting of the waters was great, awesome actually, and another highlight was the alligator spotting. I was sure we were lost in the jungle but ofcourse our guide knew where we were going. The EcoPark is not far from Manaus so you do not take a lot of travelling time to get there. We thought is was very nice. Very clean and food was good.
We bought a Brazillian Airpass thru Tam and travelled a lot of air travel thru Brazil. We found that you could travel, eg, Iguassu/Sao Paul/Brasillia/Manaus - all on one pass if your destination was Iguassu to Manaus. Hope that makes sense but the travel agents will tell you it is one pass per stop which is incorrect.

We stayed at Excelsior in Copacabana and thought it was very central, clean and good rooms and breakfast. Felt very safe all the time we were there.

I would love to be planning it all over again. Our highlights were Iguassu, Amazon and Rio.

Carole

Pooh

Thank you both, Cariocagirl and Kiwichick for responding to my questions. Yes, normally we also like to travel by ourselves, not in a tour group, but we just felt a little better in a group since this is our first time in SA and going to the Amazon.

Carole, did your trip include a survivor seminar and sleeping in the hammock? What travel company did you go with? Did you see large snakes, spiders, mosquitoes, etc. What time of the year did you go? We read that it may be raining quite a bit in February. Do you know what is the best time to go? As you can probably tell, I'm a little apprehensive about trekking through the Amazon jungle but my husband thinks this will be great. Was what you did very strenuous? We're not exactly youngsters (50-60's).

Thanks again for the good information. I'm really looking forward to Rio de Janeiro and will look into many of the suggestions made. Thanks.

Pooh

PaulH

I believe February is Carnivale time. Make sure you factor this into your plans.
Paul

marigold

I was in the Amazon several years ago in February and stayed at the Tropical Hotel in Manaus (wonderful place) for three nights. Because Manaus is on the Rio Negro (an Amazon tributary), there were not many mosquitoes (the pH level of the Rio Negro discourages mosquito larvae -- too acidy?). We also did not experience rain, but then that was only 3 nights. I don't know about mosquitoes away from Manaus. I do remember heat and humidity; I'm the kind of person who waits until the last minute to put on the AC -- but I needed it there.
One more thing -- it made me chuckle to read that the tour operator has included a trip to the H. Stern Jewelry Museum in Rio. If you take a taxi to H. Stern from your hotel, there are people waiting out front to pay your taxi fare. Ditto back to the hotel. It is "free". H. Stern WANTS you to visit. My husband and I enjoyed going there; you learn a lot about jewelry.

KiwiChick

I have just read your post again and realised I had not answered your questions. We did not do the overnight trek but did do a 2hour walk thru the jungle and this was in July. I found the heat took it out of me and it wasn't that hot. Had some trouble breathing. We are the same age group as you. We travelled with tour group Adventure world. The rest of the itinerary at Ecopark is the same as ours. Just loved it but I personally would not have done the overnight hammock thing. I thought the experience was enough as it was. The aligator spotting was a highlight, (and I didn't like it, a bit frightening for me) but as I say it was the highlight. Have fun - I wish I was back. July weather was perfect.