A great, real Amazon experience!
My girlfriend and I visited the Amazon with Ruber & his family in November. We had high expectations as it came highly recommended by some friends that had explored with Ruber and his family a year earlier.
The tour was very well organised from picking us up at Iquitos airport & considering the remote location ran very smoothly up to dropping us back off a week later. Apparently Juan – Ruber’s father is the chief organiser & previously ran the tours himself. Only Ruber speaks English and I wish we could have spoken a bit more Spanish when we visited to chat with George & Juan as both seemed like great characters!
The journey to the family home in their little village took 24 hours by cargo boat and then small canoe (an interesting experience with our big backpacks!) The reason it takes so long as we were not just going to the tourist camps on the edges of the Amazon we were going somewhere remote and beautiful!
Our accommodation was more than comfortable in the cabins at the jungle home. We ate very fresh and tasty food that Juan’s wife Ladi would cook every morning and night.
We normally did 2 or 3 different excursions a day including:
– successful pirhana fishing!
– day and night boat trips where we saw and got to play with. – sloths, snakes, caymans, monkeys, dolphins and heaps of interesting bird varieties
– overnight camping with mosquito proof hammocks along the river
– hiking to see lillypads, medicinal plants and native fruits
– visit to nearby village to watch the local football match & see the natives jewellery and home made products
– ayahuasca ceremony – we didn’t have a great experience with this but could appreciate the importance of this medicine to the natives, but not everyone is the same as us..
We were lucky in terms of weather as despite it technically being rainy season we only had one afternoon that was ‘washed out’ & it was great jumping in the river after a day in the hot sun!
I would highly recommend this tour to anyone that wants to see the real jungle, some things will go outside the comfort zone but you will leave having really experienced the Amazon. Ruber is someone I still keep in contact with – a great guy who makes sure you have a great time and are safe!
Wish we could go back!
Steve & Kirby – Australia