Tag Archives: latam-2026

Where should you head first in Manaus – the capital city of Amazonas? The fish market, of course!…

It absolutely floors you with its sheer size and variety. They’ve got everything that lives in the Amazon and its tributaries here – well, except for Red Book protected species (dolphins, for instance). And in waters this vast, the variety is about as wide as it gets:

I’m afraid I can’t remember what any of these various species of fish are called; I just recall being bowled over by the variety:

Read on…

Alas, everything comes to an end sooner or later. Not only the Brazilian leg, but our winter tour around South America as a whole was drawing to a close. It was time for us to be heading back to Manaus, where there’d be a plane to São Paulo, and from there – back home. And what a fascinating route our tour had taken: Patagonia and Jujuy in Argentina > Atacama in Chile > Amazonia in Brazil! Done! Time to return to a place we hadn’t been for ages: home.

There was just one last thing we needed to see: the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon itself. So it was in to a hydroplane and off we flew!…

Read on…

Bem-vindos de volta, pessoal!

As promised, the second part to my report on our lodgings in the Brazilian Amazon. Land-based: done (yesterday); today… see the title!…

If only I’d known beforehand, I’d have made a point of lingering aboard this vessel a good while longer. I’ll come clean right away: faced with several options, we didn’t go for the one that would save us money – we picked this little boat based on… can you guess?! ->

There she is, parked alongside the more budget-friendly options :) ->

Read on…

Olá pessoal!

It’s time to tell you about the places we stayed at in the Brazilian Amazon – those on water and on land. Today: land – and there was just one: the Mirante do Gavião hotel. And since we checked in straight off the yacht – that is, from the river side – and left by seaplane, we never did get to see what it looks like on the other approached-by-road side, but only from the river – and from the inside:

Read on…

After a two-and-a-half-hour walk through the jungle and clambering through the stone labyrinths of the Grutas do Madadá, we were treated to a tasty (even relatively lavish) lunch, lovely weather, and hammocks to lie in. Everything around us was whispering: “Relax, stick around, there’s nowhere you need to be.” But then a cloud of ominous size and coloring appeared on the horizon being blown straight our way, so we decided to evacuate at once. Too late though: soon enough we were caught up in a mega windy rainstorm – with whitecap crests racing down the river.

And did it pour!

Read on…

Oi folks!

Still in Brazil, we were not far from the city of Manaus, in the Amazon lowlands. We’d just finished exploring the anabranches of the Rio Negro, so now it was time for our next course of amazing Amazonia – the Amazon Jungle!…

There’s so much of it here that nobody really knows how much remains unexplored. Sure, they’re cutting it down mercilessly, but looking at a map, you get the sense the loggers will run out of steam before the jungle does. And out here in the middle of nowhere there are still tribes living without any contact with the outside world. Yep, really. They’re called uncontacted peoples. The internet says there are several such groups in the Amazon, but precisely how many is hard to work out. Maybe nobody really knows. Anyway, we were heading into perfectly civilized – even fairly touristy – parts of the Amazon jungle:

It’s hot and humid (who knew?!), but at least you’re almost always in the shade – with a few exceptions:

But first – a visit to a local tribe. Here’s the chief:

Read on…

Our tour of South America next took us to Brazil; specifically – to the city of Manaus (after a few adventures in São Paulo). But Manaus was just our base. The attraction was something a lot bigger and a lot more famous (just noticed – its Wikipedia page comes in a full 200 languages; rarely see that!). Have you guessed it yet? Yes, it’s the Amazon – the world’s largest (by both water volume and drainage basin) and arguably the longest river in the world!

Actually, we were more generally exploring Amazonia, aka the Amazon Basin, aka the Amazonian Plain, aka the Amazon Lowlands. And specifically – one of the Amazon’s main tributaries: the Rio Negro. Why? Because in these parts the Amazon is very silty and murky, and so there’s not much to see or do there. The Rio Negro on the other hand has much cleaner water and contains fish and dolphins and more, the surrounding ecosystem is richer, and indigenous people live along it in the jungle.

I say cleaner; here’s proof: the meeting of the muddy Amazon and the cleaner Rio Negro:

If you zoom in you can see it better:

And this mixing of clean and muddy water goes on for dozens of kilometers downstream from where the rivers meet. Here’s the confluence on Google Maps.

So where to begin? With the jungle, the indigenous people, and the rest of the locals? Local customs? Grottoes in the rain lit with shafts of sunlight?…

Read on…

Bye-bye, Atacama Desert!…

We pile into the cars, double-check we haven’t forgotten any suitcases or bags, and hit the road. Where to? The airport, of course!…

The nearest airport is in the small city of Calama, about 100km from our cozy digs in San Pedro de Atacama:

Read on…

I’d heard a lot about the thermal fields and geysers in Chile, and figured it was time to go see them for myself since the photos online were kind of underwhelming.

// Let me say this right away: Atacama does have thermal fields – but geysers? None. That’s why the “geyser” photos from there look so unimpressive. But whatever – onward to the El Tatio geothermal fields!…

All as per for thermal fields: much hissing, gurgling, bubbling, rumbling, and spraying of boiling water:

Read on…

Atacama – pt. 1
Atacama – pt. 2
Atacama – pt. 3

So, shall we keep moving across the majestic mountain expanses of Chile’s Atacama? Of course we shall! How could there be a different answer? We didn’t come here for boredom, relaxation, assorted sybaritism, or spiritual languishing. We’re contemplative tourists. Show us the views – lots of them! :)

The next installment of entertainment to calm our restless tourist souls was catching a sunset in the Valley of Death (here) (Valle de la Muerte / Valle de Marte), which, curiously, doesn’t have a Wikipedia page)…

Beautiful – insanely so. The rock formations are painted in totally fantastic colors. But there’s a catch: the sun setting behind us, who were looking east. The shadow kept creeping over the landscapes around us, more and more relentlessly…

Read on…