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The ride over to the Rain Forest Lodge took about 4 hours from Manaus. When we arrived, we were the only people staying there for the first two days. The lodge is on a lake off of the main rivers. The water level was not as low as is usual in the dry season. At the lodge there were 15 huts, a beautiful pool, a small scoccer field, a grill pit and a main dining hut. All around us was river side jungle. |
| The lodge location we settled on was a much less travelled lake across the Salamoes River. The other now more famous tree lodges have become too "touristy" - to many people hitting the trails at once. It was very nice and peaceful. Tiffany had a great pool to relax in and get away from all that amazonian jungle and river exploring. |  |
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Our little hut was at the far end of the lodge camp. We had to walk
5 minutes along dimly lit, moldy walkways to get there. Often we had to
avoid the dozens of recklessly flying bats that buzzed our heads.
One night during dinner, we were fascinated by watching a bat crawl around
the dining room walls and then fly in a perfect circle in the room.One
of the staff members hit one with a broom outside and knocked it dead on
the first stroke. Hans got a close up look at the flying rat.
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| In our room, we were greeted by a tiny little frog, hanging out on our window sill. He never quite got out ..... and we figure he ended up in froggy heaven. Unfortunately we were also greeted by lots of other bigger uglier jungle insects which Hans heroicly killed so Tiff would not have a heart attack. She still slept under all the covers the first night even though it was sweltering hot. Better hot than eaten by strange jungle "things". At dawn we were able to hear and barely see monkeys playing high up in the trees outside our window. |  |
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Our third night was a little nerve racking because of the non-stop
lightening, thunder, and torrential rain that went on the whole night.
Our hut had a leak in the ceiling and the rain hit the ceiling fan. We
were sprayed in the dark all night by God knows what. The generators were
turned off at 11pm, so we had no way to check.
Next morning we figured out why we had a hole in our thatched roof - it was from TERMITES. We woke up with thousands of the nasty critters all over our bed and floor. Yuck ---- actually - double YUCK. This is the type of thing nightmares are made of. At least for Tif. Not for Hans though, he woke up and said, "cool look at that." |
| The jungle lodge was in the process of replacing all the thatch roofing with new leaves. They had not quite gotten to ours before the storm hit. Notice the difference from the previous pictures. |  |
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This man was able to work 3 times faster than any of the other younger men when making the leaf thatch that was used to build the hut roofs. Apparently the roofs willlast only 3-5 years before it must be replaced. Stuff has a hard a time in jungle conditions. |
| Thank goodness for a little peace at the end of the day. Otherwise why would anyone (I should say any woman - since Hans liked the jungle Hell) want to come here. |  |