Amazonas (reached from Manaus)
Some places you visit, and some you sink right into. Staying at a rainforest lodge deep in the Brazilian Amazon is the second kind: a few days lived inside the world's greatest rainforest, far from any road, reached at the end by boat along a glassy river as the forest closes in around you. The lodges we love sit out on the water on stilts or tucked into a clearing in the trees, simple and comfortable, with the sounds of the jungle for company and the river running quietly past your door. The usual gateway is Manaus, the surprising city in the heart of the Amazon, and from there the journey out is already part of the adventure.
The days here belong to the rivers and the igarapés, the narrow flooded channels that wind back into the forest. You set out by boat with a local guide, drifting past curtains of green to spot pink river dolphins rolling at the surface, caimans watching from the shallows, troops of monkeys crossing overhead and macaws crossing the sky in flashes of red and blue. A canopy tower lifts you above the treetops for the dawn chorus, and after dark a night walk or a slow paddle by torchlight brings out the other Amazon, the one of glinting eyes, frogs and the great hush of the forest at night.
One of the wonders here is the meeting of the waters, where the dark, tea-colored Rio Negro flows alongside the pale, sandy Solimões for miles before the two finally mix, a clear line drawn across the river. It is a fitting image for the whole place, two worlds running side by side. We build these few days so the rhythm is yours: time on the water and time in the trees, early starts for the wildlife and long, quiet afternoons when the river is yours alone, all of it arranged so the only thing you have to do is watch the forest come to life.
