The Amazon Jungle was 1 of 4 of my favorite stops on my trip to South America. I booked a 4-day tour through a company I found online called Amazing Tours. The owner of the company's name was Leonardo Mendes. I forgot what the price was that I paid but I know i got a better deal than some of the people on my tour. From Salvador, I took a plane (with 4 different stops) to Manaus, Brazil. When I got to the airport a driver from the company picked me up and took me to the hostel that I booked through the company. When I got to the hostel I was greeted by Leonardo himself and he explained to me that since it had rained the night before, the original hostel that booked was flooded and he took me to "sister" hostel, which was a hosteling international hostel, but this was by far the most disguesting hostel i stayed in my whole trip. The beds had bedbugs!!! I had tons of gross little bites and it smelt and it was not clean!!!
That day I just hung out in the city of Manaus. The next day was day 1 of my tour of the Amazon Jungle. A man picked me up from my hostel early and took us to pick up a misquito net from a little shack place next to the dock. During this short car ride I met two guys from Holland who I'd b spending the next 4 days with. I forget their names now, but they were good company.
After we got to the dock we boarded the boat and picked up and few more people (about 10 total), gassed up and headed for The Meeting Of The Waters . The Meeting Of The Waters is where the Amazon River and the Negro River meet and for whatever reason the waters actually don't mix. It looks really cool from an areal view too. While we were at The Meeting Of The Waters a smaller boat came up on the side of us with a little boy (about 12 years old or so) and a man in it. The little boy wa holding a sloth and the man was holding an alligator!!! It was so cool! They were so close and I've never been that close up to either of those animals before. They were passing the animals around the boat that we were in. I was more scared of the sloth, because I was scared of what disease it may be carrying than the alligator. As the animals were being passed around the man reached in another cloth sack he had and pulled out a snake!!! Once I realized that the alligator's mouth was tied shut with a wire I figured it was safe to hold it, so I did, and I took a picture with it. It was really cold! I was proud of myself though. All I thought to myself was, why not? When else am I going to be able to do this? Never! So I did!
Next, we headed towards a forest of water lilies but it wasn't accessible in the smaller boat we were in an we weren't able to reach it so we just headed straight to out floating lodge where we would be staying the next couple of days. It was about a 45 mim boat ride up the Amazon River to get there. Once we got there we were assigned our rooms and then had some down time.