Today’s excursion is a jungle trek. Typically, we meet in the ship’s showroom and when our tour is ready, we board a bus. Today, we boarded a boat and traveled for about 45 minutes across the river. Manaus is located on the Rio Negro, so called, because the water looks black rather than the brown…

Manaus is the last of the large cities as you travel west up the Amazon. It’s history is a story of boom and bust. During it’s heyday 1890-1920 Manaus was one of Brazil’s major hubs/sources of rubber and was home to huge numbers of entrepreneurs (rubber barons). They made Manaus into “one of the gaudiest…