Amazon trip

alive

Hi,
Hoping to go to South America next summer. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to see the Amazon? I'm hoping to see lots of wildlife. I'd love to visit Los Llanos in Venezuela but it seems quite out of the way, has anyone been there?
Thanks

themacman

Did an Amazon Basin trip from La Paz in Bolivia, also boated across Brasil along the Amazon River - any questions fire away.

Sorry I've no info on Venezuela.

alive

Hey,
thanks for the reply. What did your trip from La Paz involve, what sorts of wildlife did you see? How long was it? Would you recommend it? Talk about question overload!
Thanks

HankScorpio1985

Rurrenabaque in north Bolivia. It's a 24 hour bus journey or a 1 hour flight. You stay at an eco lodge and go swimming with pink dolphins, piranha fishing and searching for anacondas in the long grass. Book the trip when you get to Rurrenabaque as it will be cheaper. I can't remember what tour group we went with though. Sorry.

themacman

Yeah, it was Rurrenebaque I did. For 4 days 3 nights with a company called Delfin Tours (I think).

You get to see crocs, pink dolphins, snakes and all sorts of birds. I booked it in La Paz and the whole thing was 100euro including flights, for that price I'd avoid the 24hour bus hehehe.

alive

haha ya I think I'll skip the 24 hour bus journey! Great, thanks for all the info guys, much appreciated. Will def be looking into it when I get to La Paz.

steamsey

Hi – little bit late with this but hopefully I can be of some use to you. I’ve spent a lot of time in Venezuela with work and vowed never to go back! I had a ball most of the time but to be honest, it’s a kip. Any built up areas are really really dirty. BUT – the country side is absolutely amazing. The contrast between how bad the cities / towns are with how pristine and beautiful the countryside can be is really surprising.


The cities are generally quite dangerous but Caracas is extremely dodgy. I don’t know how you can get to Los Llanos without going through Caracas. Check out Google for the murder rate there. Muggings happen a lot and when they do, they tend to be violent. Gun ownership is very high. The first thing you see when you drive from the airport to the city centre proper are the hillside barrios (slums). We had a little kid jump out in front of our jeep while driving this road. A Venezuelan was driving. He swerved and sped up. I asked him why. He said the kid was either off his head on drugs, or it was an attempted car jacking – in either case – bad news for him. He said he wouldn’t call the police if anything had happened – they are just not worth the hassle to deal with. We were also advised of this by co-workers and locals – don’t call the police. This may have been a bit exaggerated by them for our amusement but that’s what they said.


Generally speaking, Venezuela is expensive. Internal flights are an absolute nightmare to book and sometimes they don’t take cards - cash only. They can be very expensive and the airlines websites were pretty bad. Buses are ok but I avoided the really long buses in Venezuela. There is this whole dual currency thing with Bolivar Fuertes (BSF - local currency) and USD. Everyone wants USD because they have no faith in BSF but they are restricted from buying USD by Chavez – so they all want your USD. 2 years ago you would have gotten 2.15 BSF per USD via the banks – but through a “friend”, you could get as much as 6/7 BSF – making a massive difference to how much things cost. Of course this parallel money market is illegal, but happens. You wouldn’t want to get caught doing this though.


Overall though, I did enjoy Venezuela. I just got a bit sick of it because I was there for too long. I always had a cold beer in my hand and someone to talk to. They don’t really speak much English (even compared to the rest of South America) so Spanish is very handy. If they cleaned it up, taught kids English in school and sorted the crime situation, it would be the No.1 spot in South America in no time! Angel Falls to me was total class and a top 5 spot in South America. I was there for months on end, all over the country and I almost never ran into a Westerner.


Now – to get to your query ! - in terms of Los Llanos, it is beautiful. We flew from Caracas to Barinas and met our guide there who took us in his jeep to a lodge for a 2 day excursion. We saw some cool stuff – Giant Anteaters, a tame baby Onyx, cool turtles and amazing birds of prey – mainly hawks. Piranha fishing is fun (and tasty) but you can don’t to go to Los Llanos to do that. So it was pretty good but not cheap. I can’t remember how much, but we had very little change from $1000 USD for the whole thing.
Compared to the cost – probably just about worth it.


If it’s wildlife you are after – I recommend the Pantanal in Brazil. It’s cheaper and is world class widlife watching. Depending on dry / wet season, you’ll see very different things. Easy to get to on a bus from Campo Grande and works in well with a flight into Buenos Aires through Pantanal and then say into Bolivia.

The Amazon does not run through Los Llanos as far as I remember – it’s the Orinoco. I did a separate trip to the Orinoco delta and it was excellent. The word in South America was that you see almost nothing on the Amazon river trips – it’s just too dense. You might see the Pink Dolphins if you’re lucky though. I did an Amazon weekend in Iquitos Peru and it was very good – most of the stuff we saw was in the campsite area – i.e. you are not going to see monkeys swinging from the trees as you cruise down the river with a noisy outboard engine!

Apologies for the length of this, but I love talking about South America.