Carlos Damasceno

It is a long time ago, over 3 years now, since me and 4 friends were gustes on Carlos' Amazon boat trip! We had a almost 4 week Brazil trip in front of us and this was our first station. We arrived in Manaus quite exhausted, since we had to fly from Frankfurt to London to Sao Paulo to Manaus but we've been excited, what is waiting in front of us. It was Carlos, one of his friends (who later got with us onboard) and the driver who picked us up on time at the airport and drove us to the port with all those typical amazon cruise ships. On our trip to the port, Carlos stopped at some famous POI's in Manaus, like the opera to give us a chance to take some pictures. After that, we arrived at the boat and loaded our baggage onto the ship. Here we met the crew which consisted of Carlos, his beforementioned friend, a (very young) captain and one "kitchen chef". I'll start with her: During the whole trip (lasted 4 days), she cooked unbelievable good tasting meals, all very brazilian style, lots of fish, meat, rice and vegetables. It was purely amazing. If she is still doing those trips with Carlos, she alone is worth the money! After starting our journey in bad weather, the sky cleared right at the point we got to the meeting of the waters, the first highlight on the tour. Lying there on the deck in the sun, watching this spectacular scenery, it's priceless! Later on, we left the big river and headed more into the sidearms of Rio Negro. Passing along native inhabitants of these region, we had so much to see and wonder, how they got along with the surroundings consisting only of water, trees and grass. It's something totally new for us used to live in a city. In the next days, we did amazin things like piranha fishing (it actually works and all of our groups got one or more piranhas on the hooks), an alligator cruise by night (Carlos' friend actually caught one with his bare hands!), jungle trekking, bird watching and swimming with the pink dolphins. That was surely another highlight and it's a whole other thing here than doing this in a waterpark like Seaworld. It was just us, a guide and a box of fished which we could fed to the dolphins. They were all arounf us, beneath us, under us, snapped for the fishes...it was great! All in all, it was such a wonderful time, we as a group enjoyed everyday of it and we're so happy we did this with Carlos and his crew. All of those, who are considering an Amazon trip with him, i can suggest that you're doing a longer trip than we did, since you could have the possibility to even get deeper in the jungle and see even more wildlife and doing more of these great excursions. During all that time, we felt save and well cared for, the ship was clean and tidy, the hammocks were comfortable enough to get the well deserved sleep every night and the crew members were truly genuine and nice people. I want to use this platform to thank you again, Carlos, for having us with you. I hope we'll see each other again on an Amazon cruise ship someday! Hannes