Wildlife Cruising on the Amazon
By Shirley Linde, SmallShipCruises.com
We were 16 days on the cruise and 10 of them were on jungle rivers or exploring wildlife in some way. The wake-up calls on exploration days sometimes came at 5:30 a.m., with passengers having a quick breakfast of fruit, melon and pastries, then boarding zodiacs and heading for the shores or tributaries of the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers. Many days there were two scheduled zodiac trips, one in the morning and one in late afternoon, to check out wildlife or to visit local villages.
This is not a casino/cabaret/dancing-till-dawn kind of cruise. It’s an ecotourism-style voyage on the Clipper Adventurer, the expedition ship of Clipper Cruise Line that was a former Russian research and passenger ship. Renovated and refurbished, carrying naturalists and culturists as guides and lecturers, the ship now takes 122 passengers (max) on adventure cruises into off-the-beaten-path places where big ships don’t go. Read about the rest of the adventure here.
Ecoventura, also known as Galapagos Network, has renovated its 20-passenger yacht M/Y ERIC to hybrid energy. The renovation to green includes installation of 40 solar panels and two wind turbines on the upper deck and replacing canvas awnings with a hard fiberglass top for structural support. The goal is for the solar panels and wind powered generators to provide enough power to support approximately 17 percent of the energy formerly produced by two carbon fuel-based generators. This project was financed through a partnership with Toyota, a supporter of the World Wildlife Fund. They plan a similar renovation for their other three vessels.
It was a pitch black night and we sat there in our canoes in the inky dark river waters. The guides shined search lights onto the shoreline and the trees, and eyes reflected back at us from the darkness – cayman cooling off in the water. (Cayman are a crocodile-like creature that can grow to 18 ft. in length.) As we sat silently in the canoes we could hear the sounds of the night forest — crickets, frogs croaking, birds calling. As our eyes became accustomed to the night, we saw some tree frogs and birds, and the area seemed actually bright in the light of the almost full moon. There were lightning flashes in the distance. Awesome.
We were on a seven-day expedition trip in the Amazon with Amazon Nature Tours on the Motor Yacht Tucano. We were cruising the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon River. Alone it is the second largest river in the world with the Amazon being the largest. The color of the water is that of strong tea, giving it its name Rio Negro or black river. We go on the Negro because it is much more remote and pristine than the Amazon River. An added benefit — the chemistry of the waters is such that the Rio Negro has no mosquitoes. The entire river system is part of the Amazonas Region, the largest state in Brazil.
 