Amazon river wildlife cruise in Brazil
Typically you will be sharing your experiences with between 4-20 like minded travellers (depending on the trip, operator and how many others are booked on the trip) and you'll have a group leader with you. Whether you are travelling alone or with friends its good value, and a great way to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of privacy. This trip will appeal to travellers of all ages who enjoy meeting new people as well as seeing new places.
How this holiday makes a difference
Environment
One of the major distinctions of this cruise is the quality of guiding. As tropical forests are extremely complex environments, without knowledgeable guides it can appear to a visitor as one great green blur. We take a thoughtful approach to natural history. Our cruises are guided by highly skilled naturalists, many of whom come from the local area, who help us spot wildlife and offer our guests an informed narrative on tropical forests. Travellers are encouraged to learn a bit about the flora and fauna of rainforests before they travel – a comprehensive reading list is provided on our website.
The Motor Yacht Tucano is a modern river boat built in a traditional style in 1997, very wide at its base with a flat bottom so at its deepest point the vessel draws only 1.5 metres (5 ft). This enables the vessel to explore small meandering rivers where wildlife is abundant but which are closed to almost all other 'V' hull passenger vessels, but without causing any damage to the river bed or banks which can be caused by larger boats hugging the shoreline. Our visits to the Amazon rainforest take place in small groups. The boat can carry a maximum of 18 passengers which is then divided into smaller groups. Larger groups scare away wildlife and dilute contact with the guides. We also go to intact pristine rainforest and are almost always the only group to visit a particular area. Most tours in the Amazon that go only a short distance from cities or other settled areas and only visit disturbed forest--some tours actually visit the same places week after week. By contrast, our itinerary takes us far away from human settlement into beautiful natural rainforest.
We are very conscientious not to disturb the natural areas that we visit and always leave them as wild and undisturbed as when we arrived. Our guides advise travellers on responsible travel practices during the cruise, including taking only photos and leaving only footprints. We strictly observe a zero impact policy on our trips which includes not removing anything from the forest, leaving nothing behind, staying on defined trails, not creating new trails, keeping noise to a minimum, and leaving no waste behind. We take considerable measures not to disturb creatures that we observe including not getting too close, leaving an area if an animal becomes disturbed, not handling creatures that we encounter. We recycle our waste, we haul our trash back to landfills in the city, and we use as much natural products as possible.
Our equipment and cruise operations - The Motor Yacht Tucano has been specifically designed to minimise the environmental impact of our cruises. The basic areas on which we focus are waste management, energy conservation, and pollution control. All of our waste materials are returned to our city of departure, Manaus, Brazil. This includes all recyclable material which we separate on board the vessel. Where possible we avoid the use of disposable packaging.
In the realm of energy conservation the vessel has equipment and elaborate procedures in place to conserve energy while at the same time retaining the comfort of our cruises. One of these measures is that, unless requested by the travelers, cabin linens on board the vessel are changed every other day instead of every day. This reduces the energy consumed in washing what are usually still clean linens. Two additional procedures are in place to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. First, water is not heated 24 hours a day to be used in showers. Instead, there are “on-demand” water heaters installed in each cabin. Secondly, there is a policy of turning off all diesel consuming machines for certain hours of the day when they are not needed. This is done in the early morning and late afternoon when the boat is generally at anchor. The vessel remains comfortable even without electrical generation because it was designed to offer water, illumination and climate control even without electricity.
The Motor Yacht Tucano actually has two completely separate water systems. This ensures that even when there are no generators functioning, the sinks, toilets and showers on the vessel continue to operate. Because the vessel has large windows, travelers are able to use natural lighting during the day which eliminates the need to generate power for illumination. All but a very few of the light bulbs on the vessel are fluorescent which greatly reduces power consumed. When it comes to climate control, the Motor Yacht Tucano has an efficient air-conditioning system functioning in the heat of the day and at night. But even during those low power hours of the day, the cabins stay cool because the vessel is very well insulated. There is also a practice of opening the windows in the public spaces and travelers can do the same in their cabins. Together these measures enable the cruise operator to greatly reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
In an ongoing effort to continue to reduce the carbon footprint of Amazon cruises, the newest generation of diesel generators with lower CO2 emissions have been installed. Two-stroke outboard motors have been replaced with the new four-stroke design which dramatically reduces air and water emissions.
Nature conservation in the Amazon - The cruise operator has always been strong advocates for Amazon conservation and this is one of the founding ideas of the company. They have made direct monetary contributions to conservation NGOs in Brazil, though their major contribution is through environmental education. All of their staff have become advocates for conservation and all of our contacts in the communities and at all levels of government are dedicated to promoting Amazon conservation.
In the last four years the cruise operator has also been one of the participants in preparing the management plan for the world's largest rainforest park, the Central Amazon Biological Corredor. Our company has been the strongest and insistent advocate for the strictest possible environmental regulations for entry and use of the reserve. Though not currently well known, in future years this reserve could well become the world's most important rainforest park and we are working as hard as we can to facilitate the creation and enforcement of procedures that will ensure sustainable practices within the reserve.
ResponsibleTravel policy - We have a full Responsible Travel policy available on our website, which our reservations team will give you a link to when you book. It’s packed with information about how travellers can reduce their social and environmental impact as they travel, and details all the measures our company has put in place in the office and on the road to reduce our impact.
Carbon Offsetting - We have teamed up with an international conservation charity called World Land Trust to offer clients the ability to offset the carbon emissions of their flights. We encourage all travellers to do their share to reduce the impact of their travel on the environment.
Awards - National Geographic Adventure magazine has recommended this Amazon expedition company as among the “Best Adventure Travel Companies on Earth”. Their criteria are education, sustainability, quality of service, and spirit of adventure.
Community
This cruise offers travellers a truly authentic experience of the Amazon, while at the same time offering an economic benefit to local communities which receive very little contact from the outside world. The Motor Yacht Tucano travels to places very rarely visited and is often the only cruise ever to stop in the places featured on our itinerary, unlike some Amazon cruises which tend to revisit the same tourist spots over and over again. The Motor Yacht Tucano was specifically designed for careful, quiet entry into the wilderness and can go much farther into the rainforest than other groups, where it is extremely rare for us to see any other humans except the occasional fisherman. Though our cruise visits the same region each time, the actual places visited differ from trip to trip because we prefer not to visit the same areas more than a few times a year. This minimises our social impact in that our presence is not regular enough to influence the local economy to make it dependent on tourism, and offers a great variety of experiences for passengers and crew members alike.
Ecotourism is one of the very few ways in which income can be generated from undisturbed rainforest. The presence of our cruise groups has a very positive impact on the places we visit by providing income in wages and material and, as importantly, by involving a large number of local people in an economic relationship to forest preservation. During the itinerary there is an opportunity to visit a deep forest settlement, the boat building village of Novo Airão. The expedition leaders take great pains to make sure that the local community in general benefits from the visit and does not favour any one family group within the village. Infrequent visits and small group sizes (maximum passenger capacity 18) help to ensure that the cruise does not bring too many outsiders and avoids upsetting the daily rhythm of normal life and to avoid setting up a culture of dependency. The cruise helps the community in practical ways by offering a delivery of fuel, which is almost impossible for the local community to obtain in any other way.
The cruise not only benefits local people, it’s operated by local people. The staff are entirely composed of men and women from small local communities and the weekly payroll goes to supporting their families and communities. The operations are the most possible direct benefit of sustainable tourism. Itineraries have been designed to enabler guests to make purchases of locally produced products and the cruise operator does their best to make sure that the benefits of the purchases are passed on as directly as possible to the local economy. Supplies and maintenance purchases are quite considerable and again the operator does their best to purchase directly from the local farmer at the farmer's markets. There is a huge multiplier effect from the vessel’s operations. Because the operators are locally based, virtually all of their activities have social and economic benefits to local people.
All of our travellers are encouraged to learn a few words and phrases of the local language and interact with the locals as much as possible to enhance their social experiences on tour. In addition to the Portuguese phrase sheets which are available on our website, we encourage travellers to be courageous enough to test out their language skills with the bilingual naturalist guides during the cruise, as well as with the local people we visit, at restaurants and their hotel in Manaus. It’s as simple as starting a friendly conversation - even using a combination of pidgin Portuguese and body language you’ll have a richer experience than you would if you didn’t try.
All staff members are local Brazilians and are licensed by the Brazilian authorities. The guides are long term employees with stable jobs. The cruise operator selects guides for their knowledge of the forest and their enthusiasm for communicating their knowledge. The guides have all grown up in the forest and have had the dedication to go on to learn the English language and to study the more academic details of Amazon ecology.
Qualified guides - The guides are fully equal to the task of providing detailed and correct information about Amazon nature and they are also dedicated conservationists. They will also brief you on etiquette such as the clothing required and behaviour expected by visitors to the Amazon rainforest and forest settlers. There are different guidelines for different cultures, so please bear that in mind so that as we travel we can avoid offense wherever possible.
Cultural heritage and preservation - On our trips we are very careful in our interaction with local peoples and try not to turn the villagers we meet into trinket vendors. We have elaborate procedures in place for not disturbing small communities with our visits. This includes varying the places we visit and ensuring that the interactions with local peoples are respectful and not economically disruptive. We provide materials that can benefit the entire community such as diesel fuel for the village generator or writing materials to the village school. We never orchestrate “manufactured” or artificial cultural experiences for our visitors.
In another very practical way we are trying to preserve the cultural heritage of Manaus, Brazil. In a somewhat degraded part of the city we have purchased a near derelict historical building to become our office. We have restored this building to the condition of over a hundred years ago and we hope that this will encourage rescue of other historical structures in this part of the city. We are collaborating in this effort with the Ministry of Culture for the State of Amazonas, the tourist board for the city of Manaus, Manaustur, and also the Brazilian Federal Office for Historical Preservation, IPHAN.
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