Amazon rainforest holidays

The river cruises on our Amazon holidays are your best option for wildlife spotting in this vast rainforest. On foot, any animals will be scared off long before you see them, but when you’re in a boat they’re unaware, or uncaring, of your presence, and you can frequently see them at the riverbanks taking a drink. Our Amazon River cruise holidays normally start in Manaus, northern Brazil, and last five to seven days.

There are big Amazon River cruise boats, carrying as many as 1,000 passengers. But our responsible Amazon holidays use far smaller and less-polluting vessels carrying 250 people maximum. That means they can enter narrower, occasionally shallow tributaries, and reach much more remote areas, with regular excursions to riverside communities, and guided hikes through the forest.

The Amazon rainforest is home to around 400 tribal groups, and given it spans some 5.5 million kilometres across nine different countries, it’s no surprise that there is a great breadth of languages and culture between them. Knowing how to live sustainably from the land, the Amazon’s indigenous peoples are its best defenders, but their communities are threatened by powerful interests such as the logging and mining industries. Responsible Amazon holidays provide value in protecting the rainforest rather than cutting it down. They also offer remote tribal communities an income that helps to fund conservation, education and healthcare projects.

On our Colombian Amazon tours you can take the short boat ride to a Mocagua village whose vivid murals showcase the community’s culture and its bond with the rainforest. Our Ecuadorian Amazon holidays visit an Anangu Quichua community that offers overnight stays, helping to fund its work against deforestation.

In the Amazon it’s not so much wildlife watching as wildlife listening. The vegetation is so dense that for the untrained eye it can be hard to see anything through the trees, but the noise is terrific. The hum of millions of insects intermingled with a cacophony of bird calls forms a constant soundtrack, while the rumbling growl of a howler monkey can be heard from five kilometres away. Harpy eagles, parrots, and all manner of snakes and spiders can be seen, while from a boat you might see river otters, possibly even dolphins.

On our Peruvian Amazon holidays you can stay at a scientific research centre that doubles as a boutique eco-lodge in the Tambopata National Reserve – your stay helps fund their projects. Here, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about macaws, and probably things you never knew you wanted to know, from their feeding and breeding habits to the challenges faced by conservationists fighting for their survival.

Meanwhile, our Bolivian Amazon tours delve into Madidi National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. You can stay in a rainforest ecolodge for guided hikes when you might encounter many species of monkey, as well as toucans, parrots, tapirs and troops of wild pigs. Local guides are as adept at explaining their Quechua-Tacana culture as they are at pinpointing the animals in the trees.