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On a Vine Less TraveledDive straight into a comic book adventure from your childhood with a heady escape to Tarzan country. It’s a novel exploration of the amazing Amazon.By Shubha PriyaHunt crocodiles in the dead of night. Fish in piranha-infested waters. Catch a tarantula spider. Get lost in maze-like estuaries. Get hugged by a woolly monkey.
An Amazon eco-holiday in Brazil should be something to brag about. Even write a novel about. Forget catching up with the rest of the world with their to-do lists of destinations in Europe and China. Make them envy you for taking the road (or is it vine?) less traveled and come back with stories and pictures that would even inspire an Edgar Rice Burroughs to develop a new series. Your adventure begins when you fly over Manaus to land. Take in this spectacular sight: a brick red Solimoes river, snaking through dense, lush-green rainforest, to join the cola-black Rio Negro. A stunning palette of nature’s brushstrokes that make the mighty Amazon. Somewhere down there is Ariau Towers Hotel, built on stilts in the black waters.
As you approach the Ariau hotel, you marvel at the gigantic wooden cylindrical architecture, the ramps and walkways, the exceptional plumbing, the bright colored parrots, the ring-tailed mongoose, the electric eel, the shy tree sloth, the vicious piranha in a tank, and especially the friendly staff – woolly monkeys who welcome and adore you with an endless hug. And while you are checking in, you spot a familiar name on the list of celebrities who graced these very rooms. Being a typical IT geek, your heart races. Title: Bill Gates Slept Here! Subtitle: Exploring the Jungle Tracks of a Technocrat.
Don’t leave without being introduced to some local legends. And meet some – in your own room. Gigantic amazon-sized cockroaches that fly – zoom - and disappear in the cracks between wooden slats. Or that enormous tarantula spider that your neighbor has gleefully caught in a plastic bag. But the one that captures your imagination is the unusual pink dolphins of the Amazon. They are known to impregnate Amazonian Indian women whose bellies are often swollen with special ‘dolphin-child’. Title: Homo-Delphino Take Over Planet Earth! Subtitle: Clues to Human Evolution Traced to Jungle Lore. So if you are ready with your Tarzan togs, grab a vine, and let your own version of Jungle Book begin. …………………………………………………………… The Ariau Amazon Towers Hotel is a 2 hour drive out of Manaus, Brazil’s free port city on the Amazon. The hotel is situated at the beginning of the Anavilhanas Archipelago, the largest fresh water Archipelago in the world. Built on the Rio Negro, Ariau was developed on the advice of Jacques Costeau, who is believed to have said, ”Build a hotel up in the trees and people will come!” For more information: Picture credits: Shubha Priya |
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It’s a different kind of adventure at the Ariau Towers
Hotel. Located in the Anavilhanas Archipelago, the hotel is built on a river, at
the rain forest’s canopy level. Pick any overhanging vine, swing off it - and
holler a throaty Kreeeg-ah! Bundolo!! This is virtually Tarzan’s home,
and if you are planning to take your Jane along, there’s even ‘Tarzan’s
Honeymoon Cottage’, 22m up on the treetops at Ariau Towers. And if you regret
that you forgot to pack your real leopard-skin trunks, you’ll be forgiven in the
name of animal rights and the Amazon ecology and preservation department.
It can only be accessed by boat from Manaus, and takes 2
hours through the Rio Negro (colored black from all the tannin seeped over eons
in the slow moving waters), and your boatman will show you how nature is making
a huge attempt to keep the balance in a fragile eco-system, deforested by human
settlements. You are moved enough to see a novel’s title pop in your head:
Tales of Treachery! Subtitle: (your name goes here) Saves the Amazon
from Denudation and Devastation.
Now this could happen very rarely, but if you get lucky,
you could find yourself in a knotty tangle, a truly authentic nature-made Amazon
maze. Your boatman is lost in the confounding estuaries. Feels like hours go by
as he nervously jokes about the crocs below, makes more wrong turns, breaks into
a sweat, blames it on the humidity and assures you he will find the way out. He
does, 20 minutes later. Title: Lost! Subtitle: The Twists & Turns of
an Estuarian Adventure.
At night, you are taken on a river ride after dinner, in
pitch darkness, except for the Milky Way and a single torch light. You see
silver fish jump into your boat and gasp. The hanging overgrowth brushes your
face, and you stifle a yell - snake! The boat guy up front says - Shhhh! So you
shut up. He switches off his light source – and dives into croc-infested waters.
You scream. He thrashes about in the water. He climbs on board finally, with a
croc in his hands, and wants to put it on your lap. Title: Terror Tales of
the Untamed. Subtitle: Back from the Jaws of a Croc! (You know
it’s actually Backed-away from the Jaws of a Croc but this version is more
exciting).