In January 2008 my wife and I took the Trafalgar Best of Brazil and the Amazon tour. It was an 11-day tour that featured Rio de Janeiro, Iguassu Falls, and the Amazon. We had tried to book a similar trip through Globus, but the airfare advertized did not materialize so I would not work with them. We added two days at the front end to enjoy some beach time at Copacabana Beach, but that did not work out to well. That was due my fainting on the plane down but that is another post.
The days in Rio were great. We half day tours and free time which worked out well. We a lot of early morning activities so we did not do too much at night.
After Rio we flew to Iguassu Falls on the border with Argentina. That is the falls in the Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull movie. It was spectacular. They had walkways out into the falls. On the second day we bused over to the Argentina side and took a boat ride practically under the falls. We really got wet that trip.
Then we flew to Manaus and took a short boat trip to Amazon Ecopark Lodge. We went fishing for piranha, hiking in the jungle, night hunting for caiman, touring the rivers, and boating to the meeting of the waters.
Finally we flew to Sao Paulo for a night of rest at the Marriott and our flight home from there. Except for this last part I thought the trip was great. We had to get use to different guides everywhere, but Trafalgar handled the transfers very well and the guides were all good. The guide at Iguassu Falls kept wondering why we did not want to do anything at night, but we were up early every day so we were exhausted at night. The last day in Sao Paulo was really a wasted day. We had a late flight out but the hotel would not let us its services after our noon check out. I got a much needed massage and the rest of the group went to a local shopping mall.
