I am re-reading a book I had read years ago (Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice) and it got me to remembering when I was researching my first trip to the Amazon over 20 years ago. I had been reading trip reports at an office in Quito and read things like:
- "our guide knew the jungle like an animal, but he did not know how to communicate"
- "during the day, our guide was great, but then he would start drinking and pass out and leave us to ourselves to cook"
- "he would get drunk and start flirting with the females in our group"
- "the guy at the airport that we bought a trip from promised us a great trip, but that wasn't what we got"
So I did some more research and later found an operator who sounded interesting. My wife and I went with them into the Peruvian Amazon. Even getting there was an adventure because we went on Faucett Airlines, which had direct flights from Miami to Iquitos (Faucett started in 1928 and ceased operating in 1997). Before we left Miami, there were flames coming out of one of the engines, so we had to get off and wait till they fixed the problem.
While on the trip, we had a nice adventure. Among other things, we had to hike through waist deep water one day, we camped out one night (my wife's first camping trip) and our guides built a table and chairs with their machetes and cooked a great meal.
While on the trip, we had a nice adventure. Among other things, we had to hike through waist deep water one day, we camped out one night (my wife's first camping trip) and our guides built a table and chairs with their machetes and cooked a great meal.
 Moises with an Achuar shaman | One day we met a guide named Moises, who had just come back from a jungle survival trip with another guy. I had some real good talks with him over the next couple of days and he told me that the next time I came back, he wanted to take me out and show me how to survive. It turns out that he was one of the most famous guides in the Peruvian Amazon and had been the subject of several documentaries. |
A few years later when the owner of the lodge we had visited was staying with my wife and I before making a presentation to the local Sierra Club chapter, I was showing him an old video I had from another operator. He recognized one of the guides in the video as the father of Moises and mentioned that he had been one of the top guides in the Amazon until alcoholism got to him and ruined his career. He said he would often warn Moises about not becoming like his father. But when we went back to the lodge a few years ago, we were told that they had to fire Moises because he had become an alcoholic like his dad and they could no longer rely on him.
So, what is the point of my story?
So, what is the point of my story?
Josias with my wife and her new native-made broom Some amazon adventure tour operators are more picky and quality-control conscious than others. Some lodges end up hiring guides who have been fired from other lodges. When you go to the Amazon, a good guide makes all the difference in the world. We have been sending clients to the Amazonia lodges for years because we know that clients will have a good experience with them, no matter what kind of itinerary they might want. Other lodges and cruise operators do hire away some of their guides from time to time, but most of the really good ones stay. They like to be with clients who want to do something different and they enjoy doing more adventurous things themselves. They don't want to do the same itinerary week after week, like they would do on a cruise or at another lodge. Also, they like to work with the scientists who come to the lodge for research work, so they can improve their education. For instance, Josias works with an ornithologist when she comes to do research.
I'm not trying to say that none of the other lodges have good guides. Many of them do and we have no qualms about sending clients to them if they want a standard itinerary. But if somebody tells me that they want to do something different or more adventurous or less touristy or if they have specific interests (we have had an artist who wanted to paint watercolors for a book, people from a pharmaceutical company who wanted to collect snake venom, people who want to canoe and camp for 2-3 weeks), then I normally recommend that they go to the Amazonia lodges. Back when Faucett Airlines was still operating and everybody on the flight back to Miami had been on a jungle trip, of course the people would talk to others about their trip. Invariably our clients who had gone to the Amazonia lodges were glad that they did because they thought they had been able to come closer to their "dream" trip to the Amazon than the others had. That is what a customized trip can do for you.
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