Ideas for Pantanal and Amazon Rainforest on very low budget (and without a car)
Hi all!
As some of you may have gathered, I’m currently on a long backpacking trip in South America (unfortunately coming to an end this December). Over the next two months or so I (and my partner if I can convince her to tag along) am hoping to see some of the Pantanal and also the Amazon Rainforest. I probably will be taking some public river boats on the Amazon itself just for the experience, but I gather that you don’t see all that much this way because the river is so wide.
I know there’s a lot of info in trip reports, and I’m slowly making my way through them, but many don’t talk much about price, and I’m on a very low budget by this community’s standards. I also am not likely going to have a car at any point, and despite the length of my itinerary, I’m also working remotely almost half-time, so can’t afford to spend too huge amounts of my time independently scouring interesting places on foot and by hitchhiking (which is what I’d rather be doing if I had a true surplus of time, and energy). So basically what I’m looking for are backpacker-budget tours or places that are easily accessible on foot from sites with very cheap accommodation (probably max $40/night for a double if it doesn’t include food or safaris).
Honestly my top priority is to get a close look at well-preserved parts of the ecosystems themselves – so, for example, patrolling soybean fields for jaguars might not make the itinerary – but of course I still am hoping to see at least some of the charismatic megafauna (e.g. anteaters, tapir, jaguar if possible, primates, river dolphin, giant armadillo, anacondas if I’m allowed to say that here…). But I really can’t burn through $400 per person in three days, which is what one reputedly-affordable Brazilian Pantanal operator quoted me as their cheapest option.
Should I be focused more on the Bolivian Pantanal perhaps? Or am I just out of luck? And where is a good place for cheap wildlife watching in intact rainforest of the Amazon basin? Bolivia? Peru? Manaus? Elsewhere in Brazil? I probably won’t make it to Colombia (or Venezuela) this time, but am expecting to end up in the Guianas towards the end. If it helps, I speak fluent Spanish, and can kinda-sorta get by a little in Portuguese.
Thanks in advance! Happy mammal-watching!
-Evan
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Jon Hall
Check out Palmari lodge in the western Amazon. I got there by boat from Leticia in Colombia but there may be other options. It was cheap and popular with school groups back in 2006. Check out my report on my Brazil page https://www.mammalwatching.com/2006/10/30/brazil-2006/