Planning Your Own Amazon Adventure
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Things to Take With You
Here are some suggestions for things that may prove useful during your Amazon
Adventure.
Using a Guidebook
One of the most important things to take is a guidebook. A guidebook is important
because it tells you about interesting places to visit, provides insights into local
history and (most importantly) provides starting points for finding hotels and places to
eat. Most guidebooks include maps of the cities to help find your way around. Guidebooks
are particularly useful if you're not fluent in the local languages and have difficulties
obtaining local information.
Many companies put out travel guides, but the travellers' bible seems to be the
excellent Lonely Planet guides. The best aspect about the Lonely Planet guides is that
they'll also be used by most travellers you meet up with. This makes it easier when
comparing maps and ideas for further travel.
Guidebooks are also available from The Rough Guide, Let's Go and others. Fieldings'
guides deserve special mention for their Amazon Guide – although I found
this best when also used in conjunction with another more general guidebook.
Good websites to visit include:
Lonely Planet Online
Fieldings Guides
The Rough Guide
Things to Take With You
Other things you might consider taking with you are:
| Backpack |
If you're trekking around, jumping on riverboats,
and searching through town for the best hotel deals, you'll need a good backpack to carry
all your gear. Make sure the backpack has a good harness so that carrying all that gear is
comfortable. A zip-off day pack is also a good idea. |
| Binoculars |
Getting close to wildlife in the rainforest is extremely difficult.
A pair of binoculars will help ensure a good view – particularly when examining at
the fine details of the Amazon's exotic birds. |
| Camera and film |
Record your tour by taking a camera. When
trekking in the rainforest you should take a fast film (400asa) to cope with the low light
levels on the rainforest floor. In bright sunlight, use 100asa. Take spare batteries. |
| Clothes Line |
Extra soap and small clothes line is great if staying in budget
accommodation. With this you can regularly wash and dry clothes in your hotel room so that
you always have a fresh change. |
| Footwear |
If you're trekking, take some light but
comfortable boots. If travelling on riverboats, or staying in cheap hotels with shared
showers, a pair of jandals (thongs) are also very useful. You can buy a pair of jandals
cheaply in most marketplaces. |
| Hammock |
Hammocks are essential for riverboat travels, and can also be
useful for snoozing outside during the day (and even during the night if it gets too hot).
Hammocks can be readily purchased in the markets of most Amazon river towns and cities.
Prices range from US$ 10 to US$ 20. |
| Language books |
Unless you're fluent in the languages, you should
take a dictionary and/or phrase book. It's extremely useful for helping you through
conversations or trying to ask for directions. |
| Light clothing |
The weather's hot, so take light clothing and a hat. T-shirts are
good, though take a reasonable supply since you'll feel more comfortable with regular
changes. Light cotton trousers and a light cotton long-sleeved shirt are also good for the
evenings. Hemp socks are great for hot climates (hemp fibre has the wonderful property of
not retaining body smells). |
| Light raincoat |
The Amazon basin is a hot tropical area with high
rainfall, particularly in BelΘm near the Atlantic Coast. Take a light plastic raincoat of
the type commonly sold at sports games (and in Para Rubber stores) for just a few dollars.
This type of raincoat is small enough to carry in a day pack or small bag without adding
weight or taking much room. Most rainstorms last less than an hour and are only a minor
inconvenience. |
| Medical kit |
Take a simple medical kit of the type described on the previous page. |
| Money belt |
A money belt is a useful thing. You can keep your
money unseen and make yourself less vulnerable to opportunist pickpockets and thieves. |
| Pocket knife |
A small pocket knife, such as a Swiss Army Knife, is a handy
"toolkit" with lots of uses while travelling. |
| Power adapter |
Power sockets in Brazil and Peru are different to
those in New Zealand and the United States. Getting a conversion directly between NZ and
Brazilian or Peruvian plugs is difficult. Instead, I bought a converter between NZ and US
plugs before leaving New Zealand. In Brazil I was then easily able to obtain an adapter
which converted US plugs to Brazilian.
An adapter will change the plugs, but not the voltage. Voltages in
Brazil differ from city to city. In the Brazilian Amazon, the voltage is likely to be 110V
or 120V. Elsewhere in Brazil, 220V is more common. Peruvian power supplies also seem to
run at 220V. If you're bringing electronic equipment with you from overseas, it might not
operate properly at these different voltages. Worse still, the voltages could cause
damage. If your equipment uses an external adapter, it may be possible to purchase an
equivalent adapter which works with the local voltages (I found this necessary for using
an external zip drive). If you have a laptop computer with an interal power supply, you
might prefer to run the laptop solely on battery power, using an external charger to
recharge the batteries (this minimises problems associated with power surges or incorrect
voltages). For long-term use it may be easier to swap the computer's internal power supply
for a local model. My Toshiba laptop did survive the ordeal of being plugged
directly into all these different voltages, though it got very hot running at 110V (I
wouldn't recommend for others to try this). |
| Telephone adapter |
Telephone jackpoints used in Brazil are very different from the
jackpoints used in New Zealand, UK, Europe, and the United States. Brazilian phone systems
aren't particularly good – they are analogue and use pulse dialing. Once you arrive
in Brazil, local consumer electronics and computer stores should be able to provide you
with an adapter. The adapter is necessary if you plan to use a computer modem. I'm not
sure of systems used in Peru. |
| Telephone calling card |
A calling card is a useful thing when travelling.
It lets you make calls from overseas, and have them charged to your telephone account at
home. It saves you the hassle of change at payphones, and makes calling home much easier.
Calling card calls do NOT work in Peru, and the Telecom NZ calling
card does not "officially" work in Brazil either. But, I found that I could use
the card in Brazil by dialling the AT&T 1-800 number specified for card users
travelling in the USA. To access this number I had to prefix it with three zeros (ie.
000-1-800 ......). This trick worked from most payphones in Manaus - but, in the Brazilian
state of Parß, it only worked from payphones physically located in the offices of the
local phone company (TeleParß).
The above-described trick isn't guaranteed to work. So its also useful
to know the phrase for "I would like to make a collect telephone call". If you
get this far, you may be lucky enough to be put through to an English-speaking
international operator. If you need help making collect calls for the first time, ask a
native-speaking friend or the hotel for assistance (and instructions) or try making the
call from payphones in the local telephone company offices. Note that the procedure
differs slightly in different Brazilian states since they all have their own phone
companies. In Peru, I was unable to make calling card calls through Telephonica del
Peru, but its office staff were helpful and efficient when I physically visited one of
their bureaus (in Cuzco) to make collect phone calls back to New Zealand. |
| Torch |
This is useful to have around. A small maglight or similar torch is
easy to carry in a backpack, and takes up very little room. Power outages are common in
South America, and its good to be prepared. If you plan to be camping, or spending time in
a rainforest location such as Manu Reserve, take a bigger torch since some guides will
take you on night-time treks to see nocturnal animals. Don't forget spare batteries and
bulbs. |
   
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