Hi Luciana!
Thank you for your note! I would love to share with you my thoughts about my recent experiences with Viverde and Juma Lodge!
First of all, I was really happy with the way you and Viverde handled my reservations with Juma Lodge. You were very kind and helpful in answering my endless questions about the experience. I appreciated the promptness and professionalism of the company. I was only too happy to book with Juma Lodge with your help.
And my time at Juma Lodge was an amazing adventure. My husband and I were there celebrating our first wedding anniversary and it was an unforgettable experience. The lodge itself is a wonderful place to stay in, with individual bungalows built on stilts to rise above the river. The food there was delicious, as were the drinks. The lodge also had several animals as pets, whose pictures I included with this email, whose antics were incredibly charming to observe. The staff at the lodge was very helpful and courteous at all time. They had so much knowledge to share about the area, I loved soaking it all in. Our main guide, Jungle Boy along with another freelance guide named Daniel, were top notch. They was only too happy to answer all our questions and we had some great conversations at the lodge, just sitting around during and after dinner and chatting. They were not only personable but experienced and we felt like we were getting a personal tour the whole time.
Visitors should know that the lodge only turns on a generator for electricity from about 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. There is no hot water in the bathrooms either. But my husband and I were aware of this beforehand and it didn’t bother us a bit. Also, for those thinking they will see all sorts of wildlife in the Amazon, they may be disappointed. I had read in guidebooks that the Pantanal is the place to go for wildlife while the Amazon is more about the rainforest, something a fellow Juma Lodge visitor confirmed as she had just come from the Pantanal.
However, another couple that was also visiting Juma Lodge kept expecting to see wildlife everywhere and didn’t seem to realize that’s not usually the case in the Amazon.
The only thing I would suggest to Juma Lodge is to improve their communication, which is what I also wrote on an evaluation form I completed upon check-out. When we were picked up in Manaus, we did not know what to expect next. It would have been helpful if our driver, upon pick up, gave us some insight on maybe a welcome letter or even by saying “Hi my name is XX from Juma Lodge. I will be taking you to the docks in Manaus, where you will board a speedboat with another guide, to cross the mouth of the Amazon and land in the town of XX.
From there, you will take a van with your guide to a smaller dock, where a final speedboat will take you to your ultimate destination, Juma Lodge.” Or something of that nature. I knew from our emails beforehand that the trip to the lodge consisted of a boat ride, van journey, then another boat ride, but we were met but at least 4 different staffers along the way whose names I never got. One who rode the first speedboat with us was apparently some kind of guide but he never identified himself as such, so at first I thought he was just another traveler catching a boat with us across the river. Because in the second speedboat, that was exactly the case, there was another man riding in our boat but he was just catching a ride and we dropped him off at his house before arriving at Juma Lodge. Not knowing the details didn’t make damper my experience any, but I do think just a quick informational session from the beginning would be helpful for travelers.
Overall, though, our experience was a tremendous one that I would recommend to any traveler wanting to explore the Amazon. I would definitely recommend staying at Juma Lodge through a booking with Viverde. Thank you again for the wonderful experience!
Muito obrigada,
~june