Your first vacation begins by flying to Manaus, Brazil where you will check into your luxurious 5-star Hotel Villa Amazonia for a one-night stay before joining your luxury 5-star cruise of the Amazon the following day. Villa Amazonia is located in the centre of Manuas, just a few steps from the renowned Amazon Theatre, an Italian renaissance style opera house built in 1896. The hotel has 30 luxury apartments all facing a beautiful indoor garden, natural stone pool and terrace. The façade, reception and restaurant preserve the design of a restored historic mansion that dating back to the golden rubber age. The hotel has a fitness centre, swimming pool and the Fitz Carraldo Bistro offers a contemporaneous menu, blending international classic dishes with the exotic Amazonian culinary and a bar.
The spacious rooms have a sophisticated and modern design that come equipped with an en-suite bathroom, a bathtub and toiletries, high-quality bed linen, convenient amenities and a whole infrastructure of equipment and services offered by the most premium hotels as well as complimentary WiFi. The location is the perfect place for a stroll along its historic streets where you will find amazing places such as Sao Sebastiao and Nossa Senhora da Conciecao churches, Provincial Palace, and the Museum of Northern Man, all within a short walking distance of your hotel. As you will be boarding your cruise from mid-afternoon up until 4.30pm, you have plenty of time to have a stroll around the area as it’s only an 8-minute taxi drive to the Manaus Port.
Entertainment
The ship’s knowledgeable team will offer you opportunities to learn about the Amazon’s exotic local flora and fauna and the biodiversity of its river and ecosystem. You will be amazed by the ship’s entertainment crew, showing off their talents as they swing to the samba in lively cruise shows, you will certainly learn a few moves if you are not familiar with this South American dance. Beautifully bright, traditional costumes and music bring stories to life in local folklore-theme festivals. On your last night of your cruise, the Captain will throw a folklore themed dinner extravaganza. Your onboard retreat will be in an elegantly designed Royal Suite, the ships comfortable largest cabin with access to exclusive amenities. As part of your royal treatment, your cabin with its king-sized bed en-suite bathroom, coffee and tea making facilities, cable TV, wide private balcony, the perfect location for a romantic dinner deliver by room service and your cabin will be serviced twice-daily. When Royal Suite guests want to enjoy the ship’s entertainment or dinner in the gourmet restaurant, they have easy access from their room on the second-level Deck. The ship’s gourmet cuisine offers one of the finest Amazon cruise dining experiences, set among Amazonian art and décor.
Before embarking on your adventurous voyage of a lifetime, let’s give you some background on the Amazon and why it’s crucial to life on earth.
The Amazon
The Amazon contains 40,000 plant species, covers 6 million km2 (600 million hectares, or ⅔ the size of USA), spans 9 countries and is one of the largest terrestrial carbon (trees ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere) of sinks on the planet. It is estimated the Amazon sequesters around 430 million tonnes of carbon annually, roughly 4 times the of the UK’s total emissions, producing 20% of the planet’s oxygen. In context, that’s almost the equivalent of all cars on the road in UK, France, Germany and Italy combined plus the UK’s total industrial carbon emissions. The Amazon river contains around 3,000 freshwater species, 370 reptiles, is the second longest in the world after the Nile, the earth’s largest in terms of its body of water and stretches 6,400km from the Andes Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. To get an idea of its length, it’s the equivalent of a human walking from New York to Rome 1km every12½ minutes taking almost 2-months 24-hours a day. It produces 20% of the earth’s freshwater and has approximately 1,100 tributaries,17 of which run 1,500km each draining into the mighty river.
How important is the Amazon?
It’s vital to Global Climate Stability, pumping 7 trillion tons of water into the atmosphere annually. How can you help preserve this crucial lung of the planet? Take this voyage, return home and share what you experienced and all that you have learned, the more people speak about the threats of deforestation, the more international pressure is applied to protect the most biodiverse region in the world.
