The Journey to Atta Rainforest Lodge

I had breakfast soon after 6.30am in order to ready to meet the Journey Latin America group who had been in Rio for a couple of days before flying to Brasilia yesterday to catch the same flight as I had taken the previous day. There were twelve of us plus Etienne, the JLA leader. The youngest was 60 and the oldest 80, and they were very experienced travelers, some taking multi-trips each year.
After crossing the bridge over the Rio Branco, it was a 90-minute drive by taxi along a quiet road through savannah to the border at Bonfim. We had to show our yellow fever vaccination certificate but there was no customs check, nor a check of the lengthy online immigration form on my phone which I'd completed a few days before.
We drove across the Rio Takutu on a bridge which had an underpass so traffic could change from driving on the right to driving on the left. We changed money in the border town of Lethem and then had a 3.5 hour drive on a partially-graded dirt road to arrive at Atta Rainforest Lodge. Previous tours had driven for 14 hours along this road to the capital, Bridgetown.
I shared a cabin with Doug from Exmouth. Despite paying a single supplement, it was understood that I would have to share given that there were only eight cabins here and at the next lodge. There was a mossy net, and the shower, heated by the sun or a solar panel, was open to the sky.
We went on the Iwokrama Canopy Walkway which was suspended between three platforms 100 feet above the ground. It's being extended to a fourth platform. Only one person at a time could walk along the walkway, and, other than the platform at the start, only eight people could be on each of the other two platforms at the same time. I saw four macaws and a fly bat. I thought that we would stay longer and go up again the following day but a photographic group visited the following day which may have prevented us going up again, and Etienne said that we would see more birds from walking along the road.
We did a night walk in the forest and saw a juvenile black-throated antshrike.
Black curassow walked around the grounds of the Lodge.Read more