Tips 👏
- Booked as part of our package with Nick’s adventures.
- There’s electricity only few hours at night, so bring charged power banks. Same for hot water.
- A bit of signal with Tigo but just to check emails.
- Miriam and Efreim, the lovely owners, propose you various free on-demand activities, you choose what you want to do! Miriam is also english speaker.
- During rain season, there’s clouds of moskitoes. Bring long sleeves and tons of effective repellant.
- Bring your swimsuit and poncho!
🏠 Accommodation
We stayed at the Chuchini Reserve. Basic rooms, but delicous fresh food and nice commons areas.
🚲 Getting there
Flight from Santa Cruz to Trinidad airport, and then 20 minutes car.
⏱ Duration
We stayed two nights and three days and that was good.
Reaching the lodge 🛩
We boarded an early flight with Amaszonas, booked by Nick’s adventures to Trinidad, where they came to pick us up at the airport. On the way to the lodge, we’ve spotted a Capybara, the biggest rodent in the world (we saw it again crossing the river later, quite a chill dude). Upon arrival, Miriam showed us our room and gave us a quick tour of the place.
The room was very basic but clean with a private bathroom, but without electricity or hot water at night. The place can host around 40 persons at high season, but since we were there during the rain season, we had it all for ourselves, including the following facilities:
- Big common spaces to have meals, featuring hammocks.
- Child playgrounds.
- Home made football pitch.
- Two tiny artificial lakes, perfect for fishing.
- Home-made awesome zipline over the lagoon.
- Horses to ride in the jungle.
- Insane museum (will talk about it below).
- Boat rides with water-board option.
It’s a place where you can come and enjoy visiting the Amazonian bassin for few days, but also where some locals come to enjoy a sunny day in family.
Half a day in the jungle 🌳
After dropping our bags, we started the tour of the place. We spotted some monkeys, parrots, tucans and learnt about the local fauna and flora. We grabbed a delicious lunch and started a two hours trek in the wild forest. At some point, we’ve climbed a massive tree (optional) of over 200 years old to feel like Tarzan. On the way back, we spotted the usual local fauna, but also an adventurous little badger!
We then enjoy a chill nap in the hammocks, got dinner freshly cooked, and went for a night boat ride on the lagoon to spot caimans. The owner managed to grab two small ones bare hand, and showed those to us explaining some details about their morphology, before nicely releasing them in the water.
Fish lessons and horseback ride 🎣
After an early wake up and a big breakfast, we went for a fishing lesson on the lake to learn local techniques, basically with a rope. We fished five local fishes, which ended up to be our lunch.
After another delightful hammock siesta, we jumped on the horses and went for a 2 hours ride in the jungle. We didn’t managed to see much since it was raining as hell, but that made it a very funny experience. Back to the lodge, we took a quick cold shower (hot didn’t worked) and had a lovely dinner.
