Hot Spots: Boca de Valeria, Brazil: A Coboclo Experience

This beautiful city is an entrance to the Valeria River and located on the south bank on a 400 foot hill overlooking the Amazon. Boca de Valeria, literally the “mouth” of the Valeria River, is a colorful Caboclo (a word meaning person of mixed Brazilian Indian and European ancestry) village consisting of a few wooden houses and an abundance of local wildlife, including monkeys, birds and several varieties of Amazon type plants. If you are visiting Boca de Valeria as a stop on your cruise itinerary, you will have the unique experience of having canoes, manned by the local inhabitants, greet you in the River’s waters. Since it is not possible to go ashore, your ship’s tender (a small boat used to service a larger ship) will take you as close as possible, where you can observe the very different life of an Amazonian up close and barter for local crafts (most of them worthwhile). If you have ever played the computer game “Amazon Trail” you have a (virtual) idea of what this experience is like! Be prepared to feel less like a tourist and more like a good-intentioned conquistador. Truly another world, this tiny Indian village is hidden within jungle lakelands where the screeches of colorful parrots fill the air and will drown out all of the anxieties that you left at home. All around you the trees stand waist high in an awesome display of what we will probably lose to global warming.