October 2022

This July, Reena and her teenage son and daughter took an epic two-week discovery of Brazil. They visited Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Iguassu Falls but the highlight was the Amazon Rainforest. Read about their Amazon story below.
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Last year, our family had spent a lot of time in the middle of the pandemic figuring out how to take care of family members that were far away. Although we had a lot of missed time to make up with relatives at the end of the pandemic when traveling was more safe, I thought it was so unfair to the kids to keep saying “we need to go see the family again.” We’re coming off this really historically difficult time for the entire world and there were a lot of missed opportunities over those 2 years, like not planning other trips. My kids are both now in high school and I only have a few years left with them.

My kids were 17 and 14 when we went. It was my son’s last summer at home before college, and I really wanted to do something that they may not verbalize now or immediately appreciate, but would become such a happy memory for them before they have their own families and their own priorities and got busy with college and things like that. And I really wanted to do something with them that would be a trip they would never have imagined doing on their own or not have the funds to do on their own if they were a bit older. I really feel that my kids were at the exact right age to take advantage of all these experiences, and I felt we really deserved to do something fun. 

Given the COVID situation, I personally would never have chosen to go to a place with high COVID numbers, but my daughter said one thing: I want to see the Amazon before climate change makes it disappear forever. She just said it tongue-in-cheek, like a joke. But I took it seriously and she was flabbergasted that we were able to go. 

What I was most looking forward to on this trip were awesome views and experiences that I would not get anywhere else, and seeing the Amazon. My daughter was looking forward to the Amazon and just getting a break from the regular routine. My son was looking forward to the beaches….neither of my kids are beach people, but he just wanted the experience of a tropical beach...he just sat on the beach and thought it was so peaceful. And he was really looking forward to seeing the Amazon. He had always wanted to try hang gliding and I’m so glad he did.

The Amazon itself was super different, and it’s fascinating to show how different the Amazon is from season to season. What you see in a documentary or what you learn in school just gives you a big picture, but they don’t tell you what it’s like for the people who live there with this river rising and receding. The kids who live there don’t take a school bus to school; they take a school boat. And it’s so hot there during the day that they have morning school, then they come home and help their family with their chores or their businesses, and then go back to school in the evening. 

And, getting to the Amazon it’s a such an interesting experience in itself. You go from bus to dock and you cross the river to another dock. There’s no cell phone service. We were on a bus for 3 ½ hours on a pot-hole-y road. And there’s another boat ride to the lodge, but when you finally get there, you find yourself at a cross between Gilligan’s island and Paradise. Every roof is a thatched roof, made from fallen leaves from the surrounding palm trees on their island. And what you see along the ride is amazing: houses on stilts, and the river that they’re built on rises and recedes, and would wash away homes if they weren’t on stilts. The roads have potholes because they have to be constantly re-built and are sometimes washed out, you realize quickly how difficult it is for people to pull themselves out of that environment and make progress in a place like this, because nature always has another plan.

It was amazing to see.I think it’s cool to learn about animals and why they do what they do or how they have developed over time to adapt to their environment. We got to see tarantulas and their nests, Acai trees, and actual orchids growing randomly on trees. I love to experience nature, but I’m not an athletic outdoors-y person, so all our guides were so super helpful and always gave us good information in Rio, in Foz Iguazu, and the Amazon. They offered to take family pictures with my phone and make sure that the kids didn’t get too far ahead.

I had been thinking for a long time that I wanted to try sky diving or something like that on my birthday, but I didn’t have anyone who wanted to do that with me. My son really wanted to try hang-gliding, so I thought this could be my only chance to do something I want to do and with a person I love. You have to be far more athletic to do hang gliding because you have to do this running start. So my son went hang gliding, but I went paragliding. 

So, I saw my son take off. But according to my guide, the wind was not exactly great for paragliding. I had to sit up at the top of the hill and wait a great amount of time harnessed to the person who was accompanying me. You need to walk down a ramp, and as you’re walking down the ramp, you’re getting further away and the wind picks you up and lifts you off the ramp. But when you’re doing that, it’s slippery. Both myself and the person harnessed to me lost our footing, so both of us were hanging off the ramp. I didn’t realize how good I was in an emergency, I just started giving him information, like “my feet are dangling….. I’m slipping more… now half my body is off…is someone coming to help us?” (Laughs) I wasn’t screaming it, I was just talking. I thought that was a good learning experience for me: this is how I am in an emergency. 

I have an appreciation for nature and how she can be relentless, that people have learned to live with it and to earn a living from it, and subsist, some people have learned to be one with it, just not everyone. Even though nature seems like it’s resilient and can take anything humans throw at it, but I felt as if I had taken one thing out of that eco-system, it would have messed up nature’s balance.

Planet Hoppers are on the road again! Please #planethoppers your Instagram photos so we may follow all your journeys!