Top of Brazilian Amazon jungle trips - catching a caiman in your hand - Manaus jungle activities

During my trip to Brazilian Amazon in 2019 together with my friend Kasia, we had an opportunity to swim out in a boat at night to look for and catch a caiman. It was an amazing experience to hold one of those prehistoric wild animals in our bare hands! Ok, it was a baby one but more that enough for me in terms of ''scary''. I hope you will enjoy meeting and learning something about those species - a cousin of dinosaurs - as much as we did. Please rest assured that nothing has happened to the caiman as we have released it back into the Amazonian wild. We have stayed in the jungle for three days exploring it and this next to fishing for piranhas was one of the highlights - here's a link to an example of 3 days deep Amazon jungle adventure: www.viator.com.... Many thanks to our great guide Toniel, for catching the caiman and this fabulous experience.
The gate way to the jungle was Manaus city, the capital of Brazilian Amazon with population of 2.1 million people. We have visited just before the famous carnival and ended up at a random street party with the locals where I swear I have met a sibling of Dany DeVito (just probably from another mother) - but now, that is a whole separate story. The point in here is that Manaus gives you many options of variety length trips to the Amazon jungle - from a few hours or a day to multiday trips - with some cool activities like Amazon tree climbing, immersing in waterfalls or why not to go fishing for piranhas?!
One of my favourites was on route from Manaus to the deeper jungle passing the famous Meeting of Waters, an absolutely epic place, where Amazon ''milky tea'' river meets with Rio Negro ''black coffee'' waters. For 6 km (3.7 mi) the waters of the two rivers run side by side without mixing! So sitting in the middle of a boat you'll see blackwaters on one side of the boat and sandy waters from the other. Perfectly not confusing, right? The rivers then flow another 60 km (37 mi) before mixing fully, but the phenomenon persists incompletely for another 30 km (19 mi). This spectacle of nature is on of Manaus's top experiences to see.
Because of the size of the rivers you will also feel more like on a lake or sea - the waters are just so vast. I really loved it. In fact the rivers are so huge around Manaus that this midland city has its own beach!
But it is not all about the jungle. There is the Amazon Theatre, an opera house located in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. And of course, since this is Brazil, a life would not be worth living without a kickass huge football stadium, Arena Amazonia - constructed from 2010 to 2014 as part of Brazil's hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup with all-seater capacity of 42,924.
All of this makes visiting the Amazonia with its capital city and the biggest river on Earth a 100% must!