02 Mar 2024
I’ve never given a bad review before, but I don’t want other non-Portuguese speakers to go on this tour and have a less than awesome time because they didn’t get what they paid for. If you like hiking, it’s worth going on for the experience of seeing the waterfalls (which are indeed beautiful!).
Two issues:
- There is very little English translation (and at times, none), which is not what is advertised.
- With that in mind, it’s overpriced for English speakers.
Firstly: I don’t expect anyone in Brazil to speak English, unless it’s their job. In this case, the tour is *advertised* as such. The tour guide started off translating into English and then just stopped like an hour in. He was giving long, detailed histories for minutes at a time in Portuguese and then… nothing.
That was moderately annoying at first, but it became a serious problem once we were on the trail. The English speakers were put in our own group for translation. Then the guide who spoke English inexplicably decided to go with a Portuguese-speaking group instead, leaving us with a local trail guide who spoke zero English. It was a safety issue because we needed instructions about which way to go, what we should avoid, etc.
If you just want to see some waterfalls, it’s overpriced, because it’s a round trip bus ticket, a lunch (albeit, a delicious one), and pretty minimal attention from a tour guide. I say it’s a bus ticket instead of a tour because there were 20 people in my group, and English speakers are basically ignored. To put that into perspective, a round-trip bus ticket to Presidente Figueirado is 70 Reis, which is about $15. A similar lunch in Manaus would be around $4.