Learning: Leading the Way: Amazon Adventure

Amazon Adventure

Amazon River cruises aren’t necessarily synonymous with private baths and air-conditioned cabins, nor are family vacations usually associated with both learning and lounging. This summer, however, Smithsonian Journeys provides both luxury and lore in A Family Amazon Voyage: The Greatest Voyage in Natural History. Aboard La Amatista, a handcrafted twenty-eight-passenger riverboat that glides down the Peruvian Amazon, parents don’t have to worry that their children will complain of boredom or about being dragged on a grown-ups’ field trip. Not when mornings consist of canoeing and parrot watching or lessons on photography, medicinal plants and monkey-call identification, while afternoons are spent on jungle walks or playing tag with local schoolchildren. Participants of every age will get an up close view of the Amazon on the smaller excursion boats that take passengers into the mysterious wetlands.

Throughout the journey, seasoned study leader and renowned naturalist Patty Hostiuck shares her vast knowledge of flora and fauna as guests encounter examples of both in the region’s many unusual plants and animals. She delivers lively lectures aimed at the whole family or tailored to the kids or their parents, depending on the topic. A tour manager also accompanies the expedition, to attend to individual needs. So if the grown-ups want to sneak up to the roof deck to sip Chilean wines before dinner, they can do so knowing that their children will be engaged learning jungle survival techniques or how to fish for piranha. Family-style meals in the floor-to-ceiling-windowed dining room feature lots of fresh fish and local produce. After supper, Hostiuck might lead a nocturnal rainforest walk, or the crew might give a concert on traditional Peruvian instruments. (At the trip’s beginning and end, there’s time to explore the capital city of Lima.)

Perhaps, the biggest danger for parents is that their kids will beg to come back. After all, once you learn how to spot the exotic spangled cotinga, there’s only one place on earth to exercise that talent.

From $3,289 per adult and $2,789 per child, excluding international airfare, plus one $29 one-year membership per household. Amazon trips run from July 6 through 15, 2007, and from December 28, 2007, through January 6, 2008.