For as much as I enjoy traveling, even I have to admit that I never envisioned that I'd one day be looking at monkeys climbing trees in the Amazon Jungle in Brazil. But that's exactly where I found myself last Tuesday morning.

There are dozens of people selling 'tours' near the water at the harbor in Manaus, a city situated on the Rio Negro high up in central Brazil, far from any other major city. You can't drive here, but you can take a 7-day boat ride from Belem or a 16-day trip down the Amazon from Peru. It's hard to believe that nearly two million people live up here, a fully functioning society that more or less protects the rain forest for Brazil.

We had been warned numerous times not to use the street tours since they were often either scams or badly run gigs that left travelers disappointed. Our search for a legit tour ended unsuccessfully Monday morning, and internet searches didn't provide any solutions. But we had a flyer from a company called Clara Viagem - they had daily tours that left their office near the Teatro Amazonia (historic opera house) at 8:30 am.

Myself, Brett, Curtis, and Kieran got up and made it by taxi to the location at 8:30. And, of course the tour left at 8, or so explained the young man at the reception desk. But between his Portuguese and my Spanish we made it happen. He called two cell numbers on the flyer before reaching Sergio, one of the owners, who was down at the harbor loading the boats but said he would come get us. We weren't really sure if this was believable, but we waited anyway. It was our last day in Manaus and we didn't have any other options if we wanted to get a taste of the river and jungle.

Twenty minutes later Sergio finds us. We speed walk the half mile or so to the harbor as he explains, in Portuguese, what the tour includes, how much it costs, and when we'd be finished.

It was a little chaotic as we took out cash on the dock in front of a number of loaded 30-person boats, including the one that was waiting for us. We carefully jumped in and the boat began backing up as we took our seats around 9:15.

We now found ourselves on the Rio Negro.

The guide was fantastic, although he spoke behind us which limited how much we could hear. Along the harbor, as we drove east, we see all kinds of boats - huge passenger ones with hammocks hanging inside, others filled with cargo trucks, and various sized tour boats. Down the middle of the river were a number of floating gas stations, which also sold food or snacks.

As we drove further west it felt like we were the only ones on this dark, wide river, which is bordered by a lush green a forest. The trees, however, aren't on land - they appear to grow out of the water - partly because the water levels were abnormally higher and had covered hundreds of miles of the rain forest, he guide explains.

After about 40 minutes we reach an incredible phenomenon - the meeting of the waters - where the brown Amazon River meet the dark Rio Negro. It's wild to see brown and black waters touch but not mix, like they are forever fighting for their own territory. The rivers looks like huge lakes, at points over five miles wide.

We see a couple of porpoises jumping around on our way down the Amazon to a 150-person floating village, which includes houses, an elementary school and church and built on logs and somehow anchored down. Some of the houses even have floating gardens. Pet dogs can be seen running around the wooden sidewalks.

A little further down, through a tighter channel made by the trees, we see three canoes with two little kids in each. As we get closer, we can see the kids are holding little monkeys, alligators, sloths, and other wildlife. One canoe approaches us and a child, maybe 8-10 years old, jumps onto our boat with a sloth. Our guide explains that these kids catch these animals in the jungle and do this to get tips. A few on our boat, including Brett, give the kid two Reals in exchange for a photo holding the sloth. Just wild.

Seconds later the kid bolts - jumps into his canoe, and they all turn their lawnmower-style engines on and speed away. It's illegal to capture the wildlife, and patrols boats are around. We next stop to see some huge lily pads wedged into the trees.

After a couple of hours we go to a floating restaurant for a fantastic buffet lunch and get into a nice conversation with our guide, who used to be a marine biologist, as well as jungle guide - meaning he takes small groups deep into the forest with limited supplies for a number of days. We ask if he can share his wildest experience, which took him a few seconds. It turns out that he was once with four Australians when they came across an alligator. Upon trying to kill it while standing in two feet of water, his legs were wrapped by a nine foot anaconda.

Whether the story is true or not, it's exactly the type of story we wanted to hear. He claims he has photos of him holding the massive snake after they killed it, but after a week we haven’t received the emails he said he'd send us. He also shared stories of seeing jaguars swimming across the Amazon, and another similar attack by wild bores. Guide or story teller, he had our attention.

Behind the picnic tables is a little souvenirs shop, which is built into trees. It doesn't have windows, so we can see a bunch of monkeys playing five feet away, looking at all us strange peopled inside.

Although wild, and dangerous, these monkeys are smart. The minute one tourist stuck his hand out with a slice of watermelons, the monkey grabbed it and climbed back into the tree like a little kid. Soon, dozens of monkeys are jumping from one tree to another, onto a boat, and down a dock to approach the humans, carefully grabbing more food before running off.

I didn't agree with giving them food. It's strongly discouraged because they can't become dependent on humans while living in such a massive forest. But I did take photos so my nephews could see what I saw in the jungle.

Our return to the harbor was through more narrow channels of trees that looked random to me, but the driver seemed to recognize these water ways as streets, carefully maneuvering through the rain forest before we found the wider Rio Negro again.

It may have been short, but the trip left us imagining of the life that lives deep into the gigantic forest. And also smiling and shaking our heads that we had just been in the Amazon.