I was a part of a group of twenty-four students who visited Manaus - a beautiful and impressive city. However, we had a very bad experience at the hotel where we stayed. The name of the hotel is Dez de Julio. Our initial enquiries at the hotel were handled by a guy who speaks English and operates a tour business at the hotel. The name of the tour company is Amazon Backpackers. Because we did not use his services, he decided that he had to get some money out of us so when we were checking out he claimed a part of our deposit . We had said to him while making arrangements to stay at the hotel that we may need transportation to get to the hotel when we arrive at the terminus but since we did not know the time of arrival we would call him when we got there. It turned out that our bus took us to the hotel directly. We were treated roughly when we tried to make a case that we could not be possibly charged for a service that we did not receive. My sister from Canada was pushed out of the office and our suitcases taken into a room to prevent us from leaving. In the end, because we were foreigners and had to leave for our return trip, we ended up just paying the money to leave. I have no problem with the hotel itself and there are other tour operators there but that particular set of tour operators are unscrupulous. I had read on the internet about that type of treatment being meted out to guests but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt but it proved correct.

This hotel has bad service, grumpy staff, and basic rooms with no windows to the exterior. It wasn't dirty, but the place definintely needs a facelift. Thankfully, it is right off a main street with internet cafes and restaurants nearby. The ONLY reason we stayed there is because Gero Amazon Tours has an office located inside the hotel lobby, and the Gero Tour staff are a godsend - we really couldn't figure out why such a fabulous Amazon company chose this hotel to link themselves to. I would never recommend this hotel unless you are arriving really late at night and departing on a Gero Amazon tour early the next morning.

So many negative reviews. Why? The hotel is very basic but clean and with a spectacular location, smack in the center of town and 2 minutes walk from the Opera House. The breakfast is basic but adequate and there is free wifi in the dining room--which I found also extended to my first floor room. The price is right and the hotel is meant as a stopover to/from the jungle. C'mon folks, it does what it is meant to do and there are lots of places where you could spend more and get less.

I found this hotel on Google and stayed here as I was coming close to the end of my 3 month trip in Brasil and wanted to visit Manaus and do a quick tour of the jungle.

I wanted to offer some feedback on my stay as I felt that I had both positive and constructive feedback. Thankfully, I didn't have a horrible experience when I stayed here, but I can see how others can have a bad experience as I feel that the main problem with travelers to Manaus and Amazonia have expectations that cannot be met by anyone. Also, if you have bad luck, you can get robbed anywhere even in your home country.

About Hotel Dez de Julho
I thought the location was great, close to the Amazonas Theater which I wanted to be close to. Manaus in general is quite dirty. This is something that can be deceiving as it has a lot to offer, but again, most travelers to Manaus are not there for staying in Manaus, but traveling into Amazonia, jungle and visiting nature.

The hotel has the feeling that it was either a morgue or a hospital before. I had a hard time falling asleep the first night. I am sensitive to seeing spirits (I know most people don't believe this), but I can tell you that there was a lot of death here. And someone died here on the first floor like the owner or someone related to an owner. Anyway, I won't go on about this as this is not important to most people. The place is not haunted, just spirits that visit and stay behind this place.

The rooms are very cheap and for me there is no difference between a regular room and a suite. The suite is just a larger room, but same plain thing. Again, I think it's fine for the cheap price of this place. I wasn't expecting more.

I left my belongings in the secured closet and quite frankly nothing happened to my things. My honest opinion is that this place has honest workers and quite possibly has bad workers every once in a while that do steal. It wasn't my experience. I think Amazonas people are very humble, honest and friendlier than other Brazilians in other southern states.

Jungle Tour:
As I have learned that I can have more fun by having fewer expectations, I was generally pleased with the jungle tour. From the 8 people in my group, 6 of them were completely unhappy and dissatisfied. I think that the problem with most tourists is that they have extremely high expectations and expect to pay less because they are in a third world country.

Also, the jungle tour companies do a very poor job in explaining what to expect. They simply feed on your illusion that you will get what you expect. My observation is that it would be appropriate to have each person wanting to do a tour, do a questionnaire, so to assess exactly what this person wants. Then, explain what exactly they can do and what they cannot do.

If you think about it, it is not realistic to expect to go deep in the Amazon jungle and do hard core jungle exploration if you are not mentally and your body is not ready for this type of experience. Also, doing a questionnaire can help the jungle tour company put the right people together on a tour and charge higher prices for people that want more and are ready and people that simply want to go to a farm on the river and hike in someone's backyard.

For me, I was generally pleased as I wanted to do something simple. As I plan to go back many times, I figure the first time would be to get familiar with everything. I went with Amazon Backpackers Tours. They helped me get what I wanted and even helped me get my boat ticket to Santarém.

I was unhappy at the end with their service because they failed to explain to me my pick up time and the owner Claudio was extremely rude to me at the end. I ended up paying my own taxi ride because another taxi came at another time for me that he had arranged without explaining to me. Anyway, I think that Claudio had my money and was done with me, so I just wanted to get out of there at the end. I won’t recommend this agency to anyone as they have poor service.

I think most of these Jungle Tour companies are owned and managed by people that have very little education and have no sense of how to run an effective business. They lack communication skills, lack a long term vision and only focus on short term (your money), fail to really explain their product and services to tourists, therefore, 80% of them leave with a bad experience, and are pushy as hell to get your money.

Summary
1) I recommend Dez de Julho Hotel to people that want a cheap place to stay
2) I would not recommend the jungle tour companies in the lobby. I encourage anyone wanting to go into the jungle to really list out what expectations they have, email different jungle companies in Manaus, ask a lot of questions not only on the tour you want, but also who else is going (lots of tourists are annoying, I hated that part because I was stuck with very annoying tourists)

Good luck!
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Julio