Squawking macaws, caimen crocodiles and mile after mile of lush rainforest... it’s all part of an exotic river cruise in South America.

BARRY LEIGHTON writes I almost feel like Indiana Jones as our 10-seater motorised canoe slides through a sun-dappled lake of giant water lilies before branching into a muddy stream fringed with over-hanging trees and impenetrable foliage.

As the driver kills the engine an eerie silence instantly descends, broken only by the occasional squawks, croaks and caws of parrots, monkeys and other unseen jungle inhabitants.

I half expect a volley of poison-tipped arrows, dispatched with unerring accuracy by painted tribesmen, to fly from the dense rainforest.

Or perhaps my imagination has been fired by one too many caipirinhas – Brazilian sugar cane rum, crushed ice, sugar and lime – consumed on the river boat shortly before.

We are an hour’s boat-ride from the Amazon’s largest city but to paraphrase Joseph Conrad (while writing about Africa) it feels, for a brief period anyway, as though we have entered the “heart of darkness.”

Our first contact with the Ribeirinhos river people, whose floating huts we occasionally glimpse along the banks and spurs of this swampy Amazon islet, is inevitably tourist related.

Wooden masks depicting hideous, grimacing faces, bizarre and exotic jewellery, hammocks, blow-pipes complete with darts and – you have to see it to believe it – lacquered piranha fish are all on offer at the jetty.

And yes, they do take your plastic. We must have stumbled upon the lost tribe of Chip and Pin.

Another encounter sees a canoe paddle up to ours containing three youngsters surrounded by a small menagerie of wildlife – baby sloth, caiman crocodile, lizard and an anaconda – for photographic purposes.

We politely decline. Nice to see these critters, but not under such circumstances.

For me, it was evocative of films such as John Boorman’s The Emerald Forest and Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo which engendered a fascination for the Amazon – both the vast and complex river system and the world’s largest rainforest which engulfs it.

That, and the huge swathes of virgin forest which continue to vanish at an alarming rate at the hands of logging conglomerates.

Best way to get there? It has to be on a boat, doesn’t it!

Our Fred Olsen cruise begins in Barbados from where the 24,000 tonne Braemar lifts anchor and heads south into the Atlantic.

Having spent two days bypassing Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana, our cruiser takes a swift right.

You cannot initially see the banks of the Amazon, the mouth being roughly the distance between London and Paris. But what a thrill to wake up the next morning, blink through the porthole, and be greeted with a seemingly endless blanket of lush trees and vegetation spectacularly gliding by.

The scenery hardly changes over the next few days as the 900-passenger Braemar makes for Manaus, “the city in the forest,” a journey of around 930 miles.

There are 7,500 species of butterfly in the Amazon and many of the exotically patterned insects somehow make it onto the deck of the 650ft long vessel, to the joy of on-board photographers.

Our first stop is Santarem, a busy Lower Amazonian city about the same size as Swindon, which – like our town – is rapidly expanding into its own front garden.

I have a horrid flashback to the days of school dinners as we are whisked to a “typical Amazonian village” and shown how tapioca is concocted from the roots of a native plant.

River boats of all shapes, sizes and in various states of repair – from spanking new vessels to rusting derelict hulks – are clustered along Santarem’s banks.

A hundred miles or so upriver, the colonial town of Parintins only has a population of 30,000 but, per capita, is without question the noisiest place on earth.

Its residents seem to spend the entire day roaring around on motorcycles, blasting out funky Latino-Brazilian beats. Even a butcher’s shop has its own earth shaking sound system.

We guzzle ice cold Nova Schin lager opposite the Amazon’s largest religious building to stave off the sweltering heat but can’t hear a word anyone is saying.

Capital of the Amazonas state, Manaus is everything you would expect: colourful, loud, vibrant, pungent, exhausting and exciting, while also emitting an air of faded colonial grandeur.

The streets are crammed with hawkers and food stalls, many cooking from flaming grills. The grand art deco municipal market – designed by Eiffel – is a hive of activity with fish, fruit and other tropical produce chaotically arriving from all corners of the Amazon.

Built on the back of the late 19th/early 20th Century rubber boom, Manaus was once one of the richest places on earth. The wives of its rubber barons famously dispatched their laundry to Portugal.

As such the city boasts many elegant buildings from its golden era but none match the sumptuous century-old Teatro Amazonas, a cathedral to opera and a veritable Renaissance styled jewel deep in the heart of the jungle.