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Take a two hour flight from a major metropolitan area to a small town, then drive for two hours, then get on a boat for another hour and a half. You're now in one of the most remote places on Earth: the Amazon jungle.

Everything made by humans is out of place here. From the slate and rusty steel sheet roofs alongside colorless thatch above to the black tar roads below, it all perpetuates a monotone existence. Only the occasional smear of paint - inevitably an advertisement - bucks the trend.

Everything else is green. Greens along the river bed so yellow they're chartreuse. Greens in the canopy so kelly they summon unbidden memories of St. Patrick's Day. Greens on plants imbued with silver, with earthy brown, with every imaginable shade in the spectrum.

And then the long road opens up to show the full Amazon river, not those tiny tributaries we've been skipping over. This is a behemoth. A leviathan moving so slowly you might not notice, but incessant, utterly unceasing. Once we're far enough down it and away from civilization, I know with cold hard certainty that this river has committed murder. Without the right supplies and preparation it would kill an unwary traveler mercilessly. And it had. Countless times.

So we treat it with the respect it's due. Once you accept that this is not something to be tamed or conquered, it opens up to you. Its branches are the original roads, exposing the whole Amazon basin to quick and easy travel. We go and go and go for what feels like forever and around every bend something new delights: pink river dolphins jumping and splashing, falcons on lookout in the branches, jaguars heard yet unseen behind heavy vegetation. I was Harrison Ford in Apocalypse Now.

When we finally arrived at the Treehouse Lodge it's apparent where the architect got their inspiration: we are walking into a fully functional Ewok Village.

Rope bridges connect the rooms, and one starkly missing amenity is walls, with only nets to keep the bugs out. The humidity is smothering. But we made it to our destination. The adventure had begun.