Perhaps I'd seen too much James Bond or watched too many National Geographic specials, but I expected the piranhas circling our fishing boat to thrash at the bait, not nip it off the hook to avoid being reeled in.

I was fishing deep in the Amazon, being schooled by flesh-eating fish. The piranhas were hungry.

For three hours, they had feasted on our bait of raw chicken. But they weren't brutish.

They had nimbly picked the meat clean off my hooks. As storm clouds gathered overhead and lightning crackled in the distance, time to catch one was running out.

When I felt a slight tug on my line, I responded with the gentlest of jerks. Our guide had recommended this course of action, and next I followed the rest of his advice.

Hand over hand, I pulled in the line. It felt heavy, but so had that sunken tree branch I had snagged earlier.

Hands-on experience

Then the water churned. I could reel in the line, but only with resistance. A narrow head emerged, and the piranha whipped its tail and wriggled.

Soon, the fish dangled from my line, out of the water and then over the boat.

"Do you want to hold it?" the guide asked.

Our tour of the Amazon consisted of such hands-on experiences.

During three days in the vast, watery jungle in December, my wife and I learned how to climb trees without branches, survive on worms that had burrowed in wild nuts and hunt alligators at night.

We also saw an orange sun rise over the Amazon and learned to turn bamboo into huts.

Ecotourism can range from rain-forest hikes in Costa Rica to dog sledding in Norway.

My wife, Sumathi, and I wanted to see the Amazon.

There are several ways to see the 2.7 million-square-mile tropical rain forest: from the comfort of a luxury hotel to a rugged river cruise.

We aimed for the ecotourism middle ground, with a lodge providing three meals a day and guided excursions into the wilderness.

The Brazilian Amazon boasts more than 40 lodges, according to the Brazilian tourism agency, and their numbers are growing. Ours, Juma Lodge, was recommended and booked by a travel agent.

Established about six years ago, Juma bills itself as the lodge deepest in the Amazon. To get there, we flew from Sao Paulo to Manaus, a city of 2 million residents that is the main gateway to the jungle's interior.

From our Manaus hotel the next morning, we took a boat, a bus and finally another boat — all arranged by the lodge — across the jungle's shimmering lakes, over a lush island and along its winding rivers.

The half-day trip — 60 miles into the forest from Manaus — offered its share of sights: alligators resting on sandy shorelines, dolphins tumbling out of dark waters and macaws, toucans and other birds soaring overhead.

Happy-go-lucky play partner

Arriving at the lodge, we met another Amazon resident.

As we sipped a welcoming drink of fresh-squeezed orange juice, one of Juma's domesticated monkeys introduced himself.

The monkey, Joel, walked up to the mosquito netting surrounding the open-air hospitality bungalow, stretched and yawned.

Sumathi never summoned the courage to draw near to Joel, let alone play with him. That was partly because he stole both sets of room keys from some New Zealand tourists earlier in the week.

It didn't help when Joel briefly fought with the lodge's two other pets, a pair of woolly monkeys that, it turned out, were fiercely protective of each other.

Following the lead of Juma Lodge's staff, however, I welcomed his climbing all over me. He was a happy-go-lucky play partner. While he took my hat, he never snatched my glasses.

The lodge's thatched-roof cabanas and bungalows stand amid the treetops on wooden stilts rising as much as 60 feet above the ground, to avoid flooding during the rainy season.

Walking between the huts means traversing walkways whose wooden planks sway and shake.

Alligators inhabit the shoreline below the most scenic cabanas, the ones with river views. Guests on tours of the rain forest have chanced upon jaguars.

Strong insect repellent was a must. It was hot and humid. Air conditioning? Forget about it.

Meals were a rotation of fresh jungle vegetables, fruits and fish, washed down by freshly squeezed juices.

Among the highlights were chocolate-tasting guava showered in cream, and savoury crepes made from a finely ground root called manioc.

Introductory tour

Our guide for the two to three tours we took each day was Joao da Silva, a squat, muscular 28-year-old born and raised in the Amazon.

He was well suited for shepherding tourists through the jungle, having spent a year training Brazilian soldiers how to survive there.

Joao hopes tourism will help build international support for the rain forest's protection.

All of the tours began with a ride on a narrow, wooden boat, a kind of flat-bottom canoe powered by a small outboard motor, customarily used by locals to get around.

During our introductory tour, Joao explained that the Amazon is a "floating forest".

From December to April, 4.5 feet of rain falls in the area, according to the World Meteorological Organisation, a UN agency.

By the end of the rainy season, much of the land is submerged.

We visited at the start of the rainy season. Yet even islands like the one where we decamped for a hike, on our second day in the territory, were already losing ground to the rising waters.

On the hike, Joao demonstrated how to climb a tree without the help of low-lying branches.

He strapped me into a harness made of rolled palm leaves. Then he talked me into hopping my way up one tree's bare trunk, using the harness and my feet for support.

Towards the end of the hike, Joao and our motorboat driver demonstrated how to build a lean-to out of bamboo branches and leaves.

They chopped the bamboo trunks, then arranged them into a frame. Next they laid the leaves, bent in the shape of a fan, across the frame.

In search of alligators

By overlapping the leaves on top of each other, they created a water-resistant hut. Despite the driving rain that night, Joao took us out in search of alligators.

We sped away in an uncovered boat. Waves buffeted the narrow vessel, shaking us as the rain pelted our cheap ponchos, the drops pitter-pattering against the flimsy plastic.

Joao stood at the prow of the boat, aiming a flashlight at the shoreline hundreds of feet away. He was looking for a pair of eyes, gleaming just above the ground or water's surface.

This required patience Joao surveyed the coasts of many islands. Several times, using hand signals, he directed the driver to kill the engine and, eventually, row it toward land.

Peeling back branches, Joao jumped out and waded in the waist-high water. Once, an alligator scurried away before Joao came too close.

Returning empty-handed, he beckoned the driver to press on. An hour into our pursuit, the boat pulled up to an alcove of branches and brush. Joao stepped out again.

He concentrated his flashlight on two red eyes illuminated in the thicket. After taking a few steps, Joao lunged forward. There

By Jonathan D. Rockoff

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Amazing Amazon