Enjoy the Amazon rainforests... from your armchair

A riverboat at the Amazon River. now you can cruise the Amazon without leaving your armchair. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

This is Google's latest Street View venture and it has enlisted the help of local residents to use a trike to cycle through villages alongside the river, taking pictures of different parts of the remote diverse rainforests.

For the first phase of the project, Google teams are floating down a 48km sector of the Rio Negro River, extending from the Tumbira community near Manaus to Terra Preta before heading into the Amazon itself.

Google says its cameras have been welcomed in the Amazon, unlike in Germany, India and Austria that have all sought to ban the Street Views on the basis that it invades the privacy of private individuals.

For more:

• IOL: Independent On Line.
  News24

• NPR: NPR.