Some 100 lodges in the Amazon—the planet's richest natural wonderland—now trumpet their ecotourism credentials. Where in this jungle should you hang your hat? Leaving no leaf unturned, Joe Kane checks into three winners—in Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru—and identifies five more of the finest. Rain forest rookie or regular, here's everything you need to know to savor the Big Green safely, happily, and responsibly

Can an elevator save the Amazon? That's what Dr. Charles Munn is asking himself on this balmy July day in southern Peru. Head cocked, he's surveying the trunk of a fig tree that soars a hundred feet straight up into the rain forest canopy, then mushrooms like an explosion arrested in midblast. A fig in flower, ripe with nectar, is one big fast-food drive-in for "trophy species," as Munn calls them: howler, capuchin, and spider monkeys; macaws and parrots; hummingbirds and flycatchers; birds so rare that people will pay thousands of dollars to glimpse them for seconds. The fig, moreover, can flower at any time of year, which means that at any given moment, one is probably blooming somewhere here on the grounds of the Manu Wildlife Center, which Munn helped to create and fund. If he can devise a safe and efficient way to deliver clients into the tops of those fig trees at just the right time—well, build it and they will come.

What Munn envisions might be described as a mobile assault elevator: a lightweight rig that can be carried in pieces over rough forest trails, then assembled quickly. It would employ scaffolding, mountain-climbing ropes, pulleys, a counterweight, and a carriage for two. Quixotic as this might sound, no one in the Amazon is more adept at orchestrating what Munn calls "set pieces with predictable payoffs"—virtually guaranteed sightings of charismatic fauna. Munn is nothing if not passionate. He has been working in the Amazon for twenty-six years, and he has come to believe that ecotourism is not simply an economic alternative to logging, mining, and ranching, but an essential tool for conservation—a stance many of his fellow biologists consider heresy.

When you look at a map and trace the blocks of wildlands Munn has had a hand in protecting (almost all of which remain wild, despite the fragile degree to which anything can truly be protected in Latin America, where the term national park is often synonymous with, say, oil field), you're looking at a territory the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. But as recently as fifteen years ago, Amazon ecotourism was an oxymoron. The Amazon might be the richest biotic zone on the planet, but spotting wildlife in its dense bush was frustrating at best, impossible and dangerous at worst, and compounded by insects, disease, intense humidity, strange languages and cultures, unreliable transportation, and inhospitable accommodations. When Munn funded his first lodge, in 1987, it was one of only a handful in the entire nine-country basin.

Today, that's changed. Peru alone boasts some sixty rain forest lodges, and the Amazon as a whole probably has twice that. Some are quick-buck operations riding a wave of green sentiment, some employ what amounts to slave labor, and some don't even exist—such as the lodge certain taxi drivers in Manaus hustle to newly arrived tourists, who are then abducted and robbed. But reliable access, comfortable quarters, good food, and English-speaking staff are now more the norm than the exception. The best lodges, of which there are perhaps a dozen, deliver something extra, such as wildlife viewing or close interaction with indigenous cultures, and make conservation part of their mission.