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Published: March 16th 2009
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Before I start with Manaus, yesterday we visited a tiny isolated village along the river called Boca Da Valeria. There are thousands of these along the river, and every time we pass one everyone runs out and waves at us. The people that live here are called ribeirinhos or river dwellers and they live off the resources of the rainforest and the river. There were only a dozen or so modest wooden homes in the town, and a tiny school. There wasn't a lot to see here, but this was the real Brazil, nothing designed to entertain tourists here. You could tell that the boat had passed through this town quite a few times before, they all had monkeys and birds, and there was even a capybara, the worlds largest rodent ready for us. The reason I only have like 3 pictures from here though, was the locals had learned they could charge a dollar for a photo with one of these animals, or they dressed themselves up in traditional garbs.
On to Manaus, I LOVED this city it had a European look but after the colapse of the rubber boom the city had been neglected for the past 80
years so every thing was a bit run down. Manaus has some absolutly amazing buildings that were built in the rubber boom from 1890 to the 1920's. One of my guides actually said Manaus was the wealthies city in the world at one point. Then someone took some rubber tree seeds to SE asia, and the invention of senthetic rubber they no longer had a monopoly and their economy pretty much collapsed.
The first day we were here, we took a massive tour that took us into the jungle, which was pretty cool. We went to another tiny village, even smaller than Boca, there was only one family there. The best part was we got to hold a sloth!!! I think it must have been their pet, and everyone was taking photos, I asked if I could hold it :-) Pretty sweet. Next we took some canoes to a jungle lodge, where we did a jungle treck, our guide while stopping in one spot, but his machete into a hole and out came a taranchula! They also made Sarah and I Amazone princesses and we each got a crown, which we of course turned into Amazone Warrior Princesses... (see
pics bellow) After the trek we wen't back and had an amazing dinner, and then it was time for the Caymen hunting! It took a while but eventually we found some, I think they caught 3 caymen in total, the guides find them by shinning a flash light around and they can see thier eyes, you drive on over, out they jump and just grab them, crazy. I got to pet one of the ones we caught, it was actually really smooth on the belly. After that we had a long boat ride back and slept really well that night.
The next day we did a tour that took us to all the sites around town, first we stoped at Teatro Amazonas, the opera house. It took 15 years to build, and like most of the old buildings, everything was brought in from Europe, with the exception of some of the wood, which was actually taken to Europe treated and then brought back. Apparently people even used to have thier laundry sent back to Europe... they must have had a LOT of clothes!
On the way to the next stop we drove through an area that had previously
been a favela, but the government went through and bowl dozed it all down. Apparently they gave everyone the option either taking a very small amount of money, or a house. But the problem was the houses were way way outside the city, so I guess what was happening was people were taking the house, selling it and moving back into another favela in the city.
The next stop was the military zoo. It wasn't as deppressing as I thought it was going to be, it was just like a regular zoo, they weren't in little tiny cages or anything. Actually the zoo is primarily for ingured animals, they nurse them back to health and try to introduce them back into the wild. Again I didn't take many photos, only of the military dudes on the way in.
That evening Pam and Janny (some of our friends from on board) let us stay at their hotel because their flight was leaving late that night, it was the Tropical or something which was supposed to be the nicest hotel in Manaus, I wasn't really impressed. There was a huge street fair going on along the river near there though,
so that was pretty cool to wander around that night. We left early the next mourning for Rio, but I deffinitly would like to go back and explore Manaus a little more some day.
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