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Published: March 24th 2006
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Okay this is from about 2 months ago, i never published it. For all my newer photos and writting i am mainly using another website: www.bugbitten.com/tricetp its got about 500 photos on so far so feel free to get really bored and/or maybe jeaous..........
So on from jeri we took a bus back to Fortaleza then a plane (luxury) to the city of Belem at the mouth of the amazon (well not the amazon as such but may as well be). We spent only 1 night in belem as we were on tight scedule to get to Manaus then to bolivia and onto Peru for the charity work to begin.
Belem
Belem itself is a large river port and and not very remarkable the amazon around it is long gone and there are few things to do. We did however go on a trip at 4AM to an island called parrot island wher at sun rise thousand of parrots wake up at the same time and fly off in a massive loud group to the forest, this was petty cool.
Manaus
This was where the fun begins. Got into the airport late at night and was
straight away met by some dude called armstrong trying to sell us a tour, usualy i would have said no to the first one but as we had so little time (only 3 nights) and this tour starting at 8am the next day we paid pobably too much and signed up to go.
The day started with a random madman called jimmy picking us up from the hotel and taking us for breakfast and then to our boat. We were promised there would be a good few backpackers on this boat, it turned out that the people on the boat were all aged above 40 they were cool enough though (suppose i should have learned by now that salesmen bend the truth somewhat). The journey to our small floating lodge took around 3 hour and with just 5 of us on the big boat it felt kinda empty but we had hammocks to lye in and the amazon to look at so we were happy.
The lodge itself floats due to the massive changes in water level in the amazon basin )by 11 metres a year) and was very basic with no electricity and hammocks to sleep in but the
staff were cool and the food was good, and it was cool to rough it slightly (richer tourists stay in hotels with swimming pools, not really amazon living)
Our first activity was to go piranah fishing using raw meat as bait, as a boat of 5 we cought 3 of them, they were fairly small, but had cazy sharp teeth yo0u wouldnt mess with. We then went aligator hunting in the pitch black using our tourches to look for eyes, our guide cought a small one with we all held then released.
The main adventure started on the second day when in the afternoon the 2 of us and our guide headed out to stay the night in the jungle. We went down little waterways, often having to navigate around fallen trees and other debri. Hala had told our guide that we were not going to leave without finding a Sloth, so our guide spoted one, and quickly climbed a tree to do battle with the unfortunate sloth in order to carry it down to the boat and give it to us. I have never seen a Sloth before and they are really odd, with incredibly slow reactions and
movements. After finding the Sloth we carried on down little water ways, the further we got the more difficult it got to navigate, once the river got too blocked we packed our stuff (hammocks, nets, food etc) and went out on foot into the jungle proper to a place only our guide knew. This place was awesome next to a stream and a waterfall, it couldnt have been any better. As our guide always took people here he had built a couple of basic shelters to protect from the rain and to hang our nets and hammocks.
That evening we cooked over an open fire using cutlery our guide made for us from wood in the jungle.
Sleeping in the jungle was not as bad as we thought, it was pitch black by about 8pm due to the tree canopy, and we were pretty tired from the days activities. The jungle at night also wasnt as loud as we thought it might have been but our guide sid we were just unlucky, and that often monkeys come and play around the tent, and even Jaguars come to drink at the stream.
As you can see from the photos
the Amazon was amazing, we really needed few more days, but we were on a tight schedule, and had to fly out to La Paz to begin the next part of traveling.
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