Manaus

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Sunday – Mar. 16/14, Manaus



Our port of call today is Manaus, which serves as the capital of the State of Amazonas. The city is nicknamed “Paris of the Jungle” and has a current population of 1.6 million. It is entirely surrounded by the Brazilian Amazon Rain Forest and the only principle ways in or out of the city are by air or water. There are several highways leaving the city but none of them connect Manaus with the cities in southern Brazil.



Arrival at Manaus was scheduled for 10:00 am but due to heavier than expected currents during the night the ship was delayed an hour. Almost immediately after the ship had been cleared by the local authorities we were ashore and onto our tour “Meeting of the Waters”. This involved disembarking the Maasdam, walking on the pier about 100 m, down a metal gangway to a two-deck riverboat for our journey on the Negro and the Solimoes rivers. The Rio Negro has a wide variety of depths including some stretches of over 300 m deep. It can also be a shallow as 3 m in the main channel during the dry season. The “meeting” part refers to the fact that the waters of the Rio Negro are inky brown-black in colour while those of the Rio Solimoes are milky brown. Where the two rivers meet and for many kilometers down stream the two rivers do not mingle and travel side-by-side without mixing. It all has to do with the speed of the two streams, their densities, their mineral content, temperature, silt levels or as one of our fellow travellers said, maybe the river gods just didn’t want them to join.



Once we had cleared the dock the riverboat took us out onto Rio Negro where we had an excellent view of the city from the water, including the new bridge spanning the river. The bridge was completed just two years ago in anticipation of Manaus’ role as one of the host cities for this year’s World Cup. An impressive structure but the locals still don’t see the need for it nor the cost of a billion Reais. Unfortunately the bridge does not presently connect to any major highway leading to the cities in southern Brazil, but it does connect with the road heading north to Central America.



We travelled downstream for about an hour turning into a tributary of Rio Solimoes. This was our first up close and personal view of the two rivers running parallel to each other without mixing. As we entered the inner portion of this tributary we saw, however briefly, grey river dolphins passing the boat. There was also the report that manatees inhabited this area but we did not see any. The journey up this stream took us to the borders of the Lake January Ecological Park where we disembarked the larger riverboat and proceeded ashore. Here we followed an elevated wooden walkway into the interior of the forest where we came to Lake January. The principle attraction on the lake was the gigantic lily pads. We observed small birds walking across the pads collecting bugs to eat and right under the walkway the local guides had attracted two small Amazonian alligators, one of which was resting right on the lily pads. That alone demonstrated the lifting capacity that these meter wide pads have.



After our brief walk in the jungle we went back to the Solimoes tributary where we had a buffet lunch on a floating restaurant. Two of the items served were fish from the river; one being catfish, which can grow up to weigh over 200 k and the other was one of the 40 species of piranha found in the Amazon River basin.



Following lunch we boarded 10 person covered “canoes” powered by 40 horse motors. We were very low to the water. These canoes took us into the Ecological preserve where the guides pointed out some of the 5,000 different species of trees that inhabit the Amazon. During the rainy season, which this area is currently experiencing now until July, the water levels in the river can increase as much 10 m. The guides pointed out the dark rings encircling the trees high over our heads marking the height of the annual floods. It was fascinating to realize that, even at this early point in the rain cycle, we were already travelling over the tops of many sunken bushes and smaller trees.



While we were travelling along two fish jumped out of the water into our boat right at my elbow. They fell below the floorboards and were trapped there until we stopped and the driver retrieved them. They were silver in colour and the head guide identified them as Amazon River sardines. They were shown around to the other boats that were with us and I think they were taken home for somebody’s dinner.



At this stop the driver of one of the lead boats had spotted a young three-toed sloth in the trees. The driver scrambled up onto the roof of his boat and then shimmied up the tree and retrieved the sloth. The driver and the head guide showed it around before returning it to the tree where they had found it.



After we passed through several canals we returned to the boat launch area and boarded our large riverboat for the final leg of the journey down stream, which was to get up close to the merging area of the two rivers. Sitting right over the demarcation line you could see that the two streams just would not mix, unless they were disturbed by the boat’s wake. The chief guide and the boat crew retrieved water from each of the streams and filled two clear glass coffee mugs to show us the colour of the rivers. The Rio Negro was clear brown almost red in tint, close to diluted coffee; while the Solimoes water was light milky tan. The guide told us that Manaus gets its drinking water from the Rio Negro which is higher in mineral content and is easier to purify as there is less silt in it.



After spending 30 minutes on the merge line our riverboat turned upstream in a westward direction and return to the center of Manaus where the Maasdam was docked and returning us to the ship. This evening we enjoyed a dinner in one of the specialty restaurants, the Canaletto, for a taste of Italy. After dinner the ship hosted a local dance company “Simetria Norte” who presented a colourful show illustrating the development of dancing styles in the Amazon region, which have led to the current samba dances.





Monday – Mar. 17/14, Manaus [Temperature 31°C-88°F – Threat of rain in morning but it cleared and there was bright sunshine all afternoon into the evening.]



Today we opted for a more leisurely style tour “Manaus & the Teatro Amazonas Opera House”. This involved a drive into the center of town, a visit to the Opera House and a bus trip to “view” the city and finally a stop at the Mercado Adolpho Lisboa market. The interesting part was that the Opera House and the Market were well within walking distance of the ship but due to safety issues the shore excursion group opted to have us bussed around.



The Opera House was built in 1896 and is topped with a dome covered in 36,000 vitrified tiles imported from Europe. The colourful tiles depict the Brazilian flag.

Our tour guide for the morning, who is a law student and in the afternoons works as a law clerk, was a very informative individual and spent a good ¾ of an hour outside the Opera House explaining the history of the area and the building itself. He started the tour in the public plaza in front of the Opera House and pointed out all the best spots for photographs. He indicated that these were the spots that the professional photographers used for “postcards”.



The tour included the opportunity to go into the House and to see the actual seating area and the boxes. The Opera House seats 701 individuals. The local orchestra was in rehearsal when we arrived and they were gearing up for a production of Carman, so we had to wait a few minutes until they took a rest before our guide could continue his informative talk. Their practice also gave us the opportunity to appreciate the acoustics of the building. For its time it was a marvel in architecture, especially as it is in the Amazon. To help keep the building cool the architect had large pipes buried beneath the building with smaller pipes running up to the floor of the auditorium. The larger pipes were situated near the river shore and air was pumped into them and circulated into the House. The exhaust air was then vented through the grillwork in the ceiling and out through portals in the dome. Today air conditioning units handle it all. The roadways leading up to the front doors at an earlier date were covered with a thick rubber matting to deaden the noise of horse drawn carriages as they approached the opera house.



An interesting addition to the interior tour was a Lego reconstruction of the entire Opera House, which I found in one of the stairwells leading down from the balconies.



We reloaded the bus and were taken on a driving tour of the inner city past an enormous fruit and vegetable market and ended up at the Municipal Market where we had the opportunity to see and purchase local “tourist” souvenirs. We added to our art collection another small wooden plaque depicting a macaw. Then it was back to the ship where we had to duck as we entered; sometime during our outing the river level dropped enough to change the angle of the gangway.



During the day the ship’s crew spent another round at trying to eliminate the GIS bug from all our rooms. They changed all the linens and towels and even the ship supplied dressing gowns. When we returned to our room we found two coloured sticky dots attached to the doorframe. When we asked our steward, Madé, what they represented and he informed us that they indicated that the room had been cleaned and “fogged”. Later in the afternoon the Captain reported on the progress of the GIS problems and indicated that the numbers of new cases had declined considerably but that there were several individuals who were still sick and who had ignored the rules and had continued to walk around in their sickened state. He informed us that Seattle had given him permission to disembark anyone who continued to disobey the quarantine rules.



Our 4:00 pm departure from Manaus was delayed a short while as we waited for the 50 passengers who had gone on the overnight tour “Amazon Ecopark: A Night in the Jungle”. Their tour boat got back at 4:15 and they were hustled aboard with their overnight bags; as soon as the last one was onboard the gangway was hauled in, the lines cast off and we were away.



Many of us took the opportunity to go on deck to watch our departure from Manaus, to watch the river traffic and to observe once again the two rivers running side by side and not mingling.

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