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Published: September 10th 2009
the meeting of the waters
its a natural phenomenon, not an oil slick from the ferry in the background!So if you´re thinking after our last few blogs, that we might be getting a bit overwhelmed by too much nature, and need to sit inside with a tv for a while - guess again! We´re headed to the forest and river that is the stuff of legends....THE AMAZON! (dah dah daaaaaah)...
Our original plan to get to Manaus, the launching town for many amazon activities, involved a 17 hour bus trip, followed by a four day trip up river on a transport boat, which may sound nice, but we have heard the novelty wears off after the first day, and then it´s kinda like a floating bus where you get a crook back sleeping in hammocks. luckily, prior to setting off on this five day epic public transport adventure we had a sneaky peek at a budget airline. 2 hours later we were in manaus. Decision well made.
Manaus used to be known as the 'Paris of the Tropics' back when the rubber trade from the Amazon was big business, but we had heard that recently the sheen has worn off a bit and it´s a bit of a dodgy place to walk around at night. However, we
amazon speedboat ride
not an advertised activity, but this boat driver was an absolute lead foot through the flooded forest! found it a lovely town, with a really nice atmosphere and any number of things to see and do, such as visit the park where the fountain dances in time to the rejigged tunes of many of your favourite artists. That´s right, hear elton john´s greatest hits remixed for saxaphone and fountain spray.(I may sound sarcastic, but we really did get a lot of enjoyment from this fountain!). Also of great interest in the park were the young (and not so young) couples dotted about on all the benches, with the men trying to kiss the ladies, and the ladies trying to pretend they don´t know what the men are trying to do, and attempting to engage them in witty conversation and just hold hands. The thing is, these men and women are not allowed to spend much time alone together, and certainly not anywhere remotely private, without being married, so all the courting, if you can call it that, goes on quite publicly...haven´t seen so much kissing since the bluelight disco days!
Also great in Manaus was the prevalance of street meat, where a guy brings skewers of chicken and beef, sets up his grill on the street
welcome to the amazon!
one of the few places you can see the sun through the thick canopy and sells them nice and cheap. You can sprinkle the skewers with farofa if you want - a flour made from manioc which is served with almost every meat dish in brazil. And so you stand on the street corner eating your skewers and mingling with the crowd who have just finished work. Fortunately some enterprising folk always seem to set up a beer cart next to the street meat, where you can get beers cheap and icy cold. Lovely. It took me a while to realise i was the only woman drinking on the street, which was possibly quite unacceptable - oh well. Apparently eating skewers is an equal rights pursuit - hurray!
To see the amazon we decided to join a budget group tour where you go to a ´lodge´which is your base camp to explore the Amazon. And so we set out with two canadians and a japanese guy who could speak minimal english and no spanish, but seemed lovely - he certainly smiled a lot.
The first sight was the famous ¨meeting of the waters¨ where the black water of the Rio Negro meets the light brown waters of the Amazon, but due to
different densities they don´t mix for a few kilometres, so there´s this weird boundary in the water, looks a bit like an oil slick but better..... AND we were in a boat on the Amazon!!!
After we´d all taken a silly amount of photos of the water, our boatman moved us on, tranferred us into a van on the other side of the river, after which we transferred into another boat. It´s all about boats in the Amazon. This boat was definitely the most fun. The driver took us at quite a speed through all the parts of flooded forest and open rivers, past riverside dwellings and we even stopped at the corner store - a house on stilts in the river/lake - great! We finally arrived at our riverside home, and after being assured that it was safe to swim, and the piranhas wouldn´t bite, we jumped in, slightly overwhelmed at the fact that we were swimming in 'the amazon', and slightly petrified of those parasitic fish that apparently swim up your urethra - no peeing in the river!
That afternoon was spent lazing in hammocks, a pastime of which we´ve become quite fond, though i probably
PINK RIVER DOLPHIN!!!
probably the luckiest timed photo we could have taken like it more than Jeff - he likes doing stuff a bit too much. After a sumptuous dinner of river fish, we headed out in the boat once more to go and catch a caiman. Now this was a bit weird, because they grab the poor little thing out of the water so everyone can take a photo, touch its back and so on, while the little critter is terrified. Although having said this, we got to see a lot of caimans in the pantanal - they´re everywhere, whereas in the amazon you wouldn´t see them unless the guide whipped one out and stuck it under your nose, so maybe i can see the reasoning. The next day we went piranha fishing once more, an activity which is turning out to be quite the favourite of the tour operators, but which really isn´t that different to other fishing, except you have to be REALLY careful when taking your catch off the hook! Again, Jeff was at no risk of having his fingers bitten, though nor was I this time..
Heading back to home we were treated to the amazing sight of the pink river dolphins that inhabit various areas
of the amazon, including our waterway Lake Juma, which was really more like a river than a lake. There are also grey river dolphins and they swam all around us for about fifteen minutes, in which time Jeff managed to capture that beautiful picture of the pink tail your should be able to see. really amazing!
One of our nights was to be spent sleeping in hammocks in the jungle, which I was really excited about. It´s a shame it turned out to be the night from hell....
It started out pleasantly enough, hanging our hammocks in the jungle, collecting firewood, watching as our guide roasted an amazingly succulent chicken over the fire, then served it on a table he just constructed from a tree (seriously), so far so good. The problems started when the mosquitos did. We couldn´t stay up, despite it being about half past seven, because we had to get under the mosquito nets covering our hammocks. Unfortunately, our mosquito nets didn´t really do much, and we got chomped, us more than anyone else, and me most of all. Even the Japanese guy was yelling out 'MOSQUIT!!'. They were biting us through our clothes, biting our
backs through the hammocks and all the while making that horrible buzzing noise that you just know means pain. It was awful. I think I had about two hours sleep all night, and when you go to bed at seven thirty, that makes for a really long night. The upside was that we heard lots of critters scrambling around in the night, and howler monkeys in the morning, and when we got back to the camp I showed off all my bites to freak out everyone that was yet to venture into the jungle. Mwahahaha!
Our next day was spent visiting some of the locals and seeing how they make a living. The first woman we visited had a plantation for pineapples and medicinal plants - have you ever seen a pineapple plant? it´s cool. We also picked some cashews fresh off the tree, roasted them to get rid off the acid, and ate them still warm - delicious. The woman took quite a shine to me and pulled out her photo album to show me her fifteen kids, their partners, and various offspring - all in my broken portugese....i said ¨good¨ and ¨pretty¨a lot! We also headed to
a rubber plantation where we collected the liquid sap from the trees and gave it to the old bloke in the hut who was making various rubber items. He offered us a turn at the rubber making over a smoky fire, and was particularly keen that we should make some condoms! As you can see from the photo, i settled for making a nice wallet. After a final swim in the muddy waters, we bid the amazon farewell, having had an amazing amazoning time.
In our next installment we wave adios to brazil and hola to venezuela - until then amigos!
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dimitra
non-member comment
wow!!! this looks like such....fun. i saw this on the tv not that long ago, and find that it is interesting that you sound just like getaway (although without the make up and background music). dimitra