Saturday, February 05, 2005
The Amazon
We flew a circuitous route from Quito, via Lima then Sao Paulo to Manaus. The tour company put us up in the Taj Mahal Hotel with a room overlooking the Opera House, a truly amazing Theater built by the Rubber Barons in 1896 with just about everything from Carrara marble to Murano chandeliers imported from Europe. The story is that not only were the clothes worn by the Opera goers brought from Europe, but their clothes were shipped back to France for laundering as well. There is a ball room (Queen Elizabeth has since donated a large gilt mirror in the lobby as she felt the one in place was inadequate) where society met for drinks and smoking after the performances. Then the women were sent home and the men adjourned to the bordello across the street and then to the large church next door for confession next morning.
The Opera House
Dona Tania
We spent a week on a Houseboat on the river with three others, a French woman married to an American and a Brit of Italian-Caribbean descent. The tour company is called Swallows and Amazons (after the Arthur Ransome books) and is owned by a Scot\Canadian\American married to a woman from Amazonas. We went downstream to the confluence of the Rio Negro and Solimoes, where the black and silty white waters flow next to each other for kilometers.
The meeting of the waters
The rest of the trip was on the Negro as it is more acidic and mosquitoes cannot breed. The food was very good, prepared by an Indigenous woman in a very small galley. Lots of fish, fruit and vegetables. The first jungle trek was easy - along a boardwalk with crocodiles below us and a sloth and Turkey Vultures above. The second was more of an ordeal as the humidity was 100% and Marcio, the trusty guide, was slashing the jungle with his tesado (machete)to keep the path clear. Within half an hour we had seen a viper (death comes within 6 hours from the bite)and a bird-eating spider the size of a large crab, both in the middle of the trail. Three different types of fire ants involved running hard, jumping their column and then standing still while Anand (our guide from the boat) and Marcio brushed stray ants off our pants. Marcio was extremely knowledgable about the trees and plants. As far as I could tell there was a cure for every common ailment plus stress relief and baby formula. The final trek convinced me I had had enough of the forest. We walked three and a half hours up and down steep trails in a bath of perspiration and saw two frogs.
Jungle trekkers
We took numerous excursions in the motor boat (panga) and tried our hand at Piranha fishing with some success. We saw birds and then waited for dark to spot crocodile with a flashlight. I did not expect the flurry in the bow as Anand grabbed a little croc behind its head to allow us to touch and tell. A young kid brought a small Anaconda in his panga to have his photo taken but we never saw any on our treks. Fortunately, the city tour took us to the zoo where we saw all the animals of the Amazonas. The zoo is run by the army as a veterinary hospital for ailing animals of the jungle so those you see are in good shape and ready to be released back into the wild.
The Saturday we arrived was the big party for the kick off of Carnival. There were 10,000 party goers in the Plaza by the Opera House under our window and a rocking band with great amplifiers. Tonight is the start of the Carnival proper so the floats and Samba Schools will be assembling near our hotel. We ate at a Churrascaria after we came off the houseboat. This is the Brazilian bar-b-que where the meat keeps coming on big skewers until you cry stop. I missed my daughter-in-law being able to tell me what exotic meat I was eating.
Off to the southern tip of South America and cooler climes next.
LS
The Opera House
Dona Tania
We spent a week on a Houseboat on the river with three others, a French woman married to an American and a Brit of Italian-Caribbean descent. The tour company is called Swallows and Amazons (after the Arthur Ransome books) and is owned by a Scot\Canadian\American married to a woman from Amazonas. We went downstream to the confluence of the Rio Negro and Solimoes, where the black and silty white waters flow next to each other for kilometers.
The meeting of the waters
The rest of the trip was on the Negro as it is more acidic and mosquitoes cannot breed. The food was very good, prepared by an Indigenous woman in a very small galley. Lots of fish, fruit and vegetables. The first jungle trek was easy - along a boardwalk with crocodiles below us and a sloth and Turkey Vultures above. The second was more of an ordeal as the humidity was 100% and Marcio, the trusty guide, was slashing the jungle with his tesado (machete)to keep the path clear. Within half an hour we had seen a viper (death comes within 6 hours from the bite)and a bird-eating spider the size of a large crab, both in the middle of the trail. Three different types of fire ants involved running hard, jumping their column and then standing still while Anand (our guide from the boat) and Marcio brushed stray ants off our pants. Marcio was extremely knowledgable about the trees and plants. As far as I could tell there was a cure for every common ailment plus stress relief and baby formula. The final trek convinced me I had had enough of the forest. We walked three and a half hours up and down steep trails in a bath of perspiration and saw two frogs.
Jungle trekkers
We took numerous excursions in the motor boat (panga) and tried our hand at Piranha fishing with some success. We saw birds and then waited for dark to spot crocodile with a flashlight. I did not expect the flurry in the bow as Anand grabbed a little croc behind its head to allow us to touch and tell. A young kid brought a small Anaconda in his panga to have his photo taken but we never saw any on our treks. Fortunately, the city tour took us to the zoo where we saw all the animals of the Amazonas. The zoo is run by the army as a veterinary hospital for ailing animals of the jungle so those you see are in good shape and ready to be released back into the wild.
The Saturday we arrived was the big party for the kick off of Carnival. There were 10,000 party goers in the Plaza by the Opera House under our window and a rocking band with great amplifiers. Tonight is the start of the Carnival proper so the floats and Samba Schools will be assembling near our hotel. We ate at a Churrascaria after we came off the houseboat. This is the Brazilian bar-b-que where the meat keeps coming on big skewers until you cry stop. I missed my daughter-in-law being able to tell me what exotic meat I was eating.
Off to the southern tip of South America and cooler climes next.
LS
# posted by Bill and Lynne @ 11:49 AM 
