12.6.2000

Okay long awaited and long overdue: The Amazon

Arrived in Manaus airport at 3 am, hot death, pitch black, guide waiting. Drove about half an hour through dense tropical forest, got into this neato little canoe-like boat that is far more stable than your average canoe and far more stable. Out on the Rio Negro, wide dark, and a little scary with only the hint of the top of the jungle on the horizon. Sky a wide expanse of stars, water dark as wine. About half an hour by boat to the Eco Park a climb up the embankment and check-in to sleep for a couple of hours. Early and not so bright, but rather excited, I clamber out of my cabin-like dwelling to a wall'o'humidity. Whoa man. Get used to it. Three days of breathing air. ;) As it turns out, my cabin is on a jungle path, and there are about 20 such cabins in meandering paths through the Eco Park. Back out to the front area/restaurant/open air dealie and I can see it properly now. A huge round caboclo shelter, The "Paradise Deck" has open sides and a palm thatch roof. Small bar, eating area and "lounge" hammocks all around the perimeter. It's 8 am, and the air's so thick I could be swimming. And the heat of the day hasn't even started up yet. Heh. Guide's not around. He's off doing a pick up at the airport, but I meet the first couple of my tour. Newlyweds both on their second marriage, he's a bushman, she's a nurse. Very sweet woman, very kinda stoic man, bioth are on their honeymoon up through Brazil to Ecuador, if I remember properly. The couple that's being picked up is from Italy. She doesn't speak English, he speaks a couple of words. Breakfast - lots of fruit, surprise, surprise, and right in the middle of it this -huge freakin- Maccaw shows up in the most brilliant red you've ver seen, peacock blue and lemon yellow pinfeathers, swoops down to a tree and just looks at us eating like it was saying "Hey." I was staying in an Eco Park - a conservation area which has agreements with the Brazilian EPA and rehabilitates baby monkeys whose mothers have been killed by poachers. This was really cool, as 11:00 am is their feeding time. Two main varieties of monkey were most of the population of around 200. The keeper who puts food out every day at 11 and 4 calls the most dominant of the monkeys, yelling loud and long and you can hear him coming through the trees. Once he's had his fill, he climbs back into the trees above and hangs by his tail, supervising as the Keeper calls another 50 or so monkeys to come and chow down. Lots of fun. The tour guide, takes us down the Rio Negro to the place where they filmed Anaconda, and explained some things about the Rios Negro and Solimnos which are the two main tributaries of the Amazon. The Rio Negro is dark black (hence the name) has a high PH balance and an average temperature of 28 degrees. This is great, because it has a practical upside: none of them nasty malaria ridden mosquitos. And a different breed of piranha that are less likely to attack swimmers in the warm warm water. Yes, I waded with piranha. In Caiman (alligator) infested waters. Heh. All three rivers raise an lower an -insane- amount during the year. 40 meters higher in the rainy season than it was in the dry season, when I was there. You can see the waterline along the shore. In the dry season the length of the river is banked in sand. The sand is the waterline. In the wet season, most of the trees grow partly underwater. There's an old Amazon saying that says in the dry season, the birds live in trees. In the wet season, the fish do. ;) So back to the lodge for a late lunch and to lay low in the weather which is death hot, and soooooo humid, but it's not like I wasn't expecting that. I wandered around the park a while watching lizards scurry and listening to the toucans and checking out moths the size of my palm. I also discovered these giant mud nests that were attached to trees that I later found out to be termite nests. They're ginormous - as wide across as my shoulders and some are three feet long. I lay out in a hammock for a long while before the next excursion: piranha fishing!

That's the little floating house where we did our first batch of piranha fishing, using - of course - raw meat as bait on long bamboo poles. I didn't realize it would be so hard, but there's a knack to it. You have to swat the end of the pole at the water as you feed the bait in (to create a commotion the piranha will think is a wounded animal) then you wait until you have a snag - no mistaking a piranha nibble! - and then you have to yank up to snag them. I did get one on my line and out of the water, but the little beasts snap and thrash so hard that by the time we got a net over, he'd yanked clear off my hook. So I guess I officially have a "one that got away" story, but as it was a man eating fish? I don't think I have to say "Really! It was -this- big!" ;) Back to the lodge for dinner and downtime, and then out for an evening of alligator spotting! This is kind of neato, actually. Pitch black on the river at night - you take a maglite and flash it down to the banks from a boat. You won't actually see the form of the alligator, as it will be mostly submerged, but their eyes - which are the things sure to be out of the water if they're out of the water at all - are as reflective as a cat's so When you see that single, perfect little shiny circle, you know you've found one. We didn't get too close, but the guide of course, would hop into the water or up on shore and chase them down. Not cruelly - this is an EPA venue after all - but try to get a hold of one to show us. Unfortunately, though we saw many an eye, the caiman were quicker than our guide when we were out. Ah well. I polished off Bridget Jones' Diary (Thanks Dana!) while sprawled on a hammock. When I was finished I just listened to the symphony of the jungle at night, but the guide came and got me and told me it would be best if I went to my cabin, as an animal had just passed along the trail beside me not three feet away. He didn't know the English word for this particular animal, but from his reaction, it wasn't a safe one. Might have been a puma - damn I'd wished I'd seen it! On the way back to the cabin for some much needed sleep I saw a centipede that was 1/2 a foot long! In the morning, a brief sojourn to the aviary, where, much like the monkeys they rehabilitate birds that have been hurt, wounded or captured. Most of these are parrots or toucans as they are the most marketable, but there were no Toucans in the aviary at the time. We heard them all around us, but never managed to get a glimpse of one - Alas. As we arrived by boat to "parrot island" our guide jumped out and started yelling to the jungle all around "Lorro! Lorro!" (This means Parrot in Portuguese) and out came this green parrot with far more charisma than a bird should have. He followed us and talked to us the whole time, whistling catcalls and saying his name and saying hello and goodbye. We say more parrots in all sorts of varieties, did some animal tracking and went to see an orchid grove (this is very neat, unfortunately though they bloom in the wet season, so they were all just seedlings). We also had a kind of a tour about medicinal plants in the area. We learned what vines' milk make the poison for blowdarts and the sap from which trees made the resin to relieve headaches. After that we went rubber tapping and took the raw latex and made solid rubber from it by heating it with smoke and rolling it into this ginormous rubber ball. Was very cool. Next day, a big boat came to get us and we trundled on down to the Amazon proper in the brilliant sun - it was nice because as long as the boat was going at a good clip, you didn't notice the humidity. It was bad cause this is the day I got sunbirned - can you say extra crispy? I knew you could. Out we went for an hour cruise past the city of Manaus and learned a whole lot of facts about the culture there. We picked up a truckload of German tourists and went out to the meeting of the waters. This is where the Amazon - fed by the Rio Solimnosand a yellowy taupe colour run alongside the dark, dark waters of the Rio Negro and the two don't mix for 8 km. The Amazon's avg. temp is 21 degrees, it has a lower ph and moves faster than the Negro, so as you go by in the boat you can differentiate between the waters immediately. Now on the Amazon proper (which is as wide as 30+ km at some points! You can look both ways and not see land!) we went down to a floating restaurant for lunch, met some Amazonian natives, saw some crafts and the Victoria Regis Water Lilies - the lilypad of which can get as wide around as 6 feet and a light person could stand on them without sinking. We saw some Caiman close up, and went on a trip down the iguapos - flooded streamland marshland areas where we went birding (Egrets! Herons! Pipas!) and native kids came paddling out on little boats to show us sloths and baby caimans and monkeys. We also had another hour or so of piranha fishing, but only the bushman caught one (redbellied piranha). I should say we had an extra couple with us by now - from Lebanon, though the guy had lived in Montreal a spell. That night, we all had capirinha's and tuned in exhausted and sunburned after a good dinner for a good sleep. In the morning came the jungle expedition. Into the heart of the jungle! We saw brazil wood trees, which are really rivaled only by Redwoods, flowering orchids, learned about the trees, how to survive, how to navigate by armadillo tracks. I almost fell into a coral snake hole…. I can't really describe it but that it was insanely facinating and deathly hot. There's this huge tree that is used for communication. It grows naturally accoustic with a concave trunk and light wood, and you can hear the sound miles and miles away. We swung from vines like Tarzan, we saw trails of ants (thankfully not army ants) At one point he led us away to check to make sure that we wern't heading into them (eep!) we learned how to harvest weaving reedstock from a certain kind of tree, and how to weave baskets and bracelets. How to use a palm leaf to climb a palm tree without a harness…. Just soooooo much. It wasn't as dark as I'd pictured, nor as wet, of course I was there in the dry season. This picture here are mushrooms… and although they don't call them fairies, they say wood spirits or something, folklore says that the wood spirits drink from them.

Once we'd finished the trek it was a rush out and to the airport to get me to my plane. All in all? Fabulous. Which I'd gone for longer. I'd like to go back.

posted by The Mo of Space and Death 14:35 (her time) @

Não confunda ornitorrinco com otorrinolaringologista, orntitorrinco com ornitologista, ornitologista com otorrinolaringolista, porque ornitorrinco é ornitorrinco, ornilogista é ornilogista e otorrinolaringologista é ortorrinolaringologista!
posted by The Mo of Space and Death 10:22 (her time) @

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