Kathleen
Brazil – Manaus and the Amazon
May 27, 2014
The trip to Brazil would not have seemed complete without a visit to the Amazon rain forest. We decided to fly to Manaus and then stay at a lodge on the Amazon river, from whence to do day excursions to see the Amazon’s varied wildlife and flora. Manaus was a pleasant surprise as it is a lovely little city on the Rio Negro (very close to Manaus the Rio Negro merges with the Solimoes River to form the Amazon). Manaus’ claim to fame is an opera house built by the British in the 1880’s which they claim has the best or one of the best acoustics in the world. It is lovely inside and out and like so many things in Brazil it just had a fresh coat of paint to become ready for the influx of tourism for World Cup. Manaus is one of the cities hositing the world cup and they also have a very fine-looking (only saw the outside) new stadium. We have heard various Brazilian opinions related to putting a stadium in this far-flung region of the country, but the opinions we heard when we were actually in Manaus seemed to be fairly positive. In spite of this and although Manaus has two to three teams of its own, even the local folks wonder what will be done with it once the World Cup is over.
After one night, we hopped a small motor boat to take us down the Amazon to our Jungle Lodge. This was getting away from it all as there was no electricity at the lodge, meaning no lights, hot showers, or device charging. We were up early and to bed early, so the lights didn’t bother us, we charged everything up before we arrived, so that was ok, too and as far as hot showers go, well, it was about 90 degrees and humid while we were there, so that seemed ok too. We had (shocking) rain off and on while we were there and the biggest thing we sffered from was a inability to dry anything once it had been rained on.
We did canoe safaris, night canoe safari, a pirahna fishing excursion, and walking safaries. The rainforest is beautiful, but the animals were a bit elusive. We saw several types of small monkeys, but they were so high up in the trees it was difficult to get a really good look. We saw different birds, got to hold a baby caiman (like a tiny crocodile) and saw spiders so large they live inn dug-out holes in the earth (HUGE spiders), not to mention gigantic iguanas and 3 different kinds of pirahna. Since the weather was a bit dicey and the animals were a bit elusive, we didn’t really get as many good wildlife pics as we would have hoped, but it was definately an interesting experience.
Our favorite tour was the pirahna fishing, we caught three different kinds between the guide and ourselves, red, white and purple. Then we took the fish to a little local restaurant on the shore of the river, where they cleaned and grilled the fish for us. While the wife was cooking up our fish, the husband showed us the method of extracting rubber from the latex trees that he had been using for his entire life. This was super interesting, from feeling and extending the rubber-band like strings hanging off the tree, to seeing how they hardened the rubber in a big ball around a stick by pouring the latex (milk) on the stick over a heartily smoking fire. To top it off, the husband was a bit of a character with a penchant for groovy headware, so we got some fun picutures of him. Oh yeah and by the way, Pirhana is DELICIOUS. I think I liked the red one I caught the best!
Glad we’d had the opportunity to see the Amazon river and rainforest and looking forward to some air conditioning, we left Manaus for the very remote border of Brazil and Columbia.
