Day 91 and 92: Manaus, Brazil a.k.a The Amazon.
The past few ports I have not been too pumped to blog about. I had to force myself to sit down and get it done. As you could tell, Argentina was not all that detailed. But Brazil, or more specifically the Amazon, I am pumped to blog about. So strap in and hang on, this is going to be long and awesome.
We left in the morning, not as early as another field program, who left at 3. That would have been absurd. Our flight to Manaus was at 12:45, we met at 9:30.
I was more excited for this trip than I had been for the Iguazu falls trip because one, it sounded awesome, and two, Lillian was going so I actually knew someone. In the airport we had a little bit of time to kill so we found a tiny fast food place called Casa do Pao de Queiji. A brazilian fast food place! I got things called Pao de Queiji, the item they are known for. I don't know how to describe them, they were like small bready balls that were also a bit cheesy. They were interesting, but delicious. I also got two empanadas, which you can never go wrong with. The flight was fine and about three hours long. Nothing exciting to report there, except that there was a time change so it made the flight seem longer than it was.
We gathered in the Manaus airport and broke into our two boats. Of course, Lillian and I were not on the same boat. Great. At least Haley and Colin, who I had gotten to know in Iguazu were on my boat. And Lizzie, who I had known since Germany as well. We were boat B!
We met our guides, Sid and Nigel, and we were told a whole bunch of safety things, which mainly included the no alcohol policy. Made sense. Then we were ushered onto the bus and headed towards the pier where we would board our riverboat.
Manaus is in the middle of Brazil and is on the Amazon river. It has a population of 2 million people. We would be boarding our riverboats in the eastern part of the city and traveling on the Rio Negro or 'Black River.' Apparently if you want to do a riverboat trip on the actual Amazon you need at least 7 days because it takes longer to get to safe parts of the river. The other awesome thing was that the Rio Negro apparently didn’t have all that many mosquitoes so we wouldn’t need to sleep with mosquito netting and we didn’t need to worry too much about malaria, although all of us still took our meds.
They told us about the different tribes in the Amazon, there are about 600 of them and they discover new ones all the time. They came upon one about a year or two ago in a helicopter. The tribes people didn’t know what a helicopter was so they were angry and shooting blow darts at them. They decided to not make contact with the people. Sounds like something from a movie.
While a lot of the tribes are very poor none of them are hungry. They have an endless supply of fish from the river and a lot of fruit from the jungle.
While we were waiting for our riverboat to dock Colin, Trevor, Henry, and Lizzie played ninja. Ninja is a game where your goal is to knock out the hands of the other players by hitting them on the wrist or hand. But you must freeze in place one you make a move. A defending player may dodge an attempted strike but also must freeze after their move. You eliminate one hand at a time, once both hands are out you are out of the game. The last person standing is the winner.
I have never played this game before but I have watched it countless times because it is really entertaining. Especially when they start making hi-ya noises when they move. This was also when my obsessive amount of pictures began, I took some fantastic ones of them playing.
The two riverboats were almost exactly the same except ours was smaller and so had less bathrooms and less space. We were so mad that we ended up with the small one but boat B ended up being the best boat so we can't complain any more.
We were served snacks on the boat. Small cookies, pineapple, watermelon, papaya, and bananas. The fresh fruit was absolutely amazing.
The first thing we did was head to the meeting of the waters. The Amazon river and the black river come together and for 6km run side by side without mixing. The Amazon is a sandy color while the Black river is black so it is a very distinct line. This happens because of differences in temperature and water density. That was the only time that we were actually on the Amazon river, when we sailed over to it at the meeting of the waters. Eventually the two rivers do mix together and become the color of the Amazon because that rivers current is so strong.
We had some down time as we sailed to where we would be piranha fishing and alligator spotting that night. We just sailed along and watched the sunset while some people played a hand clapping game.
By the time we got to the right area of the river it was too dark to fish for piranhas so we were just going to be alligator spotting. We got off the boat and boarded small, covered, dug out canoes that were powered by a motor. We went around the area with a guide shining a flashlight at the shore. It reminded me of Busani shining the spotlight around the bush on our safari. Eventually he spotted something and we headed toward the shore. He jumped off the front of the boat and came back holding a alligator.
Actually it wasn’t an alligator. Alligators are native to the U.S. These were caimans. The only major difference is the absence of a bony septum between their nostrils, which alligators have. There are a few different species of caiman. The largest is the black caiman which can get up to 5 meters or 16ft long. The one we caught was a baby, probably only about two months old. He had hold of it around the neck and tail. Our caiman looked terrified, which made sense, their instinct is to look dead until the threat is gone.
He was about as long as my arm, most of it was tail. His head was about the size of my hand. Our guide got him to open his mouth by grabbing the fleshy underside of his jaw and then tapping the top of his mouth. He had lots of tiny teeth, and no tongue. Alligators, crocodiles, and caiman don't have tongues. They just have a flap that prevents them from swallowing too much water. They swallow food whole and will grab onto prey in the water but then will move onto land to swallow it. At one point Sid put the caiman on the floor and kept him down between his feet.
We passed him around and held him. At one point a fish jumped out of the water and into the boat. It scared all of us and was flopping around at the bottom. It came out of the pitch black, basically from nowhere. Our guide grabbed it and we suggested he feed it to the caiman. He put it up to his mouth but he was not feeling it so we threw the fish back.
When we were all done taking pictures with it we put him back in the river and went back to the river boats. As we were sitting our our canoe waiting to get off we asked Sid what the craziest thing that ever happened to him was. He told us a story about how he took two people into the jungle to camp. They were in their hammocks about to sleep when he felt something try to tip over his hammock. It seemed to go away but he couldn’t sleep for a while after that. As he was about to fall back to sleep he felt something like a dogs nose on his arm. He elbowed whatever it was really hard. The next morning one of the other guys told him that he saw a jaguar running away from the camp. He had elbowed a jaguar in the face. In the face. What. Such a bad ass.
Another canoe had caught a two year old. It was big enough that they had rubber banded his mouth shut. We took pictures with him too, but we needed two people to hold him. Apparently at one point someone dropped him when his mouth wasn’t banded and he scurried around and everyone freaked out.
Back on our boat our hammocks had been set up. They were strung across the top deck. They were tied on the edge and then stretched about two thirds of the way to the other side. They were alternated so the top of one hammock from the other side stretched to right above your head. So there were two rows of hammocks that overlapped a bit.
That was weirdly hard to explain.
I picked my hammock easily. It is stripped red, white, and dark blue and has a knit fringe of black and light blue. I slept with my head in the middle of the boat, looking outside. On my left was Lizzie and some people I didn’t know and to my right was Colin and then Hayley and then Trevor. We slept alternate ways so that we could talk to each other. Nigel came up and taught us the correct way to sleep, which is diagonally. If you lay diagonally then you are basically laying flat so you don't mess up your back and your feet are not above your head. It was so comfortable. We were not given a pillow but we did have a blanket. We fooled around in our hammocks until dinner was ready.
Dinner was pasta, bread, beef and potatoes, fish, rice, and beans.
Rice and beans became my go-to. They were delicious and I was wary of eating the meat. I didn’t want to be sick. I also gorged on the fruit. Always fresh pineapple and watermelon. Absolutely perfect. The bananas looked mutant. But someone pointed out that they were probably natural bananas and the ones we are used to eating are the mutant one. They were the sweetest, most delicious bananas that I have ever eaten.
Dessert was dried guava covered in some cream sauce. It tasted like a fruit roll up. But not the really fake fruit roll ups but the healthier ones. The "real fruit" ones. It was weird. But good.
After dinner we decided to play cards. Lizzie, Colin, and someone else who I can't remember sat on the floor of the first level and played a game. Then we started playing a game of Mao but we didn’t get very far in when the crew of the boat started to set up their hammocks on the bottom level. Guess it was time for bed.
It was completely pitch black out. There wasn’t much else to do and everyone was exhausted even though it was only about 9:30.
It was weirdly not that dark out. I mean, it was, but the light from venus and the stars made it bright enough to see the tree line. That didn’t bode well for me, who sometimes struggles to sleep when there is light.
Also, I did not think about snoring.
There was some intense snoring happening. The funny thing was that, that first night, no one snored at the same time. When one stopped another person started. We also all went to bed before we reached our destination so the engine was pretty loud. When it finally cut it was eerily quiet. That is, until the snoring took over. I ended up having to fall asleep listening to music. And it was then that I realized that I am a stomach sleeper and fall asleep on my stomach every night. It is nearly impossible to sleep anywhere but on your back in a hammock, although I eventually figured out how to roll on my side.
It took me a really long time to fall asleep. Probably not until at least half past midnight. Then I got up at 3:30 to go to the bathroom. The heat had broken in the middle of the night and it was absolutely freezing. I put on my rain jacket and just cocooned myself in my blanket and hammock. It was so cold. If it was going to be like this every night I was not going to have fun. Then I confused myself because I looked at the time on my phone, which I didn’t change, and it said 5:30. But the next time I woke up it was to the sound of Henry's voice saying that it was 5:30.
And it was bright out. Waking up to the sun…yay.
I snoozed until about 6:15. Breakfast was to be served at 7 so Colin and I just chatted until it was really time for us to get up.
The amount of time it took to get ready was not much. There were not showers. Actually that is a lie. We discovered later that there were showers. They were in with the toilet and were just basically over the ground and the toilet. I don't think many of us used them. I didn’t.
Brush your teeth over the side of the boat, throw on some deodorant and a new shirt and voila. Ready for the day.
Breakfast was ham, cheese, bread, eggs, and fresh fruit.
We ate all of our meals out of flimsy plastic bowl/plate things that collapsed really easily. It took until our last meal for no one to collapse their plate into another serving dish. I dropped pineapple on the ground once and watermelon another time. It was very upsetting both times.
After breakfast we got back in the canoes. This time they gave us all lifejackets. I don't know why we didn’t need them the night before. Also, the water would surely kill us with all the piranhas and anaconda in the water. I don't think life jackets would help us.
We headed into the jungle. Well, not with the boat. We took the canoe to the edge of the jungle and then got off and went on a walk through the jungle. We were told to wear long pants. Which I did not. That made it exciting. We were also told to not touch anything. That is way harder to do than it sounds. You don't realize how often you grab things as you are walking until you cant.
We walked in a single file line along a trail that they told us to stay on. Yeah… there was not a trail. He was chopping the trail with a machete as we walked. Instead of a jungle walk it was more like a jungle expedition.
The first thing they showed us was razor grass that can cut you if you brush against it. Then we looked at a giant ants nest hanging out of a tree.
He told one girl to put her hand on the tree to feel its energy. When her hand was on the tree he tapped it with the machete and it caused the ants to swarm all over the outside of the nest and fall onto the girls hand and arm. Then, if we wanted we could put our hand on the nest and let the ants crawl all over you.
Absolutely not.
I did not participate in that.
The next thing we were shown was a vine that had water on the inside of it. So if you were in the jungle and needed water you could drink from it. Nigel cut one of the vines and we passed it around and drank from it. The inside of the the vine looked the inside of a tree with rings and yet it also had tiny holes all through it. The water was really clear and didn’t taste like a plant at all.
Then we saw bullet ants. He tapped another tree to get them to come out. They are about an inch long and get there name because if one bites you it feels like you get shot. We were told about a village in the Amazon where boys get bit by the bullet ants as a coming of age ritual. It is said that if they can survive that then they can survive an anaconda attack or piranhas.
I do not volunteer as tribute.
After the bullet ants we spent a lot of time hacking out way through the jungle. We were at the back of the line, which was followed up by Sid. He found a bug that looked like a leaf. It even had brown spots like a leaf would. Perfect camouflage.
While we were looking at the bug in Sid's hand Nigel walked up to us with a stick on fire. It was a tree that would self combust if you broke it. People would use it as a torch in the jungle. I don't remember what the fire would be burning but there was something in the tree that acted as fuel and would eventually burn out automatically.
After the burning stick we got lost. And by we I mean the five of us at the back of the line. Everyone was walking faster than us for some reason and eventually disappeared from view. And there wasn’t a clear trail to follow. Colin decided that it was time for him to take charge and lead. But I really felt like we were not going in the right direction so we yelled back to Sid and told him we had lost them. He just started yelling out to Nigel who answered from the completely opposite direction from where Colin wanted to take us. Way to go Colin, you were going to get us even more lost.
We smelled a bunch of different plants. One smelled like cloves and another one like Vicks vapor rub. Even the ants smelled. The whole forest had an overall odor. I liked it, it was sweet smelling. I think it stemmed from the ants but it followed us everywhere. The jungle had a smell.
Our expedition ended in someones back yard. The canoes were not there yet so we played with the cutest puppy ever and basically explored this persons yard. There was a cashew tree there. Apparently cashews grow off of the fruit of the tree and only one nut grows per fruit so the harvesting process takes a while. We passed around one of the fruits to try. I don't really remember what it tasted like but it made your tongue all tingly. We also found a broom that had been made by tying sticks to the end of a giant stick and some turtle shells.
When the canoes got there we piled into them but with the odd number in the opposite boat so we were short a lifejacket. Colin was the rebel and went without a lifejacket and we had a weirdly awesome photo shoot in the boat.
We got to go swimming after the jungle expedition. The water was so incredibly warm, it was amazing. It was fairly shallow and as you swim there would be cold spots and warm spots. You could not see the bottom, which was a bit creepy but they wouldn’t have let us swim there if it wasn’t safe. The water was completely brown. So brown that it turned my white bathing suit brown. Grossly brown. My poor bathing suit, I did not foresee that issue.
We floated around and watched Rob threw Katie around. It reminded me of how my dad used to throw me in the pools at Disney. Can I be little again?
Colin and I decided that we could totally do better acrobatics and I cheerleader style flipped him. It didn’t really work in the deeper water but when we went into the shallower water he did almost an entire flip. Ok, half of a flip. But it was awesome.
Lunch was basically exactly the same as dinner from the night before, except there wasn’t any pasta. I stuck with the rice, beans and fruit.
After lunch we had some down time in our hammocks. I think most people took naps. Our day had been so full and it was only noon. I relaxed in my hammock, chatted with the people around me, and listened to music.
The afternoon consisted of a visit to a village. They had a tiny market where you could buy beads and other things made by the people in the village. There was a Chinese finger trap that had the trap on only one end. On the other end was ring. You put it around someones ring finger and trap them and then pull them away. It is a marriage ritual.
We learned a little about the village and the people that lived there, which is only 60. We watched two boys in a canoe. They would wave at us like crazy and then jump into the river. The canoe was basically sinking. One boy was trying to bail out the canoe while the other kept putting water into the canoe. They were such boys.
Nigel showed us this fruit that they would use the berries to paint their faces either for marriage or war. We broke a bunch of them open and painted each others faces. For war or marriage, I am not sure. We went with war.
It was after the village that we went piranha fishing and I discovered I have a fear of small boats over water that could kill me. I am fine in boats over water with regular fish but we were fishing for piranhas. That solidly implies that the water below us was filled with piranhas. And we were in a tiny dug out canoe. I was not all that excited when the canoe would tip even the slightest bit. Everyone thought my freaking out was pretty funny but I actually bordered a panic attack a few times.
When we had gotten to the certain patch of water that had piranhas in it Sid handed out sticks with fishing line attached to it. Just sticks, really low tech. We were using tiny chunks of beef as bait on the hooks.
We ditched our life jackets pretty quickly again. They were too constricting for fishing.
The first fish was caught by Henry. It wasn’t all that big and he reeled it in easily. He wanted to take it off the hook himself but we all yelled at him. It was a piranha, you don't touch it when you don't know what you are doing! Oh Henry.
Sid walked up the side of the canoe, which made it tip, eek! He grabbed the piranha around the body with one hand and carefully removed the hook with the other. It wasn’t all that big so we threw it back.
I caught a fish almost immediately and it ended up being the biggest one. It was giant and a bit harder to reel in. And by reel in I mean hold the stick high enough above the water while it thrashed around.
It was big enough that we kept it. Sid went to the bushes we were next to and broke a stick off. He put the stick in the piranhas mouth, it bit down and broke it cleanly in half.
Apparently getting bit by a piranha is like the baptism of the amazonian people. Both Nigel and Sid had been bit by piranhas when they were young. Still doesn't sound very fun.
We fished for a while and even moved locations. We ended up catching 12 fish including a dogfish and a catfish. Three of the piranha ended up being big enough for us to keep.
I was really ready to be back on the bigger boat. We were out on the piranha filled water in the pitch black and I was really not having fun anymore.
Dinner was a huge barbecue on the beach. We were joined by A boat and also by the Amazon express trip. They were doing the same thing as us, just compressed down into two nights.
They had a barbecue set up where they were cooking huge fish and other meat. They had set up lights all over the beach.
While we were waiting for the express canoes to come back from fishing they started setting off fireworks just for us. They were set off right down the beach and so were right over our heads. The last ones did not go off and started exploding on the ground. That was a bit scary but at least the guys who had set them off had walked away.
It was a really cool surprise.
The barbecue was not much different from the other food that we had been eating. I ate so much fruit.
After dinner we were all really tired and were thinking about playing a hand of cards and then going to bed. Right when we got up to leave one of the guides from the other boat came over to us and asked if we were ready for some games. Of course we were ready for some games!
Tug of war was the first up. We were competing boat against boat. First the girls and then the boys. I was on the girls team and we absolutely killed it. We utilized a technique we learned during sea olympics. We had one person anchor on the end and then had one person be the caller, who shouted 1,2,PULL! We pulled all together and beat them so easily.
Our boys won easily too and both of our teams went on to win the whole thing. Boat B! WOOO!!!
Our next game was musical chairs, which we also dominated. Lizzie fought hard for the last chair and won because even though the other guys arm was underneath her butt was touching the chair.
Then we played limbo. We came in second but Chris did a brilliant job. Go boat B!
Then the games got a little weird. We tried to do a balloon game where two people had to hold a balloon between their foreheads and roll it down to their stomachs without letting it go or touching it with their hands. That was nearly impossible.
Then whoever popped the balloon first won. That was a bust because all the balloons popped at the same time.
Then they tried to teach us a dance and have a dance contest but the only pairs that competed were from our boat so we would automatically win. It was the funniest part of the whole night. The pairs were me and Lizze, Naomi and Colin and Henry and Sommer. We would have to do the partner dance but then they would yell free style and Colin and Henry would just break it down. It was absolutely historical, I was on the ground in the sand because I was laughing so hard.
By that point everyone else was over it and was just watching us be absolutely ridiculous. We got so competitive and Naomi ended up being awarded the prize of a pineapple. We had been so tired and ready to go to bed until they said games and then we just became obnoxiously competitive. It was so much fun. Our boat was awesome. Boat B was the best boat!
We actually did go to bed after that. It was still only about 10 at night but it was pitch black and we were all exhausted. That was the night that I wished there was a shower because I was all sweaty and covered in sand. I brushed it off the best I could and tried to cool myself down.
It did get cooler during the night but the heat didn’t break like the night before so I was much more comfortable and was able to use my blanket as a pillow. I slept a whole lot better. The morning still came very quickly because of how early the sun came up.
