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Life along the Amazon: The Meeting of the Waters & A Local Village

Sun, 01/24/2010 - 15:22 — cynthia

Brazil is alive with color, music...people. I think that's why I liked it so much...buildings are brightly painted, but downtown Manaus was a little sad because many of the beautiful old buildings, built when the Europeans were here during the rubber boom are now abandoned and covered with graffiti. In the mid 1800's they discovered rubber here, and there was a boom, akin to the gold rush. The sad part of it is that the indigenous people were pratically enslaved, treated poorly, beaten if they didn't produce enough rubber. They had a monopoly on rubber here until early 1900's when a British botanist smuggled rubber tree seeds out of the country. The British brought the plant to Malaysia, and they bred a bigger better rubber tree plant, arranged in plantation rows (as opposed to growing wild in Brazil). That combined with cheaper labor and basically decimated the Brazilian rubber industry. In 1945 invented synthetic rubber was invented, so its all a moot point now.

On our 2nd day here, we took a smaller boat to cruise up a tributary of the Amazon called he Rio Negro. The Rio Negro, which is black, and the Amazon, which is color of cafe latte, meet but they don't mix because the waters come from different sources and have different speeds, density and acid content. It’s an amazing site.
 
 
This goes on for about 8 km (about 5 miles) before the water actually combines.
 
We stopped at a small island village, took a long (and slippery) hike through the jungle. Here’s my dad on the bridge we took from the ship into the small village.
Our hike took us deep into the jungle, under huge banyan trees.
 
We saw giant lily pads.
 
And a sloth WAY up in the trees - good thing I've got a powerful zoom lens!
  
We spent some time at the local village. The houses are all built on stilts to protect them from the Amazon floods. 
This year they are having record water levels both high and low. When we were there, it was the dry season and very low. In the photo below, you can see on the trees where the water line was, the area was flooded during the wet season. It is not unusual that the highest of the high levels are accompanied by the lowest of the low levels.
 
And back on our boat, at the end of the tour.
 
On the way back our guide told about his Christmas plans.  He was taking off that night to go up to meet his family. The trip takes about 2-3 days, on a boat was the same size as the one we were on. But everyone brings their hammock, food, drink and provisions for a big party up the river! His father made a rule (he had 20-40 kids, not all from the same mother) that all had to gather yearly at Christmas for a big celebration, and whoever doesn't attend has to pay the next year, dinner for 1000 people!   
 
In the afternoon, we went to zoo. A sad way to see so many animals in cages, but probably the only chance we'll have to see some of this wildlife like jaguars, ocelots, panther, macaws and parrots up close.