Amazon Riverboat Adventure (Part 1)

Tuesday 25^th- Thursday 27^th, 2011

Day 1:

Well after 2 days spent in Manaus, Brazil I was more than ready to get on the riverboat that would take me to see the Amazon Rainforest up close and personal! Let me just say that I’m so glad that I went on a 5 day backpacking trip a few years ago because I was set and ready to go with my backpack, my heavy duty hiking shoes, and appropriate clothing. (Compared to the girls who wore leggings that didn’t fully cover their calves and Ked tennis shoes as they hiked through the rainforest,) I looked like I had done this a hundred times before!

First of all, the riverboat that me and 29 other people traveled on is actually an ordinary form of transportation for the people who live in Manaus. Better known as river buses, these boats, which are 2 story boats, are used to take people up and down the Rio Negro (which branches off from the Amazon). Their transportation system is definitely one worth noting. There is only one highway leaving the city of Manaus, which takes one to Venezuela, but there is no direct highway that one can take to get to Southern Brazil. If one desires to take a car to drive to Southern Brazil, they have to drive onto a barge and travel on the river for about 4 days, which will eventually take them to the next closest highway. Back to the river buses; since there are many native Amazonians that live in Manaus, people will sometimes travel up to 11 days on a river bus to visit family and/or friends in the village they grew up in that’s located somewhere in the Amazon region. When traveling on one of these river buses, each person brings their own hammock and when it is time to go to sleep, they hang up their hammock and proceed to take it down in the morning when they wake up. They will continue to do this for however many days it takes them to get to where they’re going. So this is exactly what we did for 3 days and 2 nights, except the hammocks were provided for us.

Our first destination was, the “Meeting of Waters,” where the black waters of the Rio Negro meet the brown waters of the Solimões to form the Amazon River. To give you an idea of what this looked like, imagine a river that looks like coffee with cream in it mixing with a river that looks like black coffee, which made a 3^rd mixture that looks somewhat like tea. This was an interesting sight to see as you could see the 3 different colors of water as they mixed together. We left from there and later on entered the Lake January region where we had the chance to see the giant Victoria Regia water lilies. These were the biggest water lilies I’ve ever seen! It looked like you could actually sit on one and it would hold you up. Someone actually made a comment about walking or sitting on one of the lily pads and one of our guides said that a very small kid might be able to sit on one without sinking it. In this same area we observed as our guide lured 2 big alligators in by tying fishing line around a big chunk of beef and splashing it in the water, which was a good 12-15 feet beneath the dock/ outlook that we were standing on. Later on this same day, our guides took us out in smaller boats that are equal to a canoe/long kayak/motor boat to go fishing for piranha. The fishing poles we used were bamboo poles that had a fishing line tied to the end of the pole. For bait we used little pieces of beef, and after about 30-45 minutes of waiting to catch a piranha, I finally caught one! Eddie, one of our guides came over to take my piranha off the hook and said, “You caught a vegetarian piranha!!!” He was laughing as he said this, and was making a joke/ making fun of my piranha that had no teeth! That was the only piranha that I caught because I didn’t have the patience to wait around to catch the piranha that had teeth! Seriously though, what are the chances of catching a piranha with no teeth! Of course Eddie was joking around about my piranha being vegetarian, but since it tried to eat the beef off of my hook you couldn’t claim that it was 100% vegetarian. However, Eddie informed me that this species of piranha does eat both plants and meat! Shockingly, there was still more to come as the day continued. We tested out our hammocks as we took a siesta, which was much needed. The night ended as we got back in the canoes at dusk as we observed our guides spot and catch jacares (alligators) with their bare hands. It was amazing to see how quickly they spotted the alligators from the canoe by using a flashlight to spot the eyes of the alligators. The one Sid caught was a little baby one about 1 ½ feet long. He caught it so easily it was incredible! Our canoe pulled up next to another canoe to make sure their guide had caught one and sure enough they had. The alligator that their guide caught was a good 2 ½-3 feet long!!! It was big enough that Sid said, “the girls can hold the little alligator, and only the boys can hold the big one.” Some of the girls in my canoe got offended by his statement and thought that it was wrong of him to make such a judgment. I thought it was funny/ridiculous that these girls were doubting the knowledge our guide had about how strong these creatures were when Sid was just trying to protect us! Why doubt a man who was born and raised in the Amazon who grew up catching alligators, fishing for piranha, and using a machete in elementary school to do household chores! This was just the end of the 1^st day, which was only the beginning of my adventure in the Amazon.