I know, it’s been a week and a half and I haven’t posted anything. Life is busy when you’re on vacation.
I did finally finish going through my over 600 photos that I took on my 4 day River Boat tour of the Rio Negro and Amazon Forest. I forgot to bring a mouse with me on this trip, so editing all of these photos with the track pad on my laptop isn’t the most ergonomically correct thing to do which means the editing goes even slower then normal.
The trip was great, the guide knew his stuff and the people I ended up going on the trip with were very nice. I was supposed to be at the dock by 9:00 Tuesday morning. A taxi picked me up at Moises’ house about 8:00 which in theory would have been plenty of time. But this is Manaus and the traffic ended up being terrible! If traffic was light, it would have been a 20 minute drive, but traffic was a total mess so it ended up taking 1 hour and 20 minutes. The poor taxi driver was getting so angry. He knew I was supposed to be at the dock by 9:00, so he was yelling at people and blaring the horn whenever someone pulled in front of him. I felt bad for the guy, so when he finally dropped me off I gave him a little extra for a tip. And even though I was 20 minutes late, I still beat the other group going on the trip by 10 minutes.
Once everyone showed up we did some shopping in the markets down by the river. I unfortunately didn’t take my camera with me when we went to the market, there was a lot of potentially great shots in there…. We picked up some supplies including beer and
Cachaça. My new travel companions, Julian, Nick and Jeri were very interested in making sure we had enough supplies to keep us refreshed during our hot and humid trip.
Speaking of my travel companions. Julian and Nick are from England. Jeri, she is from Kenya and lives with Nick there. Julian used to live in Kenya but now has been living in Angola. They are middle aged, well to do running their own perspective companies. Talking to them you knew they were “upper class” but all in all they were great people to hang out with and talk about the current world affairs with.
The boat docks in Manaus are extremely crowded. The only reason I was able to find my guide and boat was because my friend Moises called the guide the night before, then drove me by the dock the night before since it was close to his mother’s house. Then when I got there in the morning, the guide was standing there but I didn’t know what he looked like. He saw me, a gringo getting out of a cab, and figured I was his 4th guy on the tour. Here’s a photo to give you a perspective of the chaos of boats.
First stop on the trip was the “Meeting of the Waters”. This is where the Rio Negro and the Rio Samiloes meet and form the Rio Amazon. The amazing thing is that the waters do not fully join together for something like 15 KM down river. The two rivers stay swirling side by side, the black of the Rio Negro contrasting against the muddy brown of the Rio Samiloes.
One of the reasons the waters stay separated for so long is the difference in temperature between the two waters. The Rio Negro is 4 or 5 degrees warmer then the Rio Samiloes which I find amazing. Both rivers are in the Amazon, which is pretty darn hot, but from what I understand, the Negro runs slower then the Samiloes plus is black so it absorbs more energy from the sun.
After seeing the Meeting of the Waters, we headed to a lake that is fed by the Rio Samiloes and has beautiful giant lily pads. Our guide, Anand, said that these lily pads can be large enough to support up to 40 pounds! I’m not sure if these were large enough for that though.
We walked in on a raised platform above the water. During the dry season you can walk on land, but this time of year is close to the peak of the yearly floods during the wet months. Walking through a forest that is under 10-15 feet of water is an amazing experience.
After taking in the sites of the lily pads, we headed back to the boat and started chugging up the Rio Negro to find a little cove to tie up for the night. The sunsets on the Rio Negro can be spectacular. This wasn’t the best I’ve seen, but it was beautiful to be up on the bow of the boat taking in the beauty of the Rio Negro and the Amazon Forest.
Here’s the little cove we spent the first night in. Peaceful except for the frogs talking back to each other.
You may be surprised to hear that the mosquitos and insects in general are not that bad on the Rio
Negro. This is because the Rio Negro is fairly acidic for a river, one of the reasons it’s black. So insects aren’t able to breed directly in the water but need fresh rain water in puddles. Don’t get me wrong, I still applied some insect repellent, especially on my legs. Mosquitos love to chew on my white chicken legs.
The next morning we woke up fairly early, had a nice breakfast then headed out to “swim with the dolphins”. I didn’t swim with the dolphins though, I’m kind of a chicken when it comes to getting into the water. But my travel companions did, so I tagged along to take some photos of them. They said it was amazing.
The owner of the docks has “tamed” these pink river dolphins to come for food. There were other more wild ones who the guy would give the fish as soon as they swam up to him. The tamer ones he would get them to jump up right in front of them before giving it the fish.
The afternoon was spent exploring a tributary and lake of the Rio Negro in a smaller boat. Our guide, Anand, has some of the sharpest eyes I’ve ever seen a person have. Seriously, we would be floating down the river, he would look to the side, swing the boat around, stop the motor and say, “look straight in front of us, what do you see?” Most of the time we would see nothing but trees and sky, but he would see a bird, iguana, monkey or in this case, a Three Toed Sloth carrying her baby.
After spending some time checking out the Sloth, we floated into the forest which was on both sides of the tributary we were traveling. There we tried to do some Piranha fishing with a stick and line along with a piece of chicken for bait. We didn’t have much luck fishing. I almost pulled one in, these little red belly piranhas would start chewing on your bait. You had to wait a little bit for it to maybe get to the hook then give it a quick jerk. If you tried to set the hook too soon, you would miss it. If you waited too long, the fish would eat all your bait off the hook. I got one up and out of the water before it finally let go of the bait. Anand got one, the rest of the boat weren’t as lucky, or I should say skillful.
Floating on this small tributary was so peaceful on the way back to the boat. Anand cut the motor and we silently floated down the river watching for wild life. We saw swallows and finches darting over the water. Then Anand said, “keep an eye on that tree over there, you’re going to see something beautiful. So we kept our eyes peeled and finally we saw 4 Red Macaws hanging out in a tree way far back from the river. It was too far and too dark by then for me to even attempt to take a picture. But it was still very cool to see these birds flying from tree to tree making a racket.
As we continued to float down the river, the sky was becoming darker and darker with clouds. There was thunder rolling in the distance and then Jeri said, “Is that rain I hear?” It was, so Anand fired up the engine and started headed back down the river as fast as he could trying to beat the rain. We almost made it back to the boat by the time the first rain drops started falling. We quickly got inside before it started dumping buckets. Lightning was striking in the distance and the thunder seemed to roll forever. It was a good storm to be back on the big boat. There were waves rolling through rocking our big boat. The little boat would have been fun. Later the rain stopped and we sat on the upper deck of the boat enjoying the cool air and listened to Howler Monkeys in the distance warning us to stay away.
The third day we started out in the morning to do an easy hike in some jungle near where we had spent the night. A local Indian came along as our second guide for safety. Anand said that whenever he goes into the jungle, he always brings along another in case one of them is hurt.
Our second guide keeping an eye out.
The trail was fairly well marked. Anand pointed out different trees and plants that have medicinal purposes. There wasn’t a lot of huge trees, even though Anand said it was virgin rain forest. The reason for the lack of large trees was because the trees did not have very deep roots to hold them up. The roots were very shallow, so when a big storm blew through they would fall.
The highlight of the hike was Anand coaxing out a huge Tarantula from her den. He took a long slender piece of reed, frayed one end and spat on it. Then he slowly stuck it down the hole saying, “don’t move too fast when it comes out”. Not exactly sure what we were going to see, we leaned in and were surprised when this huge, hairy Tarantula ran up out of the hole and sat there holding on to the reed. It was the craziest thing I ever saw, this spider just sitting there for us to look at.
We all got at least 10 to 15 shots while it sat there. Here’s a closer look. It was fairly dark to be shooting with a slow telephoto lens, so please look past how bad this photo is and instead look at how beautiful this girl was. According to Anand, they like to climb up into the trees at night and kill birds so they can suck their blood. And they are like Black Widows where once the male mates, it is eaten by the female.
The English guys really wanted to watch the Brazil vs Croatia World Cup opening match. So Anand found a small village where we could hang out and watch the game. We headed in later that evening and walked up a short path to this very rustic home. We stepped inside and there were already some other guys there watching the pre-game on a small maybe 21” tube TV. The guys already there ended up being from Vancouver, BC Canada and were in Manaus to watch the England vs Italy game later in the week. We talked some, then the Canadian’s guide took them off somewhere else where there was a bigger TV. I asked if they were big Vancouver Whitecap fans and they seemed to not really care about them. Which I found to be very odd. These Canadians said they had gone to the last 5 World Cups, but didn’t really care about their own local Soccer Team? When they left, Jeri mentioned to me, “Those Americans were a bit brash.” and I responded with, “They weren’t Americans, they were Canadians acting like Americans.”
So we watched the game on a small TV with rabbit ears in basically a wood hut. The signal would start to go, so the owner of the house would get up and tap the TV trying to fix the signal. I think it was about as authentic of an experience to watch a Brazil game as you can get. Brazil ended up winning 2-1, but there was plenty of the owner of the house yelling at the TV at all the bad Brazil plays.
That is about it for the trip. The 4th day we did some floating around in some trees flooded by the Rio Negro. Then headed back to the boat so that we could head back to Manaus early. The English guys wanted to get back in time to watch a big game, Holland vs Spain. So we needed to be back in Manaus before 3:00 PM to make the game. We weren’t back in time, but the guy who I ended up getting a taxi ride with had a small TV in the car. So we watched Holland spank Spain while sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on the way back to my friend Moises’ house.
If you want to see more of my photos taken during my trip on the Rio Negro, check out the following link:
Rio Negro River Boat Tour
Or you can watch a slide show here:
