Amazonas

It was more beautiful and impressive than I could´ve imagined. I wish everyone could experience the same things I did during those two weeks. :O)

I’d love to get lost in the wilderness and explore to my heart’s content.

I want to see the Amazon. I ordered a ticket yesterday to Manaus. It is only a 3 hour layover enroute to Brasilia and Goiania, but maybe I can glimpse the river even though it will be the middle of the night.

field work…and boost my imagination

We arrived in Manaus and hooked up a tour from someone we met at the airport – we were wary of doing this because our guide book had warned us of ‘pirate’ guides, so we checked that they were accredited by the organisation mentioned in the guide book, which they were.

We chose the 3 night tour that involved taking a boat up the Rio Negro to the meeting of the waters with the amazon, staying in hammocks on the boat, then later in hammocks in the jungle, eating chicken cooked on the fire out guide made from completely green wood, eating piranha (which I ate despite not liking fish, just for the story), fishing for piranha, going on canoe trips, seeing animals (which around that area were chained up to get money out of tourists, quite different to what I have heard about the national parks etc.) including monkeys, sloths, mccaws, crocodiles.

We came to the realisation that our tour guide was a little eccentric. He had a t-shirt that said ‘Spice Girls Amazon Adventure Tours’ or something similar, and said that they had been to the amazon and he was one of their guides. We noticed that other locals had guarded expressions on their faces when they saw him, and one made a comment questioning his sanity in some way or other.

After the second night, when the less adventurous tourists had left the tour, we were on a canoe with an outboard motor on the Rio Negro, when the motor conked out. The theory was we were out of petrol, and our guide asked another boat for help. They refused to help and backed away (perhaps they knew something about him that we didn’t). We started to row towards an island while scooping out the water that was getting in the canoe with cans.

The the rain came – a huge tropical storm, that started filling the boat up even faster than the holes made it fill up and we rowed as fast as we could towards the island. The guides said something to each other in portuguese about how we were now doomed, and blamed the women on the trip for having their periods which would attract piranhas. Good thing my friend was brazilian and could translate – or perhaps it was a bad thing.

We finally made it to the island and walked up a steep hill passing a sign that said in portuguese something that translates to ‘Warning! you may be the first victim’. We never found out what that meant. We found an abandoned (or at least we thought it was) farmhouse where we sought shelter till the storm passed. Our guide gave us cashaca vodka (this was supposed to get us home safe?), and after it passed we walked and ran through grass that lashed our legs to the other side, where we came across a malaria prevention boat that finally agreed to take us back for a fee – which our guide tried to make us pay but others on the trip refused.

A few nights later one of the girls on the tour complained that she had woken up with her bra removed, and suspected the tour guide. I wondered why you would wear a bra in your sleep, but noticed he had been standing over me weirdly at some point. My tour companion mentioned this incident to the company when we got back, and a few weeks later we found out they had sacked the guide, and he had gotten mad and tried to burn down a building. The girl who had complained about the bra incident said she wished my friend hadn’t said anything, because she wasn’t sure and didn’t want him to be sacked.

So perhaps that was more of an adventure than we bargained for in the amazon. Still, my friend went back the next year with her boyfriend and had an even bigger adventure that went for more than a week.

I Spend a year living in the midle of the deep bresilian amazonian jungle. The nearest habitated placed is Boca do Acre ( RIO PURUS)

This place is magic. When you go there, you forget all your problems : i’ts only you, and nature, you and the animals…
It is a very beautiful and peaceful place. The people are very nice and friendly, and there are a lot of excursions in the forest or in the rivers, to see different animals, like armadilos or crocodiles. If you have the opportunity to go there, don’t hesitate
You will never forget it!