Cruisin' on the Rio Negro

Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.  Except replace the tangerine and marmalade with papayas and mangoes because this is Brazil.  We left our uncivilized ways behind and hauled buns back to Manaus so we could load up for the next segment of our journey.  And since the primary mode of transportation when exploring the Amazon has always been a boat that's what we decided to use too.

Load 'em up

Not too shabby

And we're off on the SS Iracema bound for parts unknown

Well, unknown to everyone except the captain, crew and passengers who all knew we were headed up the Rio Negro for the Anavilhanas Archipelago, remote Jau National Park and the Rio Solimoes.  Along the way we would stop and take these small boats out for morning, afternoon and nighttime birding hikes.

Morning and evening aboard the boat are so beautiful and there are no people anywhere, just river and jungle for as far as you can see.  The river here is wide and calm and if you get up just before the sun rises it's so still you can see the stars reflected on the surface.  Amazing!

There was plenty to see just from the boat, caimans, swimming iguanas, monkeys, but best of all something I've been waiting to see since I first heard about them as a kid, pink river dolphins.

Our first close-up siting

These guys were feeding them so we could get good pictures but we saw plenty from the boat, they're  pretty friendly but they don't jump like bottlenose dolphins, they just break the water surface

Are they really pink, well sort of, and because of the tannins in the Rio Negro they do look pink underwater.  They are a bit more flesh colored than pink.  There are many myths about them including one where they turn into men and seduce women so it's important that you rub the top of your boyfriends' head to make sure he doesn't have a blowhole.  Makes sense to me.

At one point we saw a large river turtle and immediately our captain showed up on deck with one of these:

Turtle hunting bow and arrow, nice try Captain Junior

Each day we would wake early, it's a birding trip after all, have a traditional Brazilian breakfast which included things like Pao de Quejo these little cheese balls baked in bread that were delicious, strong coffee and way more food choices than we needed but ate anyway.  Then we would motor to shore and bird the small islands that dot this part of the river.

Some of these places were a little muddy, lucky for us we signed on for the four star cruise so we had crew members clean our boots at the end of each day

To prepare for these hikes each of us each day put on Deet, sunscreen, high performance fabric long sleeves shirts, long pants, wool socks, rubber boots and a hat.  Some of us were also taking malaria meds and all of us had yellow fever vaccinations.   Each of us had likely also packed a miscellany of antibiotics, band-aids, diarrhea meds, pepto, and many more unctions and ointments in case of any disastrous scenario you could dream up in your over active imagination.

You know how the local Brazilians prepared for each day.  Wake up, pull on a nylon soccer tee shirt, nylon shorts and flip flops.  Done.  The flip flops were apparently optional.

This hairstyle was all the rage in the Amazon Basin

That's the entrance to Jau National Park the second largest National Park in the world.  Where's the largest one?  Also, in Brazil.  Guess how many people visit this amazing place every year?  700

We had to stop here and get off the boat and show our passports.  I have no idea why, who sneaks in here?

Fred and a few others took a swim in the Amazon

Now would be the time to discuss the lovely little candiru catfish.   It is attracted to urine so if you pee in the Amazon it will swim up your urine stream and up your urethra and because it has barbs that point backward it cannot dislodge itself so it just thrashes around.  Enjoy your swim Fred.

If the candiru doesn't get you the caiman will

Or the boa

Or the iguana might nibble your bum

A few days into our voyage the Captain arranged for us to visit his mother's house so he could show some night monkeys that lived in a tree on his property.

Just look at that soulful face and those creepy fingers

He also showed us his very productive cashew trees.  That's the nut on top and his Mom had made us cashew juice out of the pulp.  She was a sweetie.

They use this one for body paint

This was the coolest plant ever, you blow on it and it makes soap bubbles.  He might have said it was jatropha or it could have just sounded like that.  I didn't write it down and my portuguese isn't what it once was

Hmm, might want to haul butt back to the ship

In my days of captivity back at Camp 41 I foolishly thought that once we were aboard the boat cruising down the river that the temps would be more comfortable.  Um, no.  If the boat was not moving it was just as hot as the jungle.  Sweat would form large pools under your pits and on your upper lip by as early as sun up especially if you were wearing wool socks and rubber boots.  By about the third day I decided I needed a break and would stay behind on the boat and hole up in our air conditioned cabin.  After everyone left except me and the cooks I went back to the cabin and lay down just as the generator was turned off.  No AC.  Aaaargghh.

The cabin was stifling so I decided to do my sweating up on deck

As evening approached

We all stood by the open flames of the grill waiting for dinner

Boat load of nerds

A couple of days we would slide the boat into these otherworldly flooded forest areas.  It was quite and eerie and we saw giant river otters here.  But alas, they were too quick for my iPhone.

These are not your typical Carnival Cruise onshore excursions

That porcupine face is everything

While we were snapping pics of porcupines and monkeys, the captain was procuring dinner

I think this is a leopard catfish but give me a break there are over 5,000 species of fish on the Amazon and my background is marine biology.  That's my excuse anyway.

That's the Manaus Bridge in the background on our way to the meeting of the waters

That's the meeting of the Rio Negro and the Amazon Rivers, they run side by side for about 4 miles and don't mix because of the difference in temperature, speed and water density of the two rivers.

Here's a close up.  It's apparently a popular place to get married, I guess because nothing says more about the symbolic joining of two lives than the density of water

Our last shore leave 

Evening beers and caiprinhas watching the sunset trying to wrap our head around everything we've seen and the fact that we'll have to start cleaning mud off our own boots, baking our own cheeseballs, doing our own laundry and figuring out birds all by ourselves

Our last day in Manaus we went to the famous opera house.  This is Manaus' biggest claim to fame.  Having just spent two weeks in the jungle and on the river I can appreciate the effort to haul every door knob and window pane all the way from Europe to the middle of the Amazon River.  Unfortunately, there is not much left of the rubber robber baron architecture other than this place.  If you've never seen the movie Fitzcarraldo go watch it because it tells the story of how a nutty, obsessive person who goes to the middle of nowhere at great expense to fulfill his visions seeing opera becomes unhinged as the difficulties of the project become overwhelming.  Now substitute the word "opera" with the word "birds"  and you have some idea about our trip.

It's damn impressive all things considered

But, Sonia you say this was a birding trip where are all the bird photos?  Okay, okay I'll do a separate post with all our bird pics mostly because I need Fred to take time to id them for me.

But to close out our trip, here are some totally random but good shots I took with my iphone.

Some things get lost in translation

Playground animals are a little different here, pink river dolphins and a tapir

My favorite beer 

Nothing like having live electric wires running into your shower head

I watched this father hold his daughter's hand, cross the street and then wait for the bus to come get her.  Very sweet.

Probably 20 people on this boat

The Amazon is 50 miles wide in some places, take that Mississippi

But Fred it's such a small sign

Handsome grasshopper

I may or may not have fed this jungle cat a good portion of my lunch

Old man monkey

Healthy agouti

I should have showed Fred this before he went swimming

This was posted in the botanical park museum?????

For me?  You shouldn't have.

I was impressed with the luxury hotel where we birded the grounds.  Even more impressed when I found at they heat hundreds of rooms with a wood furnace

Those are tambaqui fish ribs.  Huge fish, huge ribs.  Delish.

The kitchen on our boat

Don't even think of leaning against a tree here

Jungle paparazzi

Going through these pictures it all seems like a blur now, it went way too fast.  We are headed to Sanibel Island for a few days, then the holidays, then off to the Darien in Panama.  Whew, this retirement business is wearing me out.