The Brazilian Amazon River is a muddy brown color and
immense. Clusters of people live along the banks, which are visible most
of the time. Our first stop was Santarem (pronounced SantaREEM) - a big
city. We walked a couple of miles but found little to see
except a fish market selling lots of unrefrigerated fish. I wondered what they
did with the fish that didn't sell. A boat ride reminded me of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. It
was a similar kind of scene, except for a few differences: At the meeting
of the muddy waters of the Amazon and the blue waters of the Tapajos Rivers
(called the Meeting of the Waters), we found pink dolphins leaping around. On the banks were horses, cows, chickens, dogs, goats
and small farms. Living conditions, in most cases, were
horrendous. We were given the chance
(?) to catch piranhas. There are three varieties - black, gray and red.
I didn't care to try, but 3 people caught 8-10-inch black ones. The guide
was very pleased. Evidently, the black piranhas are considered viagra.
:-\ He said the crew would have them for dinner. The day was
hot and humid so we arrived back on our ship ready for showers.
The
next day we took the tender to a small village called Boca Da Valeria that
mimicked the way Indians lived centuries ago. Children were dressed in Indian costumes, others held parakeets,
sloths, iguanas, monkeys, and parrots (for the purpose of having their picture
taken for a dollar).The
kids treat sloths like teddy bears and one had gotten himself wrapped up
in the cord around his neck and was strangling. I pointed this out to the
man with him who got the sloth untangled. Further on, we saw a young
child holding a puppy by his paw, like a rag doll. I went over to him and
moved his hand so that it went around the puppy's middle, and hoped the lesson would stick. One child had a tarantula on a leash.
We
wandered away from the village and found some actual dwellings where people
lived in pretty rustic conditions with their dogs and cats and chickens.
The language (Portuguese) made it impossible for us to say much more than the
basics like thank you and please.
During the rainy season the
water rises about 10 feet and where we walked is underwater. The
heat was dramatic.
Along the Rio Negro we hiked with
a nature guide into the jungle. It was hot and steamy, even in the shade,
but, surprisingly, we were not swarmed by bugs. Along the way, we learned a great
deal about the way of life of the indigenous people in stone-age times, and the
valuable knowledge they still possess about plants, trees and insects. We saw
black, poisonous ants an inch long. One sting can kill you. Three
sings will kill you. They looked pretty scary. Somehow (our guide didn't explain how)
the poison is harvested to make poison darts once used in hunting. We
drank tea made from cinnamon bark, clove bark, and a tree I can't pronounce
that produces quinine. We also ate a bit of the leaf. Quite bitter.
Our guide pointed out another tree whose milky substance is supposedly a
cure for some types of cancer. And my husband was brave and ate the larva of the dragonfly
that is often found inside a small coconut shell. (The hole in the shell
is the giveaway.) He said it tasted like a coconut jellybean. We drank water
from a root. Tasted very sweet.
