Amazon River

📷

Amazon trip

This was one of those trips that got postponed because of COVID.  In some ways I am glad it did because we met a couple that told us about expedition cruise ships and it is a better way to explore this part of the world.  We flew from Atlanta to Sao Paulo Brazil where we had a layover before we got on our 2^nd leg to Manaus, Brazil.  If you ever fly through Brazil, the Sao Paulo airport is full of food choices – lots and lots of restaurants and snack bars. 

Seabourn’s Expedition ships have a professional photographer and videographer who share photos and a video with the passengers.  📷 indicates one of John Shedwick’s photos

Manaus

Jeff knew of this city from his work days because lots of set top TV boxes were built here for distribution in Brazil.  It is very much an industrial city on a major river.  The cruise company (Seabourn) had all of us come in early and put us up in a hotel for the night.  It was a decent and clean hotel, but nothing to write home about.  It was not a walkable neighborhood, so we ate dinner and breakfast there and then left on a bus for our ship.  Manaus does have a beautiful opera house that was built during the 1800s rubber boom.  The pictures were spectacular and we saw the outside of it on our way to the ship  - it was a holiday so we could not tour the place.  We saw a couple of other very nice 1800 eras houses on our route.  During the rubber boom, Manaus was one of the richest cities in the world.

📷 I wish it had been open for us to see it

There is a drought occurring in the Amazon right now and it is the end of the dry season, so the river is down 30 Meters – no that is not a typo.  It is amazing how far up the river banks are from the current river.  It also means that our ship had to stay at anchor out in the middle of the river rather than dock.  As an expedition ship, it does not have the typical tenders that most cruise ships have so rather than try and pick us and our luggage up in the ship’s zodiacs we hopped on local boats at the floating harbor to ferry us over.  It also meant that getting everyone on and all our stuff plus stuff for the ship like food and fuel all took longer than normal.  A little too long.  We did not experience a sail away a little before sunset as advertised but rather, we snuck away in the wee hours of the next day.  Since the river is low we needed daylight in a couple of places to be sure not to run aground.  There aren’t any channel markers like on the Mississippi.  Instead, the ship had a local pilot to navigate that section.  We took on a different pilot for the next day's section. It worked out fine and we still got to enjoy our first destination.  

This water channel in town is empty due to the drought.

Our home for the next 2 weeks.   Everything is like new as this is only the 10th week of operation.

As you read through our story it will become clear to you as it did for us that Water is the number 1 mode of transportation.   We only saw one bridge on our journey.  Our first glimpse of this reality was the many, many passenger vessels lined up along the banks of the river in Manaus.

The owners live aboard, and passengers bring their own hammocks

Rio Urubu

So, the itinerary acted like this is a port stop, it is definitely not your typical port stop.  Really, they were referring to the Rio Urubu or the Urubu River to you and me.  It is a black river tributary of the Amazon River.  It’s called a black river because its color resembles a dark tea due to vegetation decomposition. We stopped close to the mouth of the river and went out exploring in a mixture of kayaks and zodiacs after ample training (rib boats).  Jeff and I were in a kayak.  We too took a zodiac out to where they had tied up the kayaks in the river and we carefully transferred mid-stream to the Kayaks and went exploring.  Some of our friends in some of the zodiacs saw more than us that day.  We stopped by a tree where there had been monkeys but they had left, we were told there was a caiman in an area, but he had left, we did see a couple of pink dolphins and lots of birds and a pretty sunset since we returned to the ship just after dusk. Not a bad first outing. 

How to transfer from Zodiac to Kayak
Launching Zodiacs
Landing (Mud) Room
We make a good Kayak team

📷 Top Left is a Caiman, cousin of the Alligator we know so well

📷

Heading back to our floating home

Parintins

Yes this is a real city and a real port with a floating dock.  Matter of fact it is a city of over 100,000 people on an island in the middle of the Amazon – oh have I mentioned that the Amazon even here and at record draught levels is much wider than the Mississippi.  Now it is just as muddy so Jeff has reminisced about his sailboat days some, but I digress.  This city is very well known throughout Brazil and maybe much of South America for its annual Folklore Festival in late June which includes Bio-Bumba.  Bio-Bumba is based on a folk story about a man who killed a bull to feed his pregnant wife her desired meal of cow tongue only to get arrested by the bull’s owner (his boss).  The man almost dies but a local medicine man brings him back to health and at the same time the bull comes back to life.  The story has grown into a huge festival/party with fantastic pageantry.  Brazil chose to support this festival and now it falls behind Carnival in Rio and Sao Paulo in its popularity.  Now adays it is a contest between the red team and the blue team.  I mean serious competition here with dancing, lights, floats, music and fireworks in a stadium built specifically for the Bio-Bumba.  The whole stadium with a capacity of 40,000 is separated for the 2 teams literally half is red and half is blue.  Even Coco-Cola is in on it with an official blue can of soda for the blue team since they simply can’t have red on their side of the stadium.  While it is not June, in the afternoon they did have a small version of the blue team’s program for us in the air-conditioned convention center.  Earlier in the day we went on triciclo rides around town.

The triciclo is a cousin of a tuk tuk.  Jeff and I sat in a covered platform with a bench while a man bicycle pedaled (back half of a bike) us around town.  Well us and about 30 or so other triciclos.  Jeff and I felt like we were in a running road race in that they had closed off half the street so our 2 lanes of triciclos could navigate and a motorcyclist would stop traffic at intersections for us.  In the first triciciclo was our guide.  He is a chief from a village in the Amazon and spoke wonderful English that he had learned at university.  He said they had to walk a day and a half to get to town since the stream they would normally use to get to town is currently dried up.  Our tour pointed out several local landmarks such as a Catholic Church/former Cathedral, the Bio-Bumba stadium, new cathedral (1960s era new) and different parts of town.  We stopped to tour the cathedral and the Bio Bumba stadium.  At the stadium are a long wall of 3 dimensional murals outside that tell stories or follow local folk lore.  For instance, one showed a very large water lilly pad that a lady was coming out of and attracting fishermen.  A couple of the panels depicted the Anaconda attacking people and animals.  We then went inside the stadium where he explained the festival to us and where a group of tweens/early teens came to meet us and to practice their English with us.  We spoke with young lady who was a Stranger Things TV show fan so Jeff and her talked about it a little bit. 

Teams represented by a Bull with either a Red or Blue star
Rare Blue CocaCola sign
40,000 seat stadium divided by Red and Blue Teams

From the Lilly pads (>1 yard) rises a mermaid like creature
Who seduces the fisherman

There are about 2 dozen of these 3 dimensional murals

I will admit that when Jeff and I first heard of this festival exhibition they were going to do for us we were a bit skeptical.  On the ship, they talked it up a bunch as a wonderful though loud experience.  So off we went.  Yes it is loud as in extremely.  It is also quite impressive.  The costumes were amazing.  Some were full of feathers and huge as in made to appear to be 2 people tall while some of the ladies had costumes overflowing with sparkles.  We had at least 3 floats appear at various times, a fun loving bull and lots and lots of dancers in various costumes some with tatoo designs on the costume while others appeared to be dressed for a party.  It was mesmerizing at times.

📷

Click above to view excerpts from the show

Alter Do Chao                                                                                            

Ok next surprise.  Parts of the Amazon River are quite clear and has beaches.  Alter Do Chao has the nickname of the Caribbean of the Amazon.  Our ship was anchored so we arrived in port by Zodiac to find sandy beaches and clear water – you could see the river bottom.  It is a touristy area because of the beaches, although we were warned that in the dry season when the river is down you have to be careful not to step on a stingray since they are hidden under the sand.  In the end, we ran out of time and did not get to enjoy the beach.  

📷

Looking back at the ship with the dock on the right

Jeff and I had chosen to take a bus to the Tapajos National Forest hike excursion which involved a long drive that unfortunately became a long drive home.  The Tapajos Forest is a tropical hardwood forest and covers 1,482,660 acres.  Our bus had 2 local guides that were supplanted by “jungle men” one for each group of 10 people.   When we disembarked for a short rest stop and to pick up the 2 local guides we wondered down the road a little.  Glad we did, because we saw a few large black Howler Monkeys high in the trees.  Then back on the bus for a short drive down a dirt road to our starting point.  

📷 Howler Monkey

 I think they called this an Amazon highland forest versus lowland because it was not a wet experience.  Since it is the dry season it was kind of like hiking back home.  Key change is that while we were following a path it was not a clear down to the ground type of path; it was more of a clearing in the woods we followed – there were always a couple levels of leaves on the ground.  One of the expedition people had suggested to standstill for a moment and look at the ground at your feet and you will be amazed at how many insects you see.  We hiked for a couple of hours while our guides explained a variety of trees and other plants to us.

📷

He told us how and which plants the indigenous used for medicines or food.  He pointed out a tree that the bark is used to make baskets or for theadlike purposes.  We found the vine that is good for swinging on and had the opportunity to play like we were Tarzan on it.  Of the trees, a key tree to Brazil is the Brazil nut tree.  Even with all the slash and burn killing of areas that tree must be spared by law.  We stopped under one in the forest and learned it was safe to do so since it is not the time of year when they drop their fruit.  Fruit as in a coconut sized ball with sort of a similar look that is full of Brazil nuts in their shells since they are the seeds of the brazil tree.  Seems it can be quite dangerous to be under a tree when they are falling, and you can even get that covered by insurance for your car.  Our “jungle man” used his machete to get some brazil nuts free from their shell and we tasted then and I have to say I think I prefer them raw to roasted!  Another important tree is the  samaúma tree which gets to be huge and comes in handy for many reasons – can be used for communication when lost (pound on one of its “feet” and the sounds travels well), huge size is beneficial for protection for humans and animals and its wood is quite strong.  We stopped in a clearing in one spot where there was a valley a little way off so and saw some birds flying around.  There were mango trees and a tree whose fruit has little gel like seeds in it (think pomegranate) that was used for face paint.  The ship’s videographer was with us so he got some great pictures that we will get later.  We had left in the morning with the schedule to be back around 12:30. Well the drive back to the ship took forever – literally.  We got back to the ship after 2 maybe a little grumpy after the long non-air-conditioned bus ride and hungry.  There was another little hike up a short hill in town that had sounded interesting that they were recruiting people to go on as we got back on the ship, but at that moment Jeff and I were thirsty and hungry since we had drank all our water and breakfast was worn off.  Happily, the ship kept one of the restaurants open so we could have lunch.  After that and a shower we were happy sailors once again.

Swinging on a vine like Tarzan

Left - large termite nest on tree
Top - Large Bullet Ant who’s bite feels like you were shot
Bottom Right - giant thorns on vine

Left - Carol holding Cocoa
Top - Brazil Nuts inside shell
Bottom is used for red paint and comes out of pods shown in middle

For scale, Note person on far right of tree

These tall trees tower over the Forrest

Pucurui

On the schedule it was called “Amazon Experience “which meant we stopped somewhere that seemed interesting.  In this case it was when we got to an area known as the Narrows of Breves” which is where several small tributaries meet up including the Para River with the Amazon River.  The morning was spent on the ship where a photography class was offered and talks on what to look for when we go out on the zodiacs.  The afternoon was going out on the zodiacs.  There are enough zodiacs that we can all be out at the same time, but for logistical reasons we were broken up onto 4 groups and then called to get on the zodiacs one group at a time.  Jeff and I were looking forward to it and were quite happy with our first ride.  We ended up on Wolfgang’s boat.  Turns out Wolfgang has a PHD in biology and loves plants.  One of our other guests also loves plants so we were having all sorts of things pointed out to us.  One I recognized – the bird of paradise and a lot that were knew to me like a ginger plant of some type and all the palm trees that we saw like the acai ones (locals grow plantations of them) and another one with a big red fruit – oh all the palm trees here.  We also saw a fair number of birds too.

📷

The fruit of the Acai tree provides income to purchase items.  The Forrest provides all the food one needs

Plenty of Fruit to eat
Left - Red Fruit
Top - Mango
Bottom - Limes

📷

Cujuba in the AM

Another “Amazon Experience Day”.  It started EARLY.  As in this night owl was up dressed, fed a little and in my zodiac boat at 6am.  The sun was just coming up which was the idea since animals tend to be active at dawn.  This time Pepe was our boat driver/expedition leader.  Pepe is an expert in birds and by chance we had a guy – Bill on our boat who is a bit of an amateur birder so between them we found lots and lots of birds to the point where oh that’s just some parrots flying overhead.  We saw a roadside hawk – river side here although this is the local road/highway.  We were wandering up small tributaries and stopping while Pepe made a bird call trying to lure a bird he heard closer to us.  He was eventually successful and we saw the bronze --- bird.  Yeah my brain was on overload a lot on this trip with the names of plants and birds I was seeing.  We saw toucans but not very well at the end of our 2 hour trip (they tended to run a little long).  This ride would end up differently and a new skill learned.  Our boat was developing a “flat tire” so we all abandoned Pepe and changed to another zodiac – while in a tributary.  They pulled up to us and while Pepe held the ships together we slid from one boat to the other and then leisurely made our way back to the ship in our new boat.  Then it was time for a real breakfast and the recap meeting of what we had done the day before and what we would be seeing that afternoon because we were again sailing and heading for an afternoon zodiac exploration.

Sunrise

📷

📷

Jariuba in the PM

The afternoon boat ride by chance found us with Wolfgang again.  I spotted (hey got to brag a little here) a large bromeliad in bloom up high in a tree -  ok I was looking for sloths but the plant was quite pretty!  Wolfgang pointed out water hyacinths and a couple of other plants.  He taught us that this one plant was attractive to bats because the pollen was on long spikes and the flowers were white.  He went on to say which colors were attractive to birds and which colors for butterflies – sorry brain overload again.  We also rescued a morphy butterfly which was a gorgeous sapphire blue and black butterfly that we shared with some of the other boats.  Speaking of butterflies there are a lot here.  The first day we saw an orange and black one where the black area was 2 big dots on its wings.  Another time I saw one where when it opened the wings looked like a big black “V” was painted on them.  There were also lots and lots of little yellow butterflies.  Wolfgang also pointed out one that we all thought was a butterfly but he said no it was a moth and poisonous – not sure if to humans.  It was big, black and white and had kind of a tail on it.  We would see it several times over a couple of days.  This trip started at the mouth of a river and then we went down a tributary which circled an island we had hoped to circle it in our boats but it got too shallow for that.  Hey they were doing their best to get us to interesting places.  It was the first time for Seabourn to make this stop so we were all exploring.  We saw more birds and interesting plants, but no sloth or monkeys or caimans (wrong area for caimans).  Jeff and I were unlucky we never saw monkeys or caimans while others on our ship did.  We also saw a lot of termite and ant nests and one large wasp nests in trees as we hunted for the elusive sloth.  Since there is often a line as the zodiacs offload people back on to the ship, Wolfgang held us back where the tributary met up with the Amazon in hopes of seeing river dolphins but no luck.  Then it was time for us to board and for them to hoist the zodiacs back up to the top of the ship and for us to head off to our next destination.

📷

 

Left flower is attractive to Bats
📷Right is Wasp Nest

Macapa

Sadly, our last day on the Amazon.  It was not the smooth day they planned because we had a passenger with a medical emergency so our last zodiac cruise was shortened to 1 ½ hours and they held us to that time limit.  Since are group was first on Sunday, we were last to leave the ship today which meant I got a whole extra 30 minutes of sleep!!  On the zodiac at 6:30 with Savine from South Africa so off in the tributary we went to explore.  As the last boat, we had the advantage of following the other zodiacs to spots where they had found wildlife or neat plants.  Today we saw lots of Toucans in fact we saw more than one type of Toucan.  We saw multiple types of white egrets close to each other and watched a bit of a territorial fight there!  Oh, we had one of the expedition members who is a cultural expert on Brazil with us too and we saw a couple of birds (sorry names escape me) that were new to our 2 guides.  One was a good-sized cream-colored bird – might have been a type of hawk or another raptor.  Jeff has a popular bird app on his phone called Merlin that will help you recognize birds and also keep track of what you have seen.  40 different types of birds and he didn’t start keeping count at the start.  

📷

📷

On this trip and a couple of the others, we saw people and their homes along the river.  While I seriously doubt, they had indoor plumbing, they did often have solar panels and satellite dishes for TV.  On this trip, we did see a local school and found out that in Brazil it is usually a 4 day week and this school was closed today.  Their equivalent of a school bus is a boat that will pick the kids up and get them to school.  Speaking of boats we saw a wide variety of boats that the people use on the Amazon from old fashioned dugout canoes to houseboats to low almost fishing style boats with motors with long shafts like we saw in Thailand this summer.  As one of our guides said – we are an attraction to them like them to us and they probably laugh at us.  They are wearing their regular clothes, aren’t wearing life jackets and don’t worry about their boats getting stuck!

📷

Top Left School
Bottom Left is fish trap
Bottom Right, Note the solar panels

📷

📷

After we were all back on ship, we headed for the town of Macapa which has around 500,000 people living in it and is the capital of this Brazilian State.  They had included a free tour of the town as an excursion for all of us, so we again hopped on our zodiacs to get to the pier.  It was a rushed tour only because the local police changed the rules we were abiding by.  The plan had been to have all passengers onboard before sunset and the crew would be getting the zodiacs away in the dusk/darkness which we had done before.  Nope they said everything had to be back on the ship before dark.  Ok sorry folks shortening this tour too today.  We get to the pier take off our life jackets and walk to the buses that will take us around town.  Our bus had 2 guides and 3 ship representatives onboard.  In truth one of our guides was the interpreter for the other.  We were all given stern words from the captain to be back on time.  So we had 4 stops for a 3 hour tour.  They did different routes for each of the buses, our first stop was a market with goods made by local artisans.  We had 30 minutes, well it ended up a lot longer because it turned into mass confusion when we all started trying to pay.  Jeff and I had made a point of getting some Brazilian Reals and I wanted to pay for my purchases with them – easy right, wrong.  First, they had trouble with the prices then they did not have the correct change.  I was not alone in challenges with the payment portion.  We finally all got back on the bus – Oliver our guide is not a good cat herder (looks like a high school student) and headed off to our next stop behind schedule – oops.  Our second stop was an outdoor museum showing the various building types people have used in the past and currently do live in on the Amazon River.  We also saw a snapping turtle and stuffed jaguar and other local animals.  Oh a local dance troupe was there for us too.  I would have loved to spend more time there, but now one of our ship representatives was actively keeping us moving.  So off we went to our 3^rd stop and this one we posted a photo from on Facebook that day.  They have a memorial in town for the equator line that the town runs through town.  In fact, Oliver told us the local football stadium is built in such a way that one side of the stadium is in the northern hemisphere and the opposite side is in the Southern.  This stop was mainly a fun photo stop, but again we had a dance troupe entertaining us; this one was doing the Samba.  Then it was on to our 4^th and last stop which we passengers thought we were going to skip since our time was left was very short.  Nope off to the fort we went.  I think we had 10 minutes here and again a dance troupe greeted us.  It was grab a few photos and get back on the bus visit.  I think the passengers and crew were much more worried about the time then our guide.  A couple more thoughts on our speed tour of Macapa.  The whole time we were at anchor the boat had a small military police boat sitting nearby and then at the pier too.  Our buses were each escorted by a military police truck which came in handy when we were going back to the boat because to put it mildly, we were speeding, and he was stopping most of the traffic – we did get caught in a little rush hour traffic.  On the fun side, like the school all of these places were normally closed on a Monday, so they opened up just for us and there was always someone videotaping our movements and a news commentator was speaking.  Seems here too we were an attraction to them like them to us.  Macapa is trying to become a tourist spot so the Tourist Board went out of their way to accommodate us – now if they could just get the local military so we had been able to spend more time there! 

I 

St Joseph of Macapá Fortress

As we drove around town and passed the waterfront a couple of times, I had to remind myself that was a riverfront and not a sea or ocean I was looking at.  We are on the north arm of the Amazon, and it is so wide that you do not see the other side.  That is a fact I realized a couple of times while we were cruising the river, several times I thought I was looking at the side of the river to realize no that was an island in the middle of the river.  Another time we passed some barge traffic ala the Mississippi only it was so far away from us that I had trouble making out the logos on some of the semi-trucks on the barge the tug was pushing.  Yes it was that far away from us.  I can only imagine how much wider the river gets during the rainy season.

My other surprise about the Amazon River is how incredibly smokey it is in places.  The locals believe in slash and burn when they want to clear an area and they are doing that an incredible amount.  It was not uncommon to see the smoke from multiple fires at any time from the ship.  Although you would have your balcony doors closed, you would get a smokey smell in your cabin.  One night our ship used its horn for a while because the combination of smoke and fog was blanketing the river and they wanted to be sure everyone knew we were coming.  I understand the need for land by the locals, but I also saw a lot of that land just empty now when we went on our hike and all I could think was what a comedown for that plot of land.  It had been part of the Amazon Forests worth millions and representing so much diversity and now it was just a field of weeds sitting uselessly.  I also learned from one of the expedition crew that a large tree that lives for 50 years or so is worth over $150,000 in what it produces for the environment in water and clean air, etc. not even including the value of its wood.

📷

📷