The Amazon!

This place is amazing! There are so many things to talk about and so many amazing experiences that I am going to take it one day at a time and just throw out the highlights. On the first day in the Amazon I went swimming with pink river dolphins. These dolphins are one of only four fresh water dolphins in the world and they do not have a fused neck vertebrae like bottle nose dolphins so they can move their head allowing them to eat in between the roots of trees in the flooded forest. After that I was able to fish for the Pirarucu, the largest fresh water fish that can get over 9 ft. long. I was able to get one, but they were in a cage underwater, and they are protected so we didn't have any hooks, but it was still cool to feel the power of a 9 ft fish. That night for dinner we went to a Brazilian steak house, apparently they have these amazing places in the states, so I would check it out, but there is unlimited meat and all kinds of delicious foods that had us eating for three hours. Manaus is a unique city because it is a huge urban center right in the middle of the rainforest, it is duty free so a lot of companies ship their raw materials there to be manufactured. It can get a little sketchy but all in all it was a safe time, especially because I was with one of the three people who spoke Portuguese in the ship. On the second day I got on my river boat which was to be my home for the next three days. There were 34 of us on this river boat. The layout was as follows, One big empty area on the first deck, a small galley in the back and and a wheel house in the front, and the top deck was covered and just one big open deck where we all hung our hammocks to sleep in. It was so much fun. We had two fantastic guides Antonio and Coronado. We went to the meeting of the waters and saw the two rivers come together but never mix until miles and miles down river. After we witnessed that wonder we went and walked through some jungle to find the giant lilly pads. They really were giant. they can get over 6 ft in diameter and create a haven for Caiman, a close relative of the alligator. I was able to see several adult caiman eating and swimming around, and dozens of vultures up in the trees waiting for their turn to dine. What I found odd was that we had traveled two days up the Amazon, and another 5 hours up the Rio Negro, where peoples houses were floating and the nearest village was miles and miles away, and yet at the small floating souvenir shop, they still took VISA.
Later in the day we went fishing for Piranhas. Don't get your hopes up, I didn't catch anything, but a girl in my boat was able to get one! On our way through the winding canals and tributaries that form a small lake one of the guides saw a Sloth in a tree. SO we floated quietly up to the tree and we were all looking at it and taking pictures. Then the guide jumps out into the tree, climbs a good 50 ft up and starts to wrestle with the sloth trying to tear it from the branches and bring it down to us. Through some amazing acrobatics he was able to get the sloth in the boat after a few close calls of dropping the sloth. It wasn't to happy about this, but sloths are pretty easy going it seems because he just sort of hung out on the front of the boat as we cruised away and he finally got off at another tree when we were fishing. The boats that I am talking about here are actually canoes with motors on them and there were four of them that carried us around to the different Piranha hot spots. I was in the last boat, that also was lucky enough to have the defective motor. So as we are careening through the ever narrowing paths our engine stops, and the other boats carry on into the distance. The smoke coming from the motor was so thick you couldn't see through it. So we were in the middle of the Amazon, it is starting to get dark, and the motor dies, who know how far from anything. I don't know why but for some reason I was less nervous about being stuck in the middle of the Amazon at night then I am when I get lost in Rochester. Quite a while and a few Portuguese cures words from our navigator later and we were on our way to looking for caiman. I was able to hold a speckled caiman, about one year old. The speckled caiman are smaller than the black caiman also found in the area, but I was cool with that since the black caiman get over 9 ft long. Everything in the Amazon can grow to over 9 ft long. When we got back to our boat we had delicious food that I will never be able to pronounce, or spell. When you asked what something was the answer was usually, it is a fruit/fish/spice from the jungle. We all slept in our hammocks. which were a little close for some people. It was like a giant Newton's Cradle, and if one person swung a little, they hit the person next to them and it carried all the way down the line. But it was very comfortable, and I didn't get a single mosquito bit. I will talk about the other two days in the next post. Take Care.