October 25, 2008 - Manaus and the Amazon

Hello again everyone. We miss you all. However, we are having a truly incredible time!

Ajay and I last left you in Morro de Sao Paulo, an island about a 3 hour boat ride from Salvador. After blogging, we arrived back to our pousada (guest house), and the sun was setting. So, we decided to get ready for dinner. Ajay was in the shower, and I was reading out on the balcony overlooking the ocean. When, all of a sudden, the lights went out...on the entire island! It was a black-out!!! Our pousada manager, Giovanni, always in good spirits, ran around giving everyone candles. So we sat on our balcony, by candlelight, listening to the waves, gazing at the stars, and wondering how we arrived at such a magical moment and place.

Eventually, we needed to head out to dinner and decided to try our luck. The restaurant down the way was fully serving by candlelight, and so we ate a lovely meal (they used gas to cook). On our way back to the guest house, the electric came on, and everyone cheered. Hooray!

Sunday, Ajay and I went for a long walk on the beach and then rented kayaks. It was beautiful of course kayaking around the reefs. The funniest part of the morning was when we became `beached´ on rocks in shallow water, and Ajay didn´t want to get out of the kayak b/c he was afraid of dropping our camera in the water. So, yours truly heaved and hoed until I pulled Ajay and the kayak back into deeper waters. It was a good laugh.

Sunday evening we took a very choppy boat ride back to Salvador and caught a plane Monday morning (about 5 hours of flying time-- Brazil is huge) to Manaus which is in the center of the Amazon rainforest/jungle.

Manaus was an unimpressive mid-sized city (about 1.5 million people) at first glance, but you will learn more as you read (as we did in our time spent here). We were only here for one night until we were picked up for our 4 day/3 night jungle lodge experience!

We were picked up at 8 am, took a taxi to the dock, a boat for about 20 minutes to another dock, a van for about an hour, and another speed boat for about 40 minutes. On our way, we stopped to view the meeting of the rivers. This is where the black tea-colored Rio Negro and the coffee-colored Rio Solimoes meet. It is a fascinating 6 KM line of two colors of water. Because the water composition and thus ph-balance is different in the rivers, they don´t bleed together, and they have very different eco-systems. This is also where we saw our first river dolphin. Did you know that the Pacific and Atlantic oceans used to connect in South America thousands of years ago? So, many of the animals in the river have adapted over the years from salt-water to fresh water, like dolphins, sting rays, sea otters, caimans (like crocodiles), etc.

We made it to our lodge (Juma Lodge) where the entire place was built on stilts 30 feet high. This is because in the rainy season, the water levels of the Rio Juma rise 30 feet. There are foot bridges connecting the reception area with the restaurant with the bungalows. Our bungalow was perched on the shore overlooking the river and the forest. There was a hammock on the balcony, and the wall overlooking the river was one large screen window. We went to sleep each night with the sounds of frogs, monkeys, and birds orchestrating an incredible symphony.

Our days in the Amazon were comprised of hiking, boat rides, bird watching, swimming in the river, piranha fishing (I caught 4!), and visiting a local indigenous tribe. The lodge employed all local people and owns/preserves 6,000 hectares of land around them. We felt very good about our decision to stay there. They had a very responsible business model socially and environmentally. Also, all of our tours only had 5-8 people. We made some nice friends, ate good food, learned a ton about the environment, and were in awe of the complexity of the place: the eco-system, the politics, deforestation, the thousands of plants and animals, the 1000 tributaries of the Amazon river. It was so much to absorb.

Come Friday, we eventually arrived back in Manaus, which I wasn´t looking forward to. However, we arranged to meet one of our new friends, Marcus from Germany, for dinner. It happened to be the birthday of Manaus, which once hoped to be the greatest city in the world due to the wealth derived from Amazon rubber. At the time, they built a spectacular opera house. We were fortunate to see a performance of local groups at the opera house that night. It was amazing! We also stumbled onto the city market which was amusing. Manaus had been redeemed in my mind (although they still have a very serious grafitti problem, among others, here).

Alas, we leave today. We are off to southern Brazil which will be very different. More european immigrants. We are heading to an island with 42 beaches on it, some good hiking, and restaurants.

We´ll be back next week, with more.

Love,
Gina and Ajay