Posted 8:01 AM by MelanieandSteve
THE AMAZON, Brazil, 8 - 12 April

TUDE ESTA BEN (all is well) in Manaus Brazil where we just returned to civilization after a two-night communion with ants, animals, and all the Amazon. We, along with four English travelers (Gema, Lucy, Meera, and Cameron) signed up for safari from the unimpressive dusty sprawl of the city Manaus with little draw other than its proximity to some of the best wildlife viewing in the world. From there, we six set out for our Amazon Adventure.

PARIS OF THE AMAZON: We have found in travel that everywhere wants its piece of Paris. Every area we visit seems to have its so-called ´´Paris of the (blank-region),´´ often without much resemblance to the true European city. Amazonian Brazil was no exception, so we were unsurprised to see that Manaus was once referred to as ´´The Paris of the Amazon,´´ even though the entirely uncosmopolitan city had more features of a developing nation than a suave city in France.

VENICE OF THE AMAZON: However, if we accepted the Paris analogy, another European comparison followed more naturally - Venice. It was the wet season here, and torrential daily rains have raised the river water level so high that forest floors were buried ten meters deep. Trees still lined the river, but the flooded banks were floorless. To meander through the woods required a boat. If Manaus was Paris of the Amazon, then the forest is ´The Venice of the Amazon.´´

CRAZY CAMPING: We spent both nights in hammocks. The first night we slept in the ´´lodge,´´ an unfurnished candle-lit building with nets for windows and hooks in the ceiling planks for hammocks. The second night we camped in the jungle. According to Davi, our guide, locals in the area think we were crazy to camp. When guide, Chewow, told us of a jaguar that once got so close to his hammock that he punched it, we wondered if the locals were right. Further, locals reported having seen a huge Anaconda living in the swamp near our camp.

WATERFALLS OR RAINSTORMS: Rainstorms in the Amazon wet season were like nothing we had ever seen. It seemed there were no individual rain drops, but just a massive wall of waterfall. Inside the lodge, the pounding water on our corrugated steal roof was deafening.

AMAZON WAS NOT THE PANTANAL: We had wondered if encountering the Amazon would be redundant after our safaris in the Pantanal. In truth, they were worlds apart other than the mosquitoes, ants, and sleeping in hammocks.
Due to the flooded forest floors here, there was no place to four wheel drive or horseback ride, and there were less places to trek on foot. In the Amazon, the climate was cooler, more moist, and more comfortable and the ecology was more green, dense, and lush. While Pantanal boasted more fauna, Amazon had more interesting flora. We enjoyed the Amazon more.

COLOR CODED CONFLUENCE: Most of our daily excursions were by small boats. We boated to the confluence of the shiny black colored Rio Negro and muddy chocolate milk colored Rio Solomon, two large rivers that combined to make the Amazon. Due to the differences in acidity, temperature, and flow speed, the waters of the two rivers were reluctant to mix where they met. The interesting result was a distinct line zig zagging down the middle of the river dividing the clear water from the muddy. A venomous black water snake slithered in place on the water surface between the two.

FLOODED FORESTS: A motor canoe took us into the flooded forests (the veritable Venice of the woods) where we glided among the tree trunks and tall grasses and stopped to fish for Piranha. Steve caught two and ate one for dinner the next day. Mel opted out.

MORE CANOE VIEWS: Other canoe adventures included twilight bird watching (the white Gozza birds appeared to glow in the dimming light), sunset swimming (the water was jacuzzi warm), and dark hour alligator seeking (easy to spot when their eyes reflected in our flashlights). Guide, Davi, caught a small Caiman Alligator less than a meter long and we held it. Davi also climbed a mid river tree and caught a sloth. We felt her wooly coat before returning this slow moving relative of the monkey to her perch in the tree.

TREK AMONG THE TREES: We trekked for three hours on foot through fantastic flora. We touched, tasted, studied and sniffed flora with various uses: medicinal, cosmetic, and fragrant. Cooking over a candle flame, our guides made rubber (latex) out of Ciring Gerra tree sap, they weaved us bracelets from Mata Mata bark, pounded out distress signals on Sana Ubu roots that resonated like Japanese Koto drums, and they showed us how to make mosquito repellant from a nest of Ta Biba aunts. We put our hands on the ant nest and when the ants crawled onto our arms, we rubbed them in. We sniffed the minty smelling Avre de Vic from which Vics Vapor Rub is made, we tasted the milky sap of Emapa used for curing Tuberculosis, and we chewed the fowl tasting Cara Pan Ubu for treating malaria. Chewow used his two foot long machete to crack open coconut sized Brazil nut pods and chopped off the shells so we could eat the large nuts. Davi taught us to weave fans from the Naja Palm used for roofing by locals. We painted our faces with the red fruit of Uruca, and we swung across the jungle floor Tarzan-style on a long vine.
Animal sightings that afternoon included Macaco Ji Prega Monkeys leaping through leaves overhead and camouflaged Sap Folia Seca (dry leaf frogs) that we mistook for leaves on the forest floor even when we looked right at them. Afterwards, on the canoe ride home, we saw several surfacing Pink Dolphins.

NIGHT NOISES: The nights were full of jungle noises: sizzing cicadas, cooh-coohing monkeys, snorting wild pigs, beeping and peeping birds. The sounds were both so familiar and so foreign that we had to remind ourselves that this was reality, not a Disney sound system. But if we needed to be ´pinched´ to remind us that this was reality, the mozzies and ants were there to do the job.

SOME SAFARI SADNESS: We came to realize that education about animal preservation was lacking for locals in the Amazon. We met one local who proudly showed us an endangered monkey that he had shot for dinner. Other friends of ours spotted a beautiful jaguar in the jungle and locals shot it saying they feared for their families even thought the feline was far from their homes. Our own guides were quick to tamper and touch the animals, catching caimans from the water, and causing a pregnant sloth to fall several feet from a tree into the river. Animal endangerment is not innate knowledge for a subsistence culture, but we wonder if better education could end the dangers to these beautiful Brazilian creatures.

BACK TO BUILDINGS, BUSINESS AND BEACHSIDE BARS: After three wild days, we returned to the trafficky town and mid-city madness of Manaus. Being Sunday night, we were in time for weekend fun in the happening part of town, Ponte Negro. With safari friends, we dined at a beachside pizza bar, strolled along the boardwalk, sipped milk from coconuts, ate apples dipped in chocolate, and munched on savory salted popcorn (a special commodity here where most people like it sugared). We watched a demonstration of the Brazilian martial art, Capoeira, and we saw an open air native dance show complete with coconut bikinis and leafy leggings. Now, Manaus was beginning to look a little bit more mainstream. Whoever called Manaus the Paris of the Amazon, must have seen it from the eyes of someone returning from the jungle.

ANOTHER YEAR: Our honeymoon was camping in Montana. Last year, we celebrated our wedding anniversary camping in the Everest Region. This year, it seemed appropriate to be out in the wilds again for number 11. This safari was a great way to complete a truly ´Amazon Year.´

NEXT TIME: Bye Bye Brazil, Buenos Dias Bolivia.

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS TO : Angela C., Bob P., and Pete J.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO: US.

Posted 9:15 AM by MelanieandSteve
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, 3-7 April,

BOM NOITE From Manaus Brazil. SINCE LAST TIME, we left the jungly Brazilian Pantanal to brave the metropolitan jungle of Rio de Janeiro. During our three days and four nights there, we...

* Met up in the evening with new friends and friends from pervious travels.
* Sunbathed on Copacabana Beach (Barry Manilo tunes running through our heads).
* Worked out with locals on the cleaner and more beautiful Ipanema Beach
(always looking for the girl from Ipanema)
* Walked around the city center checking out architecture and people watching.
* On a rainy day, caught a movie down town.
* On a clear day, marveled at a 360 degree mountain top view from a helo-pad
once built for Michael Jackson who was in town on a video shoot.
* Gazed at ´´Jesus Christ the Redeemer´´, the huge open-armed statue of Christ
atop the tall Corcovado Mountain --
as much an icon for Brazil as is the Statue of Liberty for the U.S.A.
* Rode gondolas to Sugar Loaf Mountain named after the sweet bread
of which it reminded hungry European Seafarers.
* And cheered and jeered at Brazilian futbol finals in the world’s
largest soccer stadium.

BEACHES: Most people say Rio’s main attraction is its beaches. They were nice, but not as amazing as we expected. In Copacabana, the strand was flanked by a busy boulevard lined with high rises, the white sand sparkled like sugar, but the dark colored water was marred by floating rubbish all along the shore. Nearby Ipanema Beach, however, was cleaner. Both were polka dotted with colorful umbrellas and small stands selling drinks, snacks and coconuts to crack open and sip. Sales folk walked up and down the shore with sweets, sarongs, sun protection, savory snacks, and sodas. Whatever we wanted seemed to come our way. When we’d had enough lazing in the sun, we played on exercise equipment placed periodically throughout the strand.

BATHOLITHS AND BITS OF CITY: Later, on our high hill-top excursions to Sugarloaf and Christ the Redeemer, we got to know Rio’s most interesting topography. The sea level metropolis of 10 million people was divided into subsections by periodic hills and steep rocky batholiths that jutted up from the flat city like hitchhiker’s thumbs. The looming features were beautiful and yet somewhat incongruous, seemingly coming from nowhere.

FUTBOL BRAZILLIANA: Like in Buenos Aires, attending a Futbol match (soccer) is part of the cultural experience. We caught a game between Rio’s local Botafogo and Sao Paulo’s Paulista in the world’s largest sports stadium (based on seating capacity.) The close game was a nail biter, but ended in an anticlimactic tie 2 to 2. Fans were passionate and stood cheering throughout the game, but we found this game much more tame than our futbol experience in Buenos Aires.

RIO´S BAD RAP: Rio has a rap for being big, bad, and dangerous. Its famous favelas (slums) are run by lawless drug lords, and stories of robberies were common place. We talked to more than one victim of robbery in Rio, and this alerted us to be careful and not carry valuables, but we had no problems. But the Rio we experienced was tame with clean subways, relaxed sunny beaches, business people calmly walking the streets and restaurants and corner juice bars inviting in passers by. However, while we were there, eight rogue police officers gunned down thirty people in a favella, several of which were innocent bystanders. This was the largest massacre in Brazilian modern history.

NEXT TIME: The Amazon.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO:
Angela C. (Angela, soon we’ll be sipping our own Inca Colas in Inca C T -Shirts).