AMAZING AMAZON

December 8

We flew to Manaus (manOUSE) which turned out to be a long flight with a transfer in Brazilia. We were picked up at the airport and our guide gave us an interesting tour of the downtown area and their famous opera house. There are about 3 million people there as it is a major tax free zone with manufacturers like Phillips and LG etc. The city is growing at 20% a year and they are finally doing something about their favelas (slums) in order to clear up major pollution on the river Rio Negro.

We were delivered to a fabulous 5 star hotel, the Tropical, a chain of deluxe resort hotels in Brazil and waited for our tour to begin. It was tough lounging around the pool!

We must have brought a little Canadian weather with us. Previous to our arrival, Manaus had 2 months of 45C weather. When we arrived the temperature dropped 20 degrees and it started to pour. We had left Rio in a tropical downpour but found the skies clear in Brazilia and hoped for better things to come. No such luck.

On December 9, our tour guide gathered together his little tour of 9 passengers....5 Spaniards, 1 Aussie, 1 French woman and 2 intrepid travellers. We traipsed down the hill behind the hotel to cross a sandy beach and into a motorized canoe for a quick jaunt to the Amazon Clipper. The boat is exactly as pictured and normally carried 32-35 passengers. Not the 9 that were on this tour.

It rained so hard that our first nights tour was cancelled. The next day the birds, the animals and the Spaniards went on strike. But our fearless foursome started out to tramp through the jungle in plastic raincoats and running shoes...no one had ever told us that a pair of rubber boots was essential gear....just in case! We walked on a sponge of dead leaves which will be the floor of the river in the rainy season which is just starting. The trees also will be under the river. Last year the river was so high it reached over 21 metres high.

We felt like millionaires with our own private yacht as we could sit on the deck in glorious isolation and pretend we were alone.

One of our tours took us into the river islands at sunset and we saw caiman (crockadiles) and the guides found an anaconda snake which they managed to bring down on a long stick and brought it over to show us....yeach! One tour was an early morning fishing trip (for pirranahs) at which time the 2 canadians and the french went on strike. The cook prepared the fish for dinner and they were delicious. As a matter of fact the food was outstanding and could match what we had on the Veendam any day. No movies, radio or TV.

We were confused as the tour material provided to us did not match what we were doing. The guide said the tour we had was 20 years out of date. However, we had a wonderful time...just a different wonderful time than we expected.

One of our night tours down a tributary of the Amazon ended at a hotel where the true explorers stay..the Jungle Lodge. We finally saw an animal!!! The squirrel monkey--cute but no cupíe doll and certainly no 3 toed Sloth. Our poor guide Hugo, no matter how hard he tried we didn`t see anything else. What birds we did see were quite something, but didn`t see as many has he had hoped.

The day before we returned, we stopped at a village located on one of the many islands for an introduction to their practices and traditions. Who knew an indiginous tradition was having television and electric guitars. The plan was to stroll through the village, stop to watch them make flour, have the children sing a few songs and then head back to the ship. Well we were about 20 minutes into the tour when we realized Lynne was not taking the heat and humidity well, so we missed the flour making part. While we waited for the rest of the gang to meet at the communict arena, Barb doused Lynne with wonderful cold spring water which is now pumped into their homes.

They have a school house in which they are learning their AB C´s as well as two languages...their own dialect from a mixture of several cultures living in the village and Portugese.

Our final day was spent lounging on the deck as the others went for one last walk in the jungle. When they returned we cruised to what they call ¨the meeting of the waters¨where the Rio Negro and the Amazon meet. You can see the way the two rivers butt up against each other..the black and the muddy.

December 12.

Our return flight was another adventure. The schedule was Manous to Rio through Sao Paulo leaving at 3:20. The flight was delayed almost an hour and shortly before we were to land we were advised over the PA system that due to the traffic at the airport we were being diverted back to Brazilia where we refueled. After 30 minutes on the ground, we continued our flight to Sao Paulo. However, by that time we had missed our connection to Rio. Fortunately for us a delightful young Mexican gentleman tanslated the communications to us and we found out that the plane we were on was being renumbered and was to be our intended connection to Rio, so we just changed seats after we bid him a safe journey home. His flight to Mexico was to leave at midnight and we don`t know if he made it or not.

We finally made it back to our hotel around 2:30 a.m. after an 80 Real taxi ride. This time our room was a sideview and nothing to brag about but we were only staying 2 nights so no complaint.