Brazil #6 - Manaus Lodge Excursions - April 2006 
(click any picture to get enlargement)

Each day the lodge scheduled two excursions around the meals.  The daily schedule was: 
Breakfast, Morning Excursion, Lunch, Siesta (rest), Afternoon Excursion, Dinner, Nightcap, Sleep.
Day #1 Morning Excursion:  Boat Ride, Jungle Walk & Village Visit

There were only five guests at the lodge on our first day.  We all jumped into a small boat and headed out for a 30 minute ride to a place where we could safely walk in the jungle. 
Again, we were surprised to see that their 'jungle' was very similar to our normal forests... except for a few big trees & lots of water.

The tour guide showed us plants  used to make rubber, medicine, spices.... lots of stuff! This tarantula almost scared us out of the jungle ... but the guide calmed down any fears. As palm headbands were handed out ,the skies darkened and it rained and rained ... and rained.
We were already soaked, so we agreed to continue the excursions and take the boat to a local village.  The short tour ended at the shop where we were able to spend some of our wet money.
All the crafts were made by the local ladies & most from the remains of their husband's piranhas.
Day #1 Afternoon Excursion: Boat Ride, Farm Visit & Cayman (alligator) Search
For this afternoon/evening excursion, we started off with a calm boat ride though the tree tops of the nearby 'jungle'.  This was actually a shortcut to a river where an active farm is located.
The wind was still, which offered great reflections in the water.  While paddling, it was totally silent ... which was somewhat eerie.  Surprisingly there were hardly any birds ... why? because there were no insects...why?  because the water was too acidic, due to decayed leaves.  
We were very happy about the lack of mosquitoes, but we had hoped to see lots of birds. 

Can you guess what this is?
We visited a farm which grew nuts and a kind of root that is used to make flour for baking... since there is no wheat in the area.
It is a nice sized Cashew nut!

What about these?

They hold losts of Brazil nuts!
We asked questions about people destroying the rain forests in Brazil in order to farm.  The guide said that this particular area was an old rubber plantation ...  thousands of acres used to be planted with rubber trees, until all production moved to Malaysia.  The people that remained here after the plantations left were given small tracts of land & the resources to farm them, so you don't find too much rain forest encroachment in this area.  We were told that the north-eastern part of Brazil is lawless and is where the people slash & burn the forest to grow crops for survival.
The sun set rapidly as we searched for the famed 'lurking caymans' of the Amazon.  We expected to see lots of alligators floating around in the jungle waters... but when the water is high, there are few.

Finally the guide told us to be quiet & then he quickly grabbed something in the water... 


... he caught a Cayman!       We laughed about the 'little baby' but then wondered: where is mom?
After our 'Cayman Experience' we headed back to the lodge.

There was a group of new arrivals at the lodge all around the reception desk.  It seemed that one of the workers found a tarantula in their room... yikes!

The receptionist decided to keep the spider in his office... huh?
Day #2 Morning Excursion: Boat Ride and Visit to the 'Big Tree'
We went past a nice lodge with cute little huts; but it was empty. A building that looked nice, but was really an abandoned prison. A typical local residence; on stilts and only a boat for transport.
The river route got smaller and the guide started to paddle. We thought this was pollution... but luckily it's just lots of pollen. Termites are smart & build their wet-season nest high in trees.
After a bit of time the guide pointed to a large canopy tree in the distance... our destination!
We were amazed at the size of the tree and were surprised that they could not estimate it's age.  We stretched our legs a bit but there was no place to walk... so we just headed back to the lodge. 
Day #2 Afternoon Excursion: Beach Visit and Piranha Fishing

Up to this point, the excursions had not been too exciting, so we weren't expecting too much from the beach visit. 

We got to the 'beach club' and it was quite nice.  We got a drink and looked around at the dark, scary water. 
The guide explained that the water was really like tea; colored from leaves soaking in the warm water.  He also explained that the water was clean since it gets recycled every year, and that we need not fear piranhas as they were scattered over a large amount of area with the high water. After I had to test the water to take pictures, we swam and had a nice time on the sandy beach!
After a nice swim, in which we could feel a little tingle due to the acids, we set out to do some fishing.
This was a milestone for Nicole, as she had never fished before... and I doubt she will again!
The poles were just bamboo cane, with big string and big, ugly hooks.... and we used steak as bait!
After baiting the hook and throwing it in the water, we had to hit the pole on the water to send a sound of distress, which attracts the piranha.  Once close, they smell the blood and bite blindly.
I got a lot of bites and a few fish; Nicole didn't mind coming in without a 'yukky' catch.
A big thunderstorm ended our piranha fishing experience. At dinner they surprised us by preparing my first piranha catch.
The fish was really small and didn't have a lot of meat on it... but it was very tasty... to the point where Nicole was wanting more!
Day #3 All-Day Excursion with a three-hour boat ride to:  visit a village, shop for trinkets, 
visit the 'islands' and a lake in the middle of them... and to fish for more piranhas.
We were the only passengers on this rather nice boat... ... and we headed across the big river to explore the 'other side'. We passed a 'cruise boat' that competed with the jungle lodges.
After the long boat ride, we stopped along the banks of the river and climbed up to a little farming village.  Life here was more modern than we had expected, as the houses looked nice, the clothes were modern, and the grass was cut with a mower.  They still subsisted on agriculture and selling stuff to tourists, but the government also helped them out with medicines and machinery.

Nicole found a tree with pretty red flowers... the guide took one and smeared it on her face... paint pigment ... the amazon plants can be used for everything!  We then saw some girls washing clothes in the dark river; one then jumped in and you could not see her for a little while ... no thanks!

We then jumped into a small canoe and the guide took us across the river to a series of 'islands'.  During the dry season these would be above water but now they were submerged.  We now were experienced with paddling at the tree-tops... but the views were still quite interesting. 

Sometimes it seemed that the boat would get stuck, but the guide  plowed through everything; luckily there we no snakes or spiders, but we also didn't see Tarzan, Jane nor any monkeys... too bad!
The guide then stopped and got out some sticks... yipee, Nicole had to fish again!

She's secretly hoping no fish would take her bait ... but wait... She caught a fish!  For a second she was stunned & disgusted...  ... but then she realized she had caught her first fish... a piranha!
After we caught about 20 fish, Nicole asked if we could leave... as the poor fish were frantically splashing in the water in the bottom of the boat near her feet... and she thought they might bite her.  We went back through the tree-tops and with the still water, saw interesting reflections. 

We left the islands & headed back to the big boat for the journey back to our lodge... a long day!
The next day we left our jungle lodge.  We discussed the possibility of hiding the monkeys in our baggage, but we figured that Blacky (our cat) would not like the tricky playmates.
The lodge owner took us in his little boat to meet a taxi... thank goodness there were no waves, as we were almost sinking! There was no one to meet us... 
a bad omen?  We brushed it off 
& thought about other options ... 
... like hitchhiking?		 Finally our ride appeared... but they had a small car ... and all of us, and our luggage, had to fit?
Yes, we managed ... but barely.
We thought that our adventures were over... but were we wrong.  I should add at this point that the people we were dealing with spoke only Portuguese ... so Nicole tried to converse in Spanish... which sufficed most of the time.  Unfortunately they didn't explain much too us...
... like the fact that there is no road back to Manaus... we had to take a ferry.  The ferry ride was actually quite interesting, especially seeing all the floating homes and businesses.  Remember that the river varies by 50 feet over a year!  Also note that all greenery you see is floating weeds. 
The ferry docked & we were happy to see our contact at the other end.  He took us to the airport, where our 'adventures' continued.

Our flight wasn't due to take off for 12 hours, so we stored our bags & took the rickety old bus back to the river for dinner.
We had a nice evening on the river & then headed back to the airport for our 2am flight... only to wait until 6am to discover our flight was cancelled.  They put us up in a hotel, but we only rested for three hours before catching an afternoon flight to Sao Paulo.  Due to errors and mis-communication, we spent another 48 hours trying to get back to Caracas.  Look at the following pictures while you think of us going back and forth to the airport multiple times... just to find flights had changed.

The following are some mirror-image shots ...I duplicated each picture and then rotated it so it was up-side-down... 

For each, can you tell which picture is in the correct position and which is up-side-down?

As you probably figured out... 
the correct rotation has the darker part on the top ...   ?
 

Remember, we were in the southern hemisphere, which turns everything around... 

...  ha ha!

This concludes our visit to Brazil.  The 80-hour return trip left a bad taste in our mouths and were were not surprised to hear that soon afterwards, Varig Airlines went bankrupt.  Overall the trip to Brazil was an excellent experience and we will definitely return sometime in the future! 

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