Whiskey Jack Adventures: Manaus, Brazil

Last night was again trivia (winners may have cheated?), a musical show/farewell presentation from the crew and dinner in “The Restaurant”. The evening ended with a tribute to the Beatles by the ship’s performers.

Bug hunting this morning yielded a large beetle with two insects (mites?) on him. Wonder if they hitchhiked from the shore or found him here? As we sail along the Amazon there are numerous houses on stilts along the bank. But instead of being surrounded by rainforest the land around has been cleared for cattle ranching. Also evident is a lot of erosion of the banks, no doubt enhanced by deforestation. And we won’t talk about Amazon deforestation, the greenhouse effect and climate change. Apparently about 25% of the historic rainforest is now gone. Most of these small “farms” have a small skiff with outboard motor moored against the bank or just in the water.

Lots of small boat activity around these inhabited areas with the bigger two level boats picking up people along the way, perhaps for their weekly shopping in Manaus – a full day adventure. They have to go out to meet the bigger boat in their little skiff as they don’t have docks and we assume it is shallow near the edge of the river.

Manaus (pop. 2.3 million) is situated near the confluence of the Negro and Solimões rivers. The Rio Negro water is black (no silt) and the Rio Solimoes is brown (silty). Together they make up the Amazon. Because they have different densities and temps they don’t mix quickly as can be seen in the pic. The “meeting of the waters”.

The city is accessed from the ship by local tender (we are anchored in the Amazon again). The tender took us to the largest floating dock in the world - it has to float because of the tremendous difference in the height of the river during the wet vs the dry season.

We have really been lucky with the weather. We joked that it was because we have been packing two umbrellas around with us every time we leave the ship. Well today did not change that. It rained all night and it had been raining steadily all morning. Our shore excursion this afternoon was mostly a bus tour of the city with a long stop at the military zoo and the sun shone for most of it! Yes, we had our umbrellas. Manaus is a big, bustling somewhat dirty port city. Many of the classic buildings were imported from Europe, piece by piece during the rubber boom. The zoo, started by the military was interesting and featured many of the rain forest animals that would be difficult to see in nature. It is always a conundrum for us on one hand to want to set the well fed comfortable animals free or to appreciate the educational value of the zoo environment.

Tonight is our last night on the ship. And we will play trivia and pack for our departure to Miami tomorrow. Wish us luck! Will add pictures later as the internet is barely functional today.

Right now we are sitting in a hotel cooling our heels for several hours while we await transport to the airport. At least we have internet that works!