Zebrafish

Note
Our camera and photo backup was stolen from our room later on in Venezuela, so many thanks to Luis Castel and Genine Terry for these photos that you see here.

We were on the boat for the next 3 days passing stilt wooden houses built above the flooded brown river. All day long locals would paddle out in their canoes to grab hold of a trailing rope and sell things like fresh prawns and cassava (or manioc). At port mothers and children would float beside us waiting to catch packets of biscuits and other items of food thrown from the upper decks. Sitting on deck chatting, reading, listening to music or having a beer, the flooded rainforest was always the backdrop, and sometimes water buffalo grazed on plots converted to farming.



We got off at the port town of Santerem and ate the best meal in days, the food onboard was cheap and tasteless, just meat, rice and spagetti. Brent, Anna from Germany and Genine from the New Forest, UK,  bussed to the nearby village of Alter do Chao and arriving in a rainstorm had to take shelter and talk to one of the friendly local drunks in thick unintelligleable Portuguese. We found our hippy hostel in a small patch of forest, certainly in a lovely setting but the forest made it extremely humid and with that comes bugs and bats. I fell ill again with the same flu symptons as before and spent the next day in bed.



I didn't want to miss out on the fun and so later I took some paracetamol and joined the others on a canoe trip through a sunken forest, which was about as enchanting and magical as forests get. You glide silently through simply stunning reflections of the rainforest flora, quiet to listen our for monkeys and slow so as not to get covered in spider webs. At one point deep inside the jungle we jumped out for a swim and play in the water. On the way back we watched a pack of monkeys run through the tree tops and spotted a huge camoflaged toad on a tree right by our heads.



On Genine's birthday we took a boat into an indian village that just received electricity a week ago for the first time. From here we hiked the whole day on a trail through humid thick secondary forest and through a heavy rainstorm into deeper primary less dense and so cooler rainforest. Phallic clay tubes built by crickets line the path, these are where they lay their egg to hatch.. Along the way our guides brought out shopping bags to collect the many different types of fruit that had fallen, its their supermarket they told us with a smile. Again many of the trees have wonderful uses for medicene. We were joined by several friendly French and one Englishman who were sailing as part of a yacht rally up the Amazon for over a 1 month. They'd also docked in Alter do Chao and it was interesting talking to them, all self made millionare types who were using this trip as a way to enjoy their retirement.



We took the ferry with Jeanine for another 2 days upstream, spotting river dolphins jumping, reading and daydreaming in one of the best landscapes on offer. I was starting to feel better but now Johanna was falling ill with the same symptons, plus we both were also getting covered in spots that were blistering, initially over our arms but spreading to our neck and legs. We were tired and needed some city life to recuperate.



The intermational port of Manaus, is a city of almost 2 million people in the middle of the biggest rainforest on Earth, 1,500km from the sea. You would think you could find a decent meal here, but no. We couldn't find a single meal here that we felt like finishing, it was best just to stick to the village dish of river fish and rice. Manaus was very hot and humid, it has some very atmospheric squares in the old town, including the famous European built opera house, but other areas near the port were very seedy. We found a nice hostel 1 block from the Opera house and rested for several days trying to both get better. But eventually we went to a local hospital specialising in tropical diseases to try and get rid of our rash and flu. It turns out our mosquito bites has just gotten a bacteria infection and we just had a tropical flu. I had been ill with that flu 3 times in Brazil and apparenty they are sometimes very hard to shake off when in the heat.



We were keen to move on out of the humidy in order to feel better and so just went on a day trip to explore the local rainforest. Just outside Manaus is the 'meeting of the waters' where the oily black Rio Negro meets the cafe com leche coloured Rio Solimoes. The rivers float side by side for several km without mingling due to their different speeds. After this our boat is joined either side by two canoes laden with baby crocodiles, largish anacondas and cute as anything sloths. A horrible tourist trap photo oppurtunity, the locals must keep these animals in cages and the anaconda to me looked drugged. Nearby is a wooden walkway through submerged forest to a stunning pond of giant lilly pads with beautiful pink flowers and spikes on the underside.

We saw Brent one last time at the jungle lodge and then Johanna and I went pirahna fishing in the sunken forest, the same as 11 years ago I still couldn't catch one, where as Johanna caught one snappy fish, although too small to eat so we threw him back. In Manaus we waited for the night bus and got given seats near at the back near the toilet. Its always good to buy the tickets yourself and early to prevent this. Anyway the journey was relatively painless and the next morning we were waiting for another bus in Boa Vista to the border.