The next stage of our journey was to an Eco lodge on the Rio Negro, but first we were to spend a night in Manaus, the port our cruise had returned us to. Our entry into Manaus had one amusing moment. We disembarked from the cruise at a hotel foyer, and sat waiting for our luggage, with some friends we had made of the cruise. We waited and waited. Eventually Adam (new friend) and I went to find out what they delay was about. It turned out the luggage had been loaded on to a truck but the vehicle had to pass through one security barrier and the guard on the gate had gone to lunch and taken the key with him. So, there was the truck, stuck. In the end we simply took our own bags back to the hotel. This was further and took longer than if we had simply taken them straight off the boat ourselves, as we'd originally offered to do.
Manaus is a largely uninspiring city so we won't dwell on it for any length of time, other than to note what a strange amalgam of buildings and living conditions it was. In Australia we tend to have differences from suburb to suburb but in Manaus you could go from high walled, barb-wired, security-guarded properties to derelict buildings in a block. Similarly, apartment buildings were being erected, right next to tower blocks that appeared abandoned and about to fall down. And everywhere buildings were covered in different stages of mold, a condition of living in a hot and humid climate.
The next morning we made the trip across a 3.5 km bridge (only opened 7 months ago, prior to this is was ferries only) and heading into the wilderness to the Anavilhanas Lodge.
The lodge is fantastic, melding comfort with nature. We could easily have spent more time here, but, in typical fashion, we packed in plenty. We had an awesome guide, Krishna, who came from native and Guyanan Indian (actually India Indian) heritage. One of a family of 17, he was fascinating in his own right, but what he knew about the forest just blew us away.
Our first excursion with him was a full-on Amazon experience. We headed off on a jungle walk, where he introduced us to some jungle survival tips. Plants to drink from, what ants you can use for natural insect repellant etc. This was going swimmingly, until he looked up at the sky and said 'Uh oh'. Uh oh, is not something you like to hear an experienced indigenous tour guide saying. He followed this up with another phrase guaranteed to generate some concern. 'Dark sky now, this is not good. There's a storm coming.'
Of course he was right. The clouds were scudding across the sky and the trees were bending before a wind that had come out of nowhere. And still the good news kept on coming from Krishna. 'We must keep moving,' he said. 'It's not safe in the jungle - tree branches can fall.' This was readily and disturbingly easily confirmed when he pointed to all the fallen timber and, perhaps a tad melodramatically, a branch fell to the ground nearby.
Needless to say we followed hot on Krishna footsteps and made good time, but all to no avail. The storm caught us and the rain simply fell out of the sky in sheets. I do not recall ever having been more drenched. In the end we were laughing, especially as we had to finish with a boat trip across a waterway that had been so whipped up by the storm that it felt like we were out a sea, and we couldn't see more than a few metres ahead of us, courtesy of the torrential rain.
That was our welcome to this part of the world, and despite being drenched to the skin it was a pretty impressive way to start. That night we headed out on another boat trip, animal spotting. We were able to add a four-eyed opossum (cruel name, probably got him bullied at school) and a tree boa.
The next day featured a morning fishing trip (unsuccessful but fun) and then one of the highlights of the trip, a visit to a place where the pink dolphins came to shore for feeding. This was amazing. I got close enough to pat one. The pink dolphins are the strangest looking creatures, pink, long-beaked, with prominent foreheads, but seriously intelligent and friendly. It was quite brilliant. On the way home we added an iguana to the list of creatures seen.
Manaus is a largely uninspiring city so we won't dwell on it for any length of time, other than to note what a strange amalgam of buildings and living conditions it was. In Australia we tend to have differences from suburb to suburb but in Manaus you could go from high walled, barb-wired, security-guarded properties to derelict buildings in a block. Similarly, apartment buildings were being erected, right next to tower blocks that appeared abandoned and about to fall down. And everywhere buildings were covered in different stages of mold, a condition of living in a hot and humid climate.
The next morning we made the trip across a 3.5 km bridge (only opened 7 months ago, prior to this is was ferries only) and heading into the wilderness to the Anavilhanas Lodge.
The lodge is fantastic, melding comfort with nature. We could easily have spent more time here, but, in typical fashion, we packed in plenty. We had an awesome guide, Krishna, who came from native and Guyanan Indian (actually India Indian) heritage. One of a family of 17, he was fascinating in his own right, but what he knew about the forest just blew us away.
Our first excursion with him was a full-on Amazon experience. We headed off on a jungle walk, where he introduced us to some jungle survival tips. Plants to drink from, what ants you can use for natural insect repellant etc. This was going swimmingly, until he looked up at the sky and said 'Uh oh'. Uh oh, is not something you like to hear an experienced indigenous tour guide saying. He followed this up with another phrase guaranteed to generate some concern. 'Dark sky now, this is not good. There's a storm coming.'
Of course he was right. The clouds were scudding across the sky and the trees were bending before a wind that had come out of nowhere. And still the good news kept on coming from Krishna. 'We must keep moving,' he said. 'It's not safe in the jungle - tree branches can fall.' This was readily and disturbingly easily confirmed when he pointed to all the fallen timber and, perhaps a tad melodramatically, a branch fell to the ground nearby.
Needless to say we followed hot on Krishna footsteps and made good time, but all to no avail. The storm caught us and the rain simply fell out of the sky in sheets. I do not recall ever having been more drenched. In the end we were laughing, especially as we had to finish with a boat trip across a waterway that had been so whipped up by the storm that it felt like we were out a sea, and we couldn't see more than a few metres ahead of us, courtesy of the torrential rain.
That was our welcome to this part of the world, and despite being drenched to the skin it was a pretty impressive way to start. That night we headed out on another boat trip, animal spotting. We were able to add a four-eyed opossum (cruel name, probably got him bullied at school) and a tree boa.
The next day featured a morning fishing trip (unsuccessful but fun) and then one of the highlights of the trip, a visit to a place where the pink dolphins came to shore for feeding. This was amazing. I got close enough to pat one. The pink dolphins are the strangest looking creatures, pink, long-beaked, with prominent foreheads, but seriously intelligent and friendly. It was quite brilliant. On the way home we added an iguana to the list of creatures seen.
That night we snuck ourselves onto another boat cruise and had a great trip. We saw a different kind of possum, a new snake ( garden boa) and a porcupine. The weather was wild at times but beautiful and the moon rose over the river as we returned.
The final leg of our Amazon encounter was an early morning boat trip to watch the sun rise.
There remains only one further observation to be made, pertaining to the difference between individuals and tour groups. We had met some wonderful American travellers. Dana and Adam on the clipper cruise, Art at the lodge. But while we were at the lodge a tour group of Americans descended, and it truly did feel like an invasion. En masse all the stereotypes bubbled to the surface. Perhaps it's only the loud people you notice in a group and they all seemed to be talking about the share market dropping 200 points, litigation, the use of leases to diversify their fund and there was the occasional yee har. Our own American, Art, seemed to blend into the woodwork (having made his own wry observation on American tourists) and Kate and I tried to be inconspicuous. During their very brief stay, even shorter than ours, some of them arranged to fly out rather than taking the three hour bus trip back. As one person observed, loudly and in front of Lodge workers on probably fairly ordinary salaries (we've been told the average Brazilian salary is around $100/week), it was only going to cost him $1,200 to fly, which was less than the cost of attending one Lakers match. Lording, lordie, lordie, such sensitivity.
There was an amusing moment when one of the group couldn't find his table. The Lodge used a system where your room had an animal on its door and on the key ring and you sat wherever a wooden model of the animal was set up. Ours was a monkey. At dinner one gentleman was clearly lost and I offered to help him. He held up his key and said 'I can't find the beaver. I'm not good at animals.' i told him, in friendly fashion, that was an agouti and showed him where I thought his seat was. He certainly wasn't that good at animals, not only did he have no idea about the Brazilian animals, he didn't know his own. His 'beaver' didn't even have a tail, surely the one feature that would have to be mandatory in calling an animal a beaver.
Having said all of that, he was a nice enough fellow, as were many of the people in the tour group (there were clearly some tossers as well). Curious how groups tend to bring out other less appealing stereotypes.
The final leg of our Amazon encounter was an early morning boat trip to watch the sun rise.
There remains only one further observation to be made, pertaining to the difference between individuals and tour groups. We had met some wonderful American travellers. Dana and Adam on the clipper cruise, Art at the lodge. But while we were at the lodge a tour group of Americans descended, and it truly did feel like an invasion. En masse all the stereotypes bubbled to the surface. Perhaps it's only the loud people you notice in a group and they all seemed to be talking about the share market dropping 200 points, litigation, the use of leases to diversify their fund and there was the occasional yee har. Our own American, Art, seemed to blend into the woodwork (having made his own wry observation on American tourists) and Kate and I tried to be inconspicuous. During their very brief stay, even shorter than ours, some of them arranged to fly out rather than taking the three hour bus trip back. As one person observed, loudly and in front of Lodge workers on probably fairly ordinary salaries (we've been told the average Brazilian salary is around $100/week), it was only going to cost him $1,200 to fly, which was less than the cost of attending one Lakers match. Lording, lordie, lordie, such sensitivity.
There was an amusing moment when one of the group couldn't find his table. The Lodge used a system where your room had an animal on its door and on the key ring and you sat wherever a wooden model of the animal was set up. Ours was a monkey. At dinner one gentleman was clearly lost and I offered to help him. He held up his key and said 'I can't find the beaver. I'm not good at animals.' i told him, in friendly fashion, that was an agouti and showed him where I thought his seat was. He certainly wasn't that good at animals, not only did he have no idea about the Brazilian animals, he didn't know his own. His 'beaver' didn't even have a tail, surely the one feature that would have to be mandatory in calling an animal a beaver.
Having said all of that, he was a nice enough fellow, as were many of the people in the tour group (there were clearly some tossers as well). Curious how groups tend to bring out other less appealing stereotypes.
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