AMAZON AD ENTURE BLOG #2
Anyone who remembers the marvelous film “Papillon” with Steve McQueen and Dustn Hoffman will remember the scene of Devil’s Island where the two were sent to serve their sentences handed down by the courts in France. We watched the movie again on shipboard before our tour of the island and the remnants of the once famous prison.
Navigation charts refer to the location as the Salvation Islands because the three island group was first populated by French settlers trying to escape the disease plagued jungles of French Guiana where they were trying to farm. The main island, Ile Royale, became the odious Devil’s Island where the French sent thousands of prisoners, few of whom ever returned to France. Sentences usually called for a number of years in prison with an equal number of years of work in the farms of French Guiana. Today we could visit the prison buildings and cells that housed the prisoners in a style that made Alcatraz seem like the Hilton. No one escaped except Papillon who later wrote a book about his experience. The book caused the French to ultimately close Devil’s Island in the 1950’s after 100 years of being feared by all who chose to “skirt” the law.
Today the island is a favorite stop for cruise ships that pass by. A small hotel is at the ready to put up visitors and the old guard’s family houses are now occupied by caretakers. One can hike around the island, walk through the decaying cells, watch the island’s playful monkeys and watch the weird little agoutis (pronounced a kwa tee) that bustle around the underbrush. If one chose to search through the small graveyard for the names of famous prisoners the effort would be for naught. The graves mark the burial of guards and such. Prisoners were summarily buried at sea giving rise to a large shark population the still exists today. Sharks live a long time and have good memories.
Another two days at sea and we finally reached the focus of our trip, Brazil. Our first stop in Brazil was at Santarem which lies 500 miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean. Santarem is where the clear blue waters of the Rio Tapajos meet the muddy Amazon. The city has been a major river port since the glory days of the 19th century rubber boom. In the 1920s, Henry Ford carved the immense rubber plantations of Fordlandia and Belterra out of nearby jungles. These ventures ultimately failed. Sanatarem’s prosperity survived the boom’s eventual bust because it lies in an area rich in natural resources, including timber and major deposits of bauxite and gold. It remains the third largest city on the Brazilian Amazon with a population over 265,000. Santarem possesses American roots; more than 100 confederate soldiers and their families settled there after the Civil War and prospered.
In 1958 gold was discovered near Itaituba, a small town 60 miles upriver from Santarem. Suddenly Santarem became the supply post for thousands of gold seekers who flooded into the area by plane and riverboat. In 1969 the area was connected by highway to Brazil’s highway network increasing even more the importance of the city. The two million inhabitants of the Amazon Basin; river dwellers, rubber tappers, Indians, prospectors, nut gatherers and herb collectors eventually find their way to Santarem making it a colorful river city.
We chose a River Cruise for our shore excursion at Santarem. The first thing that caught our attention were the hundreds if not thousands of boats everywhere. Our guide explained quickly that the Amazon is the “highway” in this part of Brazil. The “Busses” that were most common were broad single and double storied boats that featured large open areas rather than seating that one might expect. The open areas were fitted with hooks all over their ceilings so that passengers can hang their hammocks for their trip. Some of the boats that seemed ready to leave were loaded with hammocks hanging everywhere. The openness allowed some air to circulate through the crowded deck. Given the every present muggy heat, the open nature of the boats is an obvious necessity. We were told that a two day trip “up river” cost $7.00 US. Of course. You had to bring your own hammock and whatever you needed to eat and drink.
Our guide described the Amazon as a place of two seasons; the rainy season and the dry season. The heat is over present. Our visit was at the beginning of the rainy season during which time the river rises twelve to eighteen feet. Since the river has done this for ever, everyone works around the inconvenience. We were told that the river had risen a couple of feet in the past week. Around the city everything was obviously built well above flood stage. Away from the city we saw most buildings built on stilts.
Our tour took us to the confluence of the Rio Tapajos and the Amazon. The differing temperature of the two rivers and the muddiness of the Amazon create an interesting picture as the two rivers run side by side before becoming as one in color. At the confluence we had an opportunity to see the fresh water dolphins of the Amazon as they did their dolphin thing. We continued westward and into the area surrounding Maica Lake. Here we saw the local farmers still using the land for grazing of their brahma cattle and water buffalo. In a few weeks, the farmers will begin transporting their live stock to higher ground as the river rises and eventually covers their land with several feet of water. We saw a number of men in small dugouts and boats fishing. Some houses had large screen “fish boxes” that they used to store their excess catch of fish until they needed them for dinner. Refrigerators are an unknown experience in this area. Along the way we spotted several iguana perched in trees along with an interesting variety of strange birds. We didn’t see any of the famous anaconda snakes that are found in the region. Our guide told us that the anaconda snakes, which prefer to live in the water, are very common and feed on all kinds of live animals including humans. Alligators are also prevalent in the area and are considered dangerous to humans and animals.
At the end of our tour we stopped for almost an hour so that passengers could fish for the Piranha that fill the local waters. Although we were told of an incident when a man was eaten by Piranha, such occurrences are rare. As a matter of fact, in several places we saw children swimming in the river where we later fished for Piranha. Although we fished in earnest for the little critters, we didn’t catch one. Bill had one on the line but it shook itself loose before he could bring it on board. Our fellow passengers caught a half dozen which were immediately cooked so that we could each say that we have eaten Piranha. We did and Piranha is quite tasty.
We stopped at a tiny Amazon village named Boca Da Valeria located at the mouth of the Valeria River. While our itinerary included places like Santarem, Parintins and Manaus, Boca Da Valeria was included as a stop to show us the kind of place where many residents of the Amazon Basin live. Boca Da Valeria is a village that is home to about 75 permanent residents. The small wooden houses surrounded a small church, a school, a bar and a restaurant. We were taken ashore by tender and allowed to roam at will through the town as dozens of small children followed grasping our hands and asking to be our guides. Residents posed for pictures in native ceremonial costumes while others held exotic jungle animals up for pictures. We saw baby alligators with their mouths tied shut with string, macaws, sloths, monkeys, parrots, small anaconda snakes, turtles, piranha and a host of other exotic flora and fauna on exhibition for photographs. We dutifully paid those whose pictures we took a dollar and enjoyed every minute of our visit
We noticed an obvious absence of people over 40 years of age. One of our shipboard friends told about seeing a man scoop up a hand full of river water to drink. Given the muddy water he was drinking, we quessed that life in the Amazon is destined to be short. The Amazon natives we met were quite handsome, the children beautiful and the teen age girls very pretty, especially when dressed in their ceremonial costumes. When we return to Boca Da Valeria, on our northward return trip, we promised ourselves that we would take an hour long boat ride that was offered. The ride will be in a sixteen foot boat that the locals use for their fishing in the Amazon. Our ride will be up stream on the River Valeria to see how people live on its banks.
Sailing westward, our next stop was at Parintins, about half way between Santarem and Manaus. Parintins is a city of 100,000 located on one of the islands at the mouth of the Valeria River. The city can only be reached by plane or boat but is a thriving commercial center with hundreds of small shops selling anything that can be bought in a Sears catalog. We took a one hour “pedi-cab” tour of the city that took us through the commercial center, by several schools and government buildings, in front of an impressive cathedral, past the soccer stadium and to a stop at a special venue for folklorical shows for cruise ships. We were able to watch the dancers and musicians set up for a show planned for some of our passengers from the Royal Princess but we didn’t stay for the show. On our ride we passed literally dozens, if not hundreds, of pedi-cabs carrying everything; passengers, freight, building supplies and groceries. There were hundreds of motorcycles buzzing up and down the streets but very few cars, trucks or busses.
Parintins is the site of one of Brazil’s great folk celebrations – the Boi Bumba. A colorful fusion of Portuguese and Amazonian folkways, the Boi Bumba has become the second most popular Brazilian festival after Carnival in Rio. The annual Boi Bumba Festival features two competing teams – theRed and the Blue. Each year in this “Bull Festival”, the two strive to outperform each other with colorful costumes, dance routines, and allegorical floats decorated with Amazonian flowers, tree barks and feathers. During the annual festival, the population of the city triples for the week long celebration.
Our next stop and most westward city on our tour, Manaus, is the largest city on the Amazon and the capital of the State of Amazonia. The State of Amazonia is huge; 600,000 square miles and larger by far than most European countries. While the population of Brazil is about 170,000,000, the population of Amazonia is slightly more than 2,000,000 with the large majority of the people in the state living in Manaus.
Manaus was founded in 1660 by the Portuguese who established a fort to monitor the movement of other foreign powers on the river. The town was a small backwater spot on the river until 1890 when the value of rubber was recognized. Overnight the town became fabulously rich as “Rubber Barons” made huge fortunes in trade. The rubber boom burst however just before World War I after an Englishman, Henry Wickham, managed to smuggle 70,000 seeds of rubber trees, each about the size of a walnut. The seeds ended up in Southeast Asia. In Manaus’s peak year, 1910, 38,000 tons of rubber was shipped. The same year 8,000 tons was exported from Asia. By 1915 the world’s rubber market was glutted and Manaus became a deserted city overnight.
The “Rubber Period” of Manaus was marked by severe practices by plantation operators. Many workers were imported from various parts of the world only to be treated pretty much as slaves. Workers were punished by the loss of an ear if they didn’t meet their imposed quotas. A second failure caused the loss of a second ear and a third called for death. When foreign workers refused to come to the rubber plantations, Amazon Indians were forced to work under even harsher conditions.
Sometime in the early 1800s, an Englishman is credited with noting that this new substance from the jungles called latex was effective in removing lead pencil marks, thus the name of “rubber” was created.
We hired a local tour guide to show us the sights of Manaus. We were impressed with his near perfect English, his state “guide” credentials and his agreement to our negotiate price. We had a list of specific things we wanted to see and he added more that he knew we couldn’t leave Manaus without experiencing. He was particularly eager to take us though the market areas where the locals did their shopping. The markets were unbelievably crowded with people, cars, trucks, hand trucks, motorcycles and motor scooters. He also took us “up town” where things were less crowded and the shops more genteel. We quickly concluded that Manaus was a city of haves and have nots like most large cities around the world. Our tour through the poorer neighborhoods left us with the feeling that there were a lot more “have nots” than anythingelse. Poor people tended to live in the lowest parts of the city with houses built on stilts to stay dry during the annual rise of the Amazon River. The river rises four to five meters every year during the rainy season (summer) and then drops back down again during the dry season (winter).
We also saw thousands of new looking houses that government has built to house the poor. We were told that in the late 50s the government of Brazil decided to revitalize Manaus. Hundreds of manufacturers were encouraged to locate at Manaus with tax incentives. People living in the Amazon jungles were invited to come to Manaus to work in the new factories. More people came than needed by the manufacturers leading to the development of huge areas of poverty level housing. The government felt responsible for the living conditions and ultimately provided some housing for those most in need.
Manaus is proud of its Teatro Amazonas, one of Brazil’s most famous attractions. The Teatro is an opera house that was built during the Rubber Boom and is an elegant example of European architecture of that period. The building was begun in 1879 and completed in 1896. It was rebuilt in 1929 after several decades of neglect and restored in 1989. One of the many stories involving the opera house involved a European group, including Enrico Caruso, who arrived during a cholera epidemic and refuse to leave their ship. They returned to Europe without singing a note. During our tour of the opera house the Amazon Philharmonic Orchestra was in rehearsal. We listened for a while before continuing our tour of the building. During our tour at the Opera House, three of our table mates at dinner walked in. They had walked across town from the ship in search of the opera house. We invited them to join us in the little car our guide provided. It was crowded but fun.
Another major stop on our tour was at the Amazon Peoples Cultural Center where we were treated to a display featuring the life style of the people who live in the jungles of the Amazon. Clothes, cooking utensils, dress and customs were on displayed and wonderfully described to us by a young docent with remarkable English skills. The two hour tour that we had negotiated ended up as a four hour plus tour of an interesting town.
During our second day in Manaus we opted for a river exploration west of Manaus. Our boat was built as a river “bus” complete with hooks in the ceiling for our hammocks. Lacking hammocks, we used plastic chairs just like the ones we have in our backyard. It rained like crazy during the first hour of our trip but we were dry inside and rather enjoyed seeing what real rain is like on the Amazon. Manaus is located near where the Rio Negro is joined by the Rio Solimoes; the place that purist insist the Amazon really begins as a river unto itself. The Rio Negro, as its name implies is black while Rio Solimoes is very muddy. It takes several miles before the dark clear water of Rio Negro becomes the muddy color that is associated with the Amazon. At the place where the two rivers meet, fresh water dolphins, famous in the Amazon, were seen gathering their dinner and fooling around. We saw a few but still didn’t get a good look at a Pink d that dolphin everyone else seemed to see.
Half way through our tour we changed from our “bus” to a smaller boat that was more than full when ten people were seated. The smaller craft took us further up stream past dozens of homes at the river’s edge. Many of the homes were on stilts high up in the air to avoid the river at flood stage. The remainder were houseboats built on a series of logs taken from the rain forest. Most of the house boats seemed liveable if not quite small. A few of the houseboats where people lived appeared to be on their last legs; tilted at crazy angles as the water soaked support logs rotted away.
The river people live pretty much on the fish they catch and manioc. They sell some of the fish they catch to provide for gas for their outboard motors and an occasional beer at one of river side floating bars. The river people live very simply and have lots of kids. The life is easy but hard on the health. We were told that someone was considered quite old at forty. Fishing becomes very difficult and dangerous during the flood season. Fish are hard to catch and floating trees and such make the river dangerous for the small boats used by the fishermen. During this time of the year we were told that people eat chicken instead of fish but we didn’t see any chickens running around the rain forest.
We were a little amused but more than interested in the number of “floating” gas stations we passed on the rivers we traveled. With the thousands of boats we passed there had to be somewhere for each to buy gasoline. We must have seen at least 50 near Manaus and there were probably more that we didn’t see. As we passed each station we saw boats of all sizes tied up for fuel. Little fishing boats vied for tie up space with water busses seven to eight times their length. Most stations seemed to have restrooms but we didn’t stop to check to see if they were well supplied with paper towels.
Tomorrow we begin our return trip back to Fort Lauderdale with an opportunity to see some of the things that we may have missed the first time through. About half of the passengers left the ship in Manaus and an equal number came aboard. We’ll have lots new folks to meet and we’ll miss the friends from the past two weeks that have gone home. We have their addresses and email addresses and promised to stay in touch.
Love to all,
Dottie and Bill, Gram and Grampa Bill, Mom and Dad
