December 1st – Markets and Music in Manaus

December officially marks the transition between the dry season and the wet season here in the Amazon, so appropriately enough on December 1^st, the heavens duly opened and dumped an enormous amount of rain on top of the city and on us. I suppose that if you're visiting a city in the middle of the RAIN-forest, it's a little churlish to complain that it rains here!

Fortunately, the point at which the deluge started, we were inside the city's huge produce market by the riverfront. This has got to be one of the most interesting markets I've ever been to – a real hive of activity, yet incredibly friendly. The meat section was full of beef being carved up and offally big piles of innards, gizzards and entrails. The fish market was piled high with exotic fish that we didn't recognise, all being gutted, filleted, sliced and diced – stay here for long and you'd be covered in scales and God knows what else. While, the fruit and veg sections smelt much better – again full of fruits of the forest that I didn't recognise.

All the while, the torrential rain was pounding noisily on the roof above us, and bouncing off the pavement outside. We waited and waited for it to stop, but eventually we had to make a run for it. Within seconds we were soaked, as we dodged from cover to cover, while the stoical locals kept reassuring us that it would stop soon. It didn't!

In the end, we decided to call it quits and head back to the ship to let the deluge pass. Of course, at the precise moment that we stepped onboard, the rain finally stopped!

The day before, we had found out (by chance) that there was performance on at the Opera House. Quite how they expected to sell many tickets when their website had zero information on their programme, and they weren't able to tell the ship's port agent what was on either – but, at least we were able to get tickets by turning up in person.

So, that evening, it was worth the price of the admission (very cheap at $5.50) just to get inside this magnificent building – an amazing relic from a brief moment in time (the turn of the 20^th century) when remote Manaus was thrust into the limelight by the boom in Amazonian rubber, and for a short time it became the richest city on the planet. The hugely costly construction of this amazing Opera House in the middle of the inhospitable jungle was an ambitious statement of intent – a sign to the world that against all the odds, Manaus could turn itself into a centre of culture.

The bad news for Manaus, was that the city's money abruptly ran out within 20 years of the Opera House's construction; although the happy legacy is that the Opera House has since fostered an incredible cultural scene that seems totally at odds with this isolated tropical environment. So, in this slightly faded belle epoch gem, we got to see a wonderful performance of Mozart's Requiem (plus some other Mozart classics), enjoying some fantastic acoustics and a level of virtuosity that we had no right to expect out here in the jungle. It was an absolute privilege to watch and be a part of.

That's the thing with Manaus – it combines the primitive with the high-brow, the First World with the Third World, the verdant jungle with the urban jungle. Another great day in the Amazon.....

November 30th – Meeting The Waters at Manaus

When you've sailed for almost 1,000 miles upriver into the heart of the rainforest, you don't really expect to find a huge city of 2 million people waiting for you – but, that's what we got with Manaus today.

What makes this metropolis all the more remarkable, is that it's not really connected to the rest of the country by road (ok - there is one road leading out of the city, but that heads north to Venezuela). That means that pretty much everything we'll see here, has been shipped upriver. To see the huge container port and the waiting ocean-going ships anchored in the river (a full 1,000 miles from the ocean) was quite staggering.

Actually, Manaus doesn't sit on the Amazon, it sits on the wide Rio Negro, a few miles upstream from where the mighty Negro and the Rio Solimoes join together to form the Amazon. So, to get the best perspective on this, it was time to take to the waters again, to see the famous Meeting of the Waters.

First we took a fascinating boat trip around the backwaters of the Janauari Ecological Park. It was a roasting hot day, and there wasn't a lot of shade for those sitting at the front of our canoe (me!), but the sights were great. We saw plenty of birdlife along the verdant banks, lots of other river traffic, communities of people living on houseboats plonked on top of some absolutely huge logs, and a few giant water lilies (to be honest, these were looking a bit moth-eaten because they only thrive in the wet season). It was amazing to feel so far away from it all and so back to nature, when we were only a short boat ride away from the big city across the waters.

Next, we headed downstream to the point where the dark black waters of the Rio Negro, come together with the muddy brown waters of the Solimoes. These two sets of waters have such different properties (colour, density, speed, temperature, acidity and sediments), that they refuse to mix for about 4 miles as they flow alongside each other. This was more marked and more spectacular that the Meeting of the Waters that we'd seen in Santarem, and we also saw a few fleeting glimpses of the famous pink dolphin that's unique to the Amazon.

That evening, we decided to go out for a meal, heading to the main square, the Praca Sao Sebastiao, in front of the iconic Teatro Amazonas, Manaus's Opera House. The square was looking good, because they were putting the Christmas Tree up (although it doesn't feel like Christmas when it's 30 degrees C at night time), and there was a band putting on a free show for a lively audience. We rehydrated with a couple of beers, and then had some typical Amazonian fare – some pirarucu rolled in banana leaves (the gigantic pirarucu fish grows up to 8 feet long, so we weren't eating much of one), and some tambaqui, a rather earthy-tasting fish from the river. The meal was good, the atmosphere vibrant, and everyone we met was incredibly friendly.

We've had a pretty special first day here – hope the next 2 days in Manaus are as good! 

 

November 29th – Assessing the Impact of Tourism at Boca Da Valeria

Getting off the tender in the remote river community of Boca Da Valeria immediately shows you that this is not an untouched village of innocents. We were greeted by a "welcoming committee" of about 30 children, all desperate to grab our hands and lead us on a guided tour around their village. Some are dressed up in exotic (but non-authentic) costumes, others are carrying slightly forlorn-looking sloths or brightly coloured parrots, and others just choose to follow you about smiling sweetly.

But, although on first impressions it seems to be an overly-commercialised environment, in fact, once you've run the gauntlet of the children (who do take no for an answer, and who aren't pushy at all), it becomes apparent that the village is a fairly typical example of an Amazonian community. They do have electricity (they were connected to the grid a couple of years ago), they do have satellite dishes, TVs and a few refrigerators, but they don't have much else in their rudimentary stilt houses.

The question that it raised with me was, do they need anything else? They seem well fed and happy, so would having more material goods make them any happier? Well, whatever I think doesn't matter, but they clearly want to have a bit more for themselves, hence the efforts that they were making to entice us to spend with them – beside the efforts of the children, the adults were selling crafts, food and drink, and offering boat rides in their motorised canoes.

We decided that we weren't going to give the children dollars just because they were asking for them, nor were we going to reward people who'd captured animals that would be much better off in the forest, so we donated some money to the small school, and gave out a few Father Christmas toys (which we'd bought in Santarem the day before) as presents. We'd brought along a bagful of these Father Christmases, but it soon became apparent that we hadn't bought enough. It was lovely to see the smiles of the children when they received them, but word quickly got around, and we had a trail of children behind us asking for "Papa Natal".

What we were prepared to pay for, was for a canoe trip into the backwaters, so we had a fun (but boiling) ride out into the beautiful little waterways that run into the Amazon. It turned out that we hadn't necessarily picked the best boat – ours was one of the few without shade, while rather alarmingly, we were taking on water as we sailed along, necessitating me to constantly bail out the ever-growing puddle at our feet, with the top of an oil bottle that had been left there for precisely that purpose.

Sadly, water levels were too low to take us to see the giant water lilies that the area is famous for, but we passed by lots of birdlife as our "captain" took us to his home village. This village was much more "real" – the houses were laid out more neatly (although) they were just as basic, and the school here was much bigger and better equipped. Actually, one of things that struck us about our time here, was just how many children there were – it appears that there's nothing much to do here other than procreate.

As we sailed back, it appeared that the party was over back in Boca Da Valeria – loads of boats were heading away from there with all the people we'd seen dressed up or selling stuff. But, what was nice was that they were just as smiley and friendly as they passed us by as they had been earlier – their friendliness wasn't manufactured, it was genuine.

So, we headed back to the ship, wondering if our impact on the villagers had been a positive one or a negative one. To me, they didn't seem any worse off for us visiting, and it felt like their lives would just go back to normal when we left (albeit with a few extra dollars in their pockets). In some ways, I got the feeling that they seemed just as curious about us, as we were of them.

It's always an odd feeling getting back onboard the ship to our air-conditioned luxury having just been with people who were a lot less well off materially than us. But, I can't be sure who's happier – us or them.