The Amazon

Oh, what an adventure!!!

The Amazon can be accessed from Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil.  Our ship’s departure port was Manaus, Brazil.  We weren’t prepared for the heat in Manaus, Brazil.  Stan and I come from the south and spent our early youth with window fans and we’ve spent many a summer week in the Florida panhandle. We know hot steamy summers, or at least we thought we did.  We’ve heard hot summer days described as Amazon Hot;  that term is real.  Sitting only miles from the equator, the sun in Manaus is penetrating and exhausting. 

A few years ago, we spent time in the jungles of the Amazon Rainforest upriver from Puerto Maldonado, Peru.  While we fished for piranha, met a shaman, hiked the jungles, slept in open-air cabins under mosquito nets, spotted tropical wildlife, and lived through a microburst storm on the water, we never saw the Amazon River.  A little like Theodore Roosevelt, we felt we must make the river journey. 

While Roosevelt’s river expedition departed from Manaus as did ours, his adventure was quite different. Here is an excerpt from the book, “The River of Doubt” by Candice Miller about Theodore Roosevelt’s remarkable, hair-raising expedition in 1913.  “For all its exotic allure and potential riches, the great Amazon River Basin in 1913 remained a vast and remarkably mysterious place, untouched by modernity and repelling all but the most determined attempts to explore its hidden secrets.  Although more than two-thirds of the Amazon Basin rests within Brazilian borders, the vast majority of Brazilians in the twentieth century, crowded along the sun-soaked eastern coast, had little interest in knowing what lay within the basin and no way to find out even if they had.” 

We boarded about 3 pm and settled into the luxury all-inclusive river boat with a capacity of only about 160 passengers.  The Iberostar Gran Amazon Expedition is a great way to go.   

While most passengers were Brazilians, we met other guests from London and Palm Beach, Florida too. Every cabin had a private balcony, was spacious, and exactly right for heavenly sleeping.  The meals on board were delicious with just caught Peacock Bass, and local fruits like pineapple, bananas, and papaya. The bar was open all day with good and plentiful refreshing drinks.  Best of all, we got to know many of the guests, and a little time poolside was extremely relaxing.  The highlight of the three-night trip was morning, afternoon, and nighttime excursions on smaller boats up and down the river, venturing into feeding tributaries, visiting farms, and spotting wildlife, like lots of waterfowl and the occasional 10-foot caiman sunning on the riverbanks.  Once we motored into a school of fish jumping about.  We all exclaimed when one leaped out of the water into our boat.  Though we only caught a glimpse of one mama and her baby, pink freshwater dolphins frolic in the sister river, Rio Negro.   We learned about the lives of the native people living on the river’s islands, banks, or in floating houses.  Many exist on fish they catch and foods they grow, like manioc, pumpkin, corn, and beans that they plant and tend during the short growing season when their land is not covered by water.  Some families fish and raise cattle as their main source of income.  When the rainy season commences, big boats like cattle trucks transport the cattle to the farmer’s higher ground, returning again when the water recedes and lush green grass reappears. 

Amazing Amazon facts: This river is not the longest river in the world.  It is debatable but some declare the Nile is the longest but not by much.  The Amazon, however, is the world’s largest river by volume of water.  It carries so much water at such great fluctuating levels that it affects sea levels in the Caribbean.  Beginning in the Andes Mountains in Peru, this enormous river system flows from west to east, traveling over 4,000 miles through Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil growing wider and wider until it finally empties into the Atlantic.  

The miraculous Amazon system is like a gigantic drain.  In the rainy season, its intricate tributary web of creeks, streams, and rivers sends all its water to the great Amazon.  The river islands we saw where cattle grazed and corn and manioc fields flourished during the dry season are completely under water each year when the rainy season, December through May, causes the river to rise over 30 feet each year. 

On our boat tour, we saw the “meeting of the rivers” in which two main Amazon rivers merge, the Rio Negro or the black river and the milky-colored Rio Solimoes, (Solimoes is the Brazilian word for Amazon). Tannins picked up from decaying vegetation cause the Rio Negro to take on a dark but clear black tea color.  The milky-colored Rio Solimoes contains silt, mud, and sand and looks thick and murky.  Because each river has a different PH, a different temperature, and flows at a different speed, after the rivers come together, the colors remain separate, dark and light for four miles beyond. Like ying and yang and like Pittsburgh’s Allegheny and the Monongahela, the combined rivers flow side by side, so distinctly black and white that their joining can be seen in both shades from outer space. 

I cannot close without adding that while the river was low during our visit, its volume and enormity are difficult to comprehend.  Even in the dry season, the Amazon’s width was wider than the Mississippi, and like Old Man River, its water was fast-moving.    Another interesting point about visiting this part of the world this time of year . . .the smoke from burning pastures and cane fields in Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay permeates the sky.  That is not a good thing. We hopped in a small boat early one morning to see the sunrise.  We motored to the key point and then sat waiting. The smoke was so dense that although the sun rose at 6 am, we saw nothing.  Finally, at about 8 am, a hazy red ball peeked through the haze. 

Because everything changes with the two seasons: the river, the landscape, the farms, the animals, and the sky, I would love to visit again someday to see this mighty, magnificent river and its jungles in the rain. 

This! Oh, this was a lifetime experience for us!  The Amazon!  What a world!