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Amazon Adventure

By : Maria Campbell
Trip Begins September 29, 2011
Trip Ends October 8, 2011

Swimming with pink dolphins, climbing trees, and cruising the Rio Negro in Amazonia.

Want to go? Tucano: Voyage to the Heart of the Amazon

I went to: South America, Brazil, Amazon
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September 29, 2011
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Arrival in Manaus

Manaus, Brazil

The trip started off a bit rocky. We landed in Manaus, Brazil on September 29th -- or rather, I should say I, my friend Robyn, and my luggage landed. Robyn's luggage was still sitting in the Miami airport. They airport staff assured us her luggage would make it on the same flight the next day and would be delivered to our hotel, so off we went.

Before we left the airport, we used the ATM to withdraw some Brazilian money. Robyn couldn't get her card to work, then realized she'd forgotten to call her bank in advance to notify them that she'd be traveling out of the country and so her card was blocked. Oops. (She called them from the hotel to unblock it.) Then when we got to the hotel, I pulled out my sandals, my favorite Fit Flops that are so comfortable and don't give me blisters (and that were the only sandals I brought on the trip), to discover that they'd broken in mid-flight: the strap that goes between the toe had broken apart from the strap that goes across the foot. So off we went to the hotel shops to buy some new sandals. I found a pair that were kind of cute and wore them back to the room.

By the time I got there, it felt like I'd gotten dirt lodged in between my foot and sandal 'cause it felt grainy. So I took the sandal off and discovered that the silver finish on the sole of the sandal had rubbed off onto the bottom of my foot (and wouldn't come off despite much scrubbing). Not wanting to go through the rest of the trip looking like I had the Tin Man's foot, I turned back to my broken Fit Flop. 'I can bring it back to life!' I thought to myself. So I pulled out my travel sewing kit, threaded the needle, and started pushing it through the hard leather, sewing the two straps back together. Success!

September 30, 2011
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Swimming with pink dolphins and climbing trees

Rio Negro

Today was an excursion I'd really been looking forward to -- our Amazon tree climbing day. Luckily, I'd way overpacked so Robyn was able to borrow all the clothes and shoes she needed for the day from me. Our two guides, Eddy and Fabiano, picked us up along with Melanie, a German med student who was traveling through South America on her way to a clinical rotation in Buenos Aires, and took us by speedboat to our first agenda item of the day: swimming with pink dolphins. A local family had set up a platform about 1 meter below the surface of the river that you stand on. They then pulled out small fish and smacked them on the surface of the water to 'call' the dolphins. Sure enough, within a couple minutes, several pink (and one grey) dolphins swam up wanting to be fed. They let us pet the dolphins and at one point gave us each a foam noodle to use as a flotation device to swim amongst the dolphins, but it kind of freaked me out to have them brushing up against my legs so I went back to the platform.

We then continued on into the jungle to climb a tree. I had thought we'd actually climb up the branches, but I was wrong. They strung a rope from the top branch of the tree, hooked us into harnesses, and then we used hand pulleys and our feet to pull & push ourselves up to the top 6 inches at a time. So much fun! We could even hang upside down from the rope. The view from the top of the canopy was pretty cool. When we got back to the hotel, Robyn's suitcase had arrived (via Sao Paolo). Good thing -- we were leaving on our cruise the next day and there would have been no way for them to deliver it to her there.

October 1, 2011
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Tucano cruise begins

Rio Negro

Today, our riverboat cruise on the Tucano began. There were 16 passengers in all, 3 from the USA, 3 from England, 4 from Sweden/Norway, and the rest were a Brazilian family (mom & dad, two grown daughters, one son-in-law, and a woman who'd worked with the dad for many years). We immediately bonded with Pat, one of the Brits who had to be at least 75 years old. This woman was a riot. Her husband doesn't like to travel, so for the past 20 years, she's been traveling and having adventures all over the world on her own. She's trekked 3 times in the Himalayas, tracked lemurs in Madagascar, went white water rafting in Thailand on a bamboo raft (where at one point, a big wave flipped her off the raft. As she was hanging on for dear life, trying to figure out to where on the shore she should swim, another wave came and flipped her back onto the raft). She's been to Thailand 17 times because she teaches Tai Chi and studies under a master there. She's gotten stranded in Siberia, traveled the Middle East, all through Asia...you name it, she's been there. But the crazy thing is, her husband doesn't know anything about any of it! She doesn't want him to worry about her, so she lies about where she's going. And she thinks it's perfectly natural not to tell him and didn't really understand why we thought it was so funny.

Our boat headed up the Rio Negro, one of the rivers that feeds into the Amazon. The Rio Negro is much less traveled than the Amazon and we pretty much had the river to ourselves for the week. We didn't see any other tourists, only a few locals here and there on their fishing boats. It was incredibly quiet and peaceful.

October 2, 2011
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Cruising on the Rio Negro

Rio Negro

Our daily routing was such: early morning canoe ride at 6am, followed by breakfast at 8:30am, followed by a forest walk at 10am, lounging on the boat in the afternoon (usually up on the top deck, sometimes sleeping in a hammock up there), followed by a village visit or canoe ride at 4pm. About half the nights we also had canoe rides at night, looking for wildlife in the dark. Those were my favorites. The guides, Edgy & Sosa, would shine big spotlights on the shore and we'd look for red eyes looking back at us. We spotted a bunch of caiman (an alligator-type creature), some frogs, a boa constrictor (in a tree, so camouflaged he was hard to spot). One night, we came across a mother caiman and 20 babies. So cool! On our first night canoe ride, we'd only been out about ten minutes when a fish jumped right into our boat. Later, our guide started pounding on the canoe, making the fish start jumping all around us, and another fish jumped into the boat right at Robyn's feet.

By the second day, I'd given up all attempts at looking good. It was just too hot. Makeup? Forget it -- it would just melt off your face within a half hour (or be wiped off on your sleeve as you tried to wipe the sweat off your face). Forget about styling your hair -- just pull it off your face and neck with barrettes and rubber bands. When I got dressed, I just grabbed the first thing I came to in my bag, whether it was clean or dirty. I've never looked worse!

October 3, 2011
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Cruising on the Rio Negro

Rio Negro

One of the first nights our guide Sosa gave us a lecture on Brazilian fruits. I thought it was going to be really boring, but it was actually really interesting. Did you know Brazil nuts grow a bunch in a hard shell that looks like a coconut? And cashews grow one nut on a fruit that looks kind of like an apple? I was fascinated with the cashew trees after that.

We saw lots of birds on the trip, many of which I'd never heard of. My favorites were the hoatzins, birds that can't fly very far and travel in packs, flapping around in trees making lots of noise. Also saw parrots, parakeets, kingfishers, lots of different herons, woodpeckers, toucans, green ibis, anhingas, hawks, and vultures, just to name a few. Besides caiman and dolphins, we also saw iguanas, sloth, frogs, lizards, and 3 different kinds of monkeys. No anacondas, though! Our guides also showed us all kinds of trees & plants with medicinal purposes. On our first forest walk, we came across a big spider web stretched out across two bushes with a big spider sitting on it. We admired it, then walked on. I couldn't believe it when a big Swede named Anders walked right through the web, destroying it! I didn't like Anders after that, although a few days later, we were talking to him and asked him what he does for a living. He's a nurse in a hospice center, and after he talked about how rewarding it is to help people at the end of their life and bring them comfort, I liked him better. Maybe he just didn't see the spider web.

October 4, 2011
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Fishing for piranhas

Rio Negro

One afternoon our guide Edgy took a bunch of us out fishing for piranhas. We used bamboo sticks with a fishing line hanging off the end and baited the hooks with raw meat. After 5 minutes, we saw a rainstorm approaching quickly from across the river. We had just enough time to put our raincoats on when the rain hit us. It only lasted about 15 minutes or so, and we kept fishing in the meantime. Nearly everyone caught at least one piranha. I was one of two who didn't. But I fed a lot of piranha! They kept nibbling my bait off the hook. Every time I'd pull my hook out of the water, the bait was gone. I guess they're smarter than me. It was still tons of fun, though.

October 5, 2011
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Cruising on the Rio Negro

Rio Negro

This time of year is the dry season and the water levels are really low. That's good for wildlife sightings 'cause they're all concentrated in a smaller area. But it means we didn't get to see flooded forests, which would have been really cool. Might have to go back some day to see that. In some of the little tributaries that we rode through, the water level was so low we had to be really careful so we wouldn't get stuck, which we actually did a couple times. Our guide had to jump out of the canoe to dislodge us, and once we had to have the other canoe tow us out.

The weather was hot & steamy most days. I had rivers of sweat running down my back on our forest walks, for which we had to dress in long sleeves, long pants, hiking boots with heavy socks, and leather gaiters around our shins. But when we got back to the canoes after the hikes, they'd give us frozen washclothes from a little cooler they'd brought. Brilliant! And they'd always have us leave our boots out after a hikes so they could clean them for us.

October 6, 2011
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Cruising the Rio Negro

Rio Negro

Today they took us to a big sandbar in the middle of the river. The white sand went on and on forever. We had the beach all to ourselves and had a chance to go swimming in water as warm as bathwater.

That night, Robyn and I had a wildlife sighting right in our cabin. I came out of our bathroom and heard a squeaking noise. I ran to the end of the room, where Robyn was standing. She asked, 'What is it?' and I replied, 'I heard something' and then I saw it -- a frog clinging to the molding around the bathroom door RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE MY HEAD WOULD BE IF I WERE LYING ON MY BUNK! We both ran out of our cabin, shrieking, down to the crew's quarters. The first guy we came to, Francisco the mechanic, doesn't speak much English and didn't understand what we were saying. (the crew later told us they thought someone had fallen into the water by the way we were carrying on) So then I grabbed Zacharias, one of the guys who does speak English, and dragged him into our room. He calmly picked up the frog with a rag (after I took some pictures of him, of course! and dropped him into the water.

October 7, 2011
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The Meeting of the Rivers

Manaus

The last day of our cruise, we'd just come back from a jungle walk. I had just showered and was wearing nothing but a little robe and Robyn had just hopped in the shower when we heard our guide yelling in the hallway 'Meeting of the Rivers! Come on deck now!' I popped my head out the door and said 'But we're naked!' He replied, 'Come anyway!', so we threw on whatever clothes were handy and rushed up on deck. The Meeting of the Rivers is the confluence of the black water Rio Negro and the lighter colored Amazon River. The two rivers run side by side for several miles, half black, half white, for several miles before the two colors blend together. It's nature's version of a black and tan. So cool.

October 8, 2011
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Journey's end

Manaus

We arrived back in Manaus this morning and had to say 'Goodbye' to all the characters we'd gotten to know over the past week. I have hundreds of photos to share with friends and a ton of memories I'll cherish forever.

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