April down the Amazon II: Down river to Manaus

One thing that Becca has repeatly said during our trip is that she would like to see an opera at the opera house in Manaus. Manaus is right in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon, on the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, and emerged as the capital of the rubber boom in the late nineteenth century. When things were going well, it was such a rich city that building a grand opera house, importing marble etc. from Italy, seemed a reasonable thing to do! Manaus is down stream from Iquitos in Peru, so once we had done our conservation trip, we thought it would be an interesting experience to travel down the Amazon by boat to get there.

Bruce & Rebecca here…

Travelling down the Amazon at speed

Like being on a bus – thankfully without the TVs turned on!

On returning from our trip to the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve with Richard Bodmer and his team from FundAmazonia, we spent a couple of days in Iquitos and then, on Tuesday 12th April, we got on a speedboat downriver to the border of Peru. The slow boats in Peru are not generally recommended (much poorer standard than the Brazilian ones), especially as this leg of the trip is 8 hours (roughly!) downstream (12 hours up) by speedboat, so quite d0-able. We thought of it as a long flight, although if felt more like a being on a bus.

Santa Rosa, the Peruvian border town, is under water much of the time

This took us to the triple border of Columbia, Peru and Brazil, which is quite a surreal place, with three different border towns adjoining each other. People move freely between them (without completing border formalities each time), but they each have quite different characters. Santa Rosa on the Peruvian side of the border is a rather poor and miserable place, separated from Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil) by the river. We subsequently learned that, when negotiating the borders, the Peruvian politicians were outfoxed and ended up with border territory on the side of the river that floods (no one involved had actually been there, of course), whilst the Colombians and Brazilians had their side of the borders on firm upland that doesn’t!

A river-taxi across the Amazon

Leticia in Colombia is the preferred place to stay, as it is the more significant town, safest and least like an outpost. When you arrive, you are meant to get stamped out of the country you are leaving and into the one that you are travelling on to in a timely fashion, but then you can move freely between all three. So we were stamped out of Peru (requiring a river taxi to get to the customs office, as much of the Peruvian side was flooded when we were there), then crossed the river by taxi and checked into our little hotel, just having time before dark to hop in a moto-taxi to the police station in Tabatinga (Brazil) to get stamped in there.

After the rain in Leticia

The next step in the journey was to get ourselves on a slow boat down river to Manaus and see a show at the opera house. Just after we woke up (early, with the intention of getting to the port early), the heavens opened in a way that you only experience in places like this. So we settled in to wait for it to ease, a little later finding that our bags were leaning against a wall that leaked, leaving them damp and sitting in a puddle! Luckily, when the rain stops, it gets warm and things soon dry out…

Boarding the N/M Montiero in Tabatinga

We put on waterproof tops, rolled up our trouser legs, put on our flip-flops and waded down the road outside the hotel – it was just like Oxford during a summer flood! A friendly moto driver took us to the port and helped us work out (we speak a little Spanish now, they speak Portugese in Brazil, he spoke enough of both) that a boat, the N/M Montiero, would be boarding in an hour’s time and there was a cabin available for us on board. So we dashed off like headless chickens, splitting up to cover ground more quickly where we could, with our enthusiastic moto driver racing us around, to go to an ATM, and then a change office, to get enough Brazilian Reals to pay for it, a supermarket to get some supplies and collect our stuff from the hotel where we’d left it (when, that is, our moto didn’t run out of gasoline and the driver had to get another passing moto to go get him some while we waited anxiously!) We got back to the port, rather breathless, and boarded just a little late. Of course, it was quite sometime later that the boat actually departed!

Another boat, just like ours, passes us going the other way

Bruce on our little veranda

We chickened out of the traditional approach to these journeys of three or four nights camped in a hammock on deck, as neither of us has ever spent more than a few hours at a time in a hammock before, so three nights straight off (with nowhere but the hammock to sit during the day) seemed a little risky (and uncomfortable). Instead we took a cabin, which turned out to have a nice little private veranda and came with meal delivery service. Despite the bed being wedged as best they could into an alcove with a distinctly uneven floor, it was actually quite a pleasant way to travel. We spent most of the days sitting out on the veranda, reading, editing photos, writing diary and blogs, and generally watching the river and life go by.

Bruce returning with a top-up of coffee – most people travel on deak in hammocks

The boat moored briefly at each small town along the way. These are all rubber tapper settlements, formed a century plus ago, with the original tribes that lived along the river either pushed inland, absorbed or extinguished in the process.

In Manaus

Arriving in Manaus

The so called opera house in Manaus is really only a theatre (it is called the Teatro Amazonas these days) and is not big enough to host full opera. This means that, despite the grand ambition, since the opening night on 31 December 1896, no touring operas had visited again until recently, when the theatre was restored and an annual opera festival initiated. The local opera company stages performances sized appropriately and visiting full scale operas are staged outside in the square in front of the theatre! Unfortunately for us, this year the festival was a month later than usual, so we were too early and missed it by a matter of weeks. Although Becca didn’t get her opera, they do regular free shows throughout the year and we spent a pleasant evening in one of the boxes watching a superb modern dance group.

An evening at the Teatro Amazonas

While in Manaus, we also had a rather surreal political experience, as we were there the Sunday that the Brazilian congress met to vote to impeach their president, Dilma Rousseff, for budget irregularities. Sixty five percent of the members of the congress are under investigation for various criminal charges, some of them serious and much of them corruption related and we sat in the safety of the common area of our hostel (we had seen a protest gathering in the main square in the morning), watching them, one after the other, make an impassioned statement against her as they stated their vote. The uncomfortable thing is that she is probably one of the least corrupt of Brazil’s politicians and was probably being attacked precisely because she hadn’t stood in the way of a huge investigation into political corruption (known as “carwash”). That and it’s always fashionable to get rid of the person in charge when the economy nosedives… The charges against her are relatively trivial, especially in Latin American terms (a report to the Senate saying as much a few months later was reportedly quietly shelved), so her describing it as a “political coup” seems understandable.

A slightly less surreal experience was spending a surprisingly enjoyable afternoon in a thoroughly modern shopping mall and deciding to take the opportunity to go to the cinema to watch The Jungle Book in the jungle!

Retracing our footsteps to the north coast of Peru

Flying over the Amazon from Manaus

To get back back to Zorritos and the Yellow Van, we flew, first back to Tabatinga (as a journey that takes two and a half days down river will take about twice as long as that to go back up river against the Amazon’s powerful flow). The flight was an experience in itself, giving us a birdseye view of the river, already enormous halfway to the sea. Boarding our flight with us were four members of an indigenous Amazonian tribe, replete with wooden facial ornaments through their nose, lips and ears, but also nattily dressed in western clothing – a lovely example of modern meeting the traditional.

We spent a further couple of nights back in Leticia while we sorted out the return speedboat trip to Iquitos. One lunchtime we witnessed the sheer volume of water that can fall out the sky in the rainforest in just 30 minutes. These three pictures (which open as a gallery) were taken just as as the clouds opened at lunchtime, then 10 minutes later (the moto is deep in water) and at it’s peak just after the rain stopped, another 10 minutes later. Amazingly, it had almost all drained away just another half hour after that!

A couple of days later and we were on the flight back to Tumbes and, as it was daylight, we had a spectacular view of the Amazon basin as we flew over it, seeing lots of examples of how the river meannders and changes course rapidly as it makes its way across the flat Amazon basin.

When the river course moves, an oxbow lake is left as evidence of the old route

The gallery below includes images from around Iquitos taken during our three visits, as well as the story of our journey down the Amazon to Manaus and back.

A boat load of bananas passing by

Iquitos used to sit on the Amazon, but the river has since changed course a little, leaving the city mostly looking out over an attached lake

There are very few cars (they must be brought by river), but lots of Colonial-style rubber boom era buildings

Maintained with a colourful lick of paint

There’s always a parade on a Sunday in South America!

The Andes cultures don’t have a monopoly on fine pottery

The jungle quickly reclaims what is neglected – this riverboat hadn’t apparently been out of use very long!

In the evening, as people cool down, life begins

The Malecon, the waterfront, is the centre of evening activity

Haircut time! (Bruce is being cut, Rebecca waits in the pedicure chair)

One weekend, we asked at our hotel where to go for live music and were told to get a moto-taxi to a particular stadium

The same band kept up and energetic performance of a range of different latin music for many, many hours – what stamina! And the crowds danced in the cool of the evening…

Most of the traffic is either motorbikes or moto-taxis – we rather enjoyed buzzing around in them, although it can be a bit of a rough ride!

On the speedboat down river – it made regular stops on the way and people came through from the door at the front end selling newspapers, snacks, drinks etc.

It was a tight squeeze on board, but with fresh air from the open windows, books to read, travel pillows to help with having a snooze, the journey was over faster than we feared

Lunch service – quite a tasty dish of chicken and rice washed down with the obligatory Inca cola (or ordinary coca cola if you must)

Arrival in Santa Rosa (Peru side), at a dock cut off by the flooded river

And onto a river-taxi to go first to the immigration office to check-out of Peru then across the river to the Colombian / Brazilian side

The dogs know where is dry when it rains!

Sago pancakes are all the rage in Brazil, although we had this one in Leticia. They may be “healthy”, but they are also tasteless and need a fully flavoured filling!

Casting off on the N/M Montiero for the 3 day journey from Tabatinga to Manaus

We took a little cabin, rather than try hammock sleeping for 3 days and nights for our the first time!

It was a funny little cabin, with a very uneven floor, but was comfortable enough despite the wonky bed. It had A/C, but mostly we preferred leaving the door open and the breeze from the boat moving was pleasant and enough to keep the mosquitos away.

Settling in on our little veranda (once we’d found a second chair to purloin)

A chance to catch up on blog writing, photo cataloguing and editing, etc. while the graceful river went by

A look into the bridge

We stopped at many small towns along the way, mostly populated by descendents of rubber workers

Once docked, there was a frenzy of activity, with people and goods getting onboard

People headed up to the deck to find a place to hang there hammocks

Life on the river

Just outside of Manaus, the Amazon meets the Rio Negro and two different types of waters “meet” forming a visible boundary for quite some distance downstream

We had seen the same effect back up stream, on the river Marañon in Peru (previous blog) – this time we just caught site of it as we approached Manaus

Coming into Manaus

Greeted by a flock (?) of taxi drivers plying for our trade (we walked). Notice how the ramp is held by wedging it in one of the ballast tyres!

This records the high water levels each year in the port of Manaus. The river level when we were there was a many metres below this sign.

More colourful colonial style rubber boom architecture

Nightlife outside the theatre

Even in the cool of evening, the dogs are hot!

And tempers flare for cats!

Inside the theatre – it’s actually rather smaller than it appears from the outside!

On Sunday 17th April, the Congress met to vote on the proposal to impeach the current President, Dilma Rousseff, and a pro-Dilma protest gathered in the square

Bruce shopping for flip-flops. Flip-flop fashion is important in Brazil. I like the Kennets, but Bruce opted for some classic Havaianas

Enjoying an afternoon in a thoroughly modern shopping mall

Cachaça is Brazil’s spirit and the main ingredient in the Caipirinha – we might have enjoyed a few of those…

Visiting Brazil’s National Institute of Amazon Research centre in Manaus was a rather strange experience, as it seemed pretty run-down and many of the few wildlife enclosures were closed and empty – a side-effect of Brazil’s economic downturn perhaps

But the Manatees in their pools with windows in the side were still there, which we was what we had really come to see

We were lucky enough to catch them just as their water had been changed, so we got a really good view

The river Manatees are very rare and endangered now, for this reason – because they used to be hunted for food and, as the population on the Amazon exploded with the rubber boom, this became unsustainable

Flying out of Manaus – a surprisingly large city to be found in the middle of the rainforest so far from anywhere

We spent the night before getting the speedboat back to Iquitos in Santa Rosa, as the boat was leaving from there before dawn

But that was a mistake – the only places to stay were all equally cheap and horrid

And we learnt from Richard later on, back in Iquitos, that the boat companies all have hotels in Tabatinga, on the Brazilian side, from where they will transport you to get on the boat early in the morning in Peru – although how the immigration process is completed then, we don’t know

Flooded Santa Rosa

Kids learn to fish early!

A pre-dawn start for the speed boat back upriver to Iquitos – a slower journey against the river flow

Back in Iquitos, the Rio Amazonas was moored in front of our hotel for some work to be done

We visited a wildlife rescue centre, that specialises in breeding and releasing river turtles

Bruce getting another look at a baby caiman

There was one rather lonely giant river otter in

It couldn’t be released again until it had recovered from its injuries

They also look after rescued Manatees, giving us another chance to get a look at these wonderful creatures

Feeding the Manatees – a real treat!

It’s unlikely that a centre like this has any meaningful impact on the numbers of Manatees, but they do a great job in educating the local population about them and why they should be cherished

This one was clearing suffering while waiting for some injuries on its belly to heal

This baby was enjoying its bottle!

On a moto-taxi out to the airport for our flight out

Great views of the meandering rivers as we flew out of the region