Travellogue III: On the Amazonas
Mar. 9th, 2004 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakNow that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
citizengkar is there, t![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse is becoming ever more addictive. The bickering is everything I (and my muse) have hoped for. *g*
Manaus’ great claim to fame is its opera, immortalized by Werner Herzog in his movie “Fitzcarraldo”. It’s also the only thing worth visiting in this rather dirty and dull town. Think Art Noveau, think fin du siècle, all pink and white on the outside, with a cuppola covered by rainbow-coloured bricks. Inside at first we weren’t supposed to go, it being Sunday. However, we noticed that a group from cruise ship docked in the harbour was let in. It turned out to be a group of Brits, so I did my best to look English and polished up mykathyh imitation accent. Apparently it worked well enough to impress Brazilians. They believed us when we said we were from the ship as well and had come on foot in order to explore the town. And we got our guided tour.
Inside, it’s all painted columns from England, mirrors and chandeliers from France and red marble from Italy. Oh, and Louis-Quinze-chairs to sit on when watching the performances. Which rather recently have resumed after a long period of only guest ensembles using this house. In Europe, this opera would be a pretty but not magnificent bauble, more candy than cake. In Manaus, surrounded by lots of ugly concrete buildings, it’s a surreal vision.
The opera aside, the other reason to visit Manaus would be to embark on a tour down – or up – the Amazon, which is joined by the Rio Negro there. We had booked passage with Amazon Clippers, on a boat called the “Dona Selly II”, which had altogether nine passengers, us included, and four crew members.
“What happened to the Dona Selly I,” I wondered.
“Better don’t asked,” replied one of my fellow travellers.
Though the insinuation is somewhat unfair, the Dona Selly II being a fine little ship, and besides, I did ask. Hugo, our guide, told me that the boat was named after one of the owner’s former girl friends. The owner possesses altogether five boats. (Yes, I asked that, too.)
Our group consisted of two Canadians, Leanna and Roy, a very nice couple around 60, four Spaniards in their 20s or 30s who were slightly crazy but in a fun way, one South African from Durbin, David, who, being of Indian origin, looked way younger than he actually was, and the two of us from Germany. Normaly I try to avoid group travelling, but on this occasion not only was the group small enough but there was not a member I did not like. I felt positively social which was somewhat odd.
It was strange to listen to Roy and Leanne in their not-quite-US, not-quite-English accent, and to see Leanne smoke, when everyone on the North American continent seems to have gone off the habit. They started everyone’s interaction by introducing themselves, and reminded me why I am inevitably charmed by most Americans – the continent seems to come with a spontanous friendliness we Old Worlders can’t quite seem to manage.
(I am obviously less than charmed by present US politics; as it turned out, so were the Canadians and the rest of the group. We did have an internation Bush loathing session which ended on a positive note with the expressed hope the world will be rid of him (as US president) next year. Why, oh why can’t Jed Bartlett be the real thing?)
The Amazon, and assorted rivers leading towards same, is incredibly wide. I’ve seen the Mississippi, I’ve seen the Nile, I’ve seen the Yangtse. They still don’t hold a candle to this monster. The water is very dirty, black in the case of the Ponte Negro, a muddy brown in the case of the Amazon. Very soft, though. See, on board the showers used the water from the river, which was better than being covered in sweat. No, I didn’t shower long. But yes, it was soft. No chalk, I assume.
The ship itself looked like a small, small edition of the ships one imagines sailing up and down the Mississippi in Mark Twain’s time, and we did have a very Twainian moment later. Most of the time we were on it we spent on deck, watching the green shores with the wooden houses, the occasional piers and other boats, and the dramatic, intense colourings of the clouds who looked as if you could touch them, and often were flexed with sunlight. Further away from the city, there were even swimming petrol stations for the boats, pubs and restaurants. There are no roads there in the Amazonas – the Amazon river IS the granddaddy of all highways.
As the sun set, we noticed that some of the wooden houses had a mysterious blue light flickering in them instead of the usual yellow one. It took us some time to figure out that this was the TV. Duh! But genuinenly, no kidding: even pretty shabbily-looking boats had satelite dishes. We weren’t sure whether to be amused or appalled. Hugo told us that while people were poor here, they never lacked food, due to the incredibly fish life in the Amazon.
The moon was getting fuller, so the nights were very bright. We made nightly excursions with the kanoe, as well as very early in the morning, before breakfeast. Imagine gliding on the waves of the Amazon, hearing fish jumping all the time – they really did – the frogs, all the birds… it was eerie and beautiful. There were fireflies over the reeds that made it look like fireworks were happening all the time, oddly soundless in the middle of all the other sounds, and the eyes of owls and hawks blinking in red and gold as the boat drew closer.
In the first night, Hugo caught two little alligators. This I had experienced before, in the Louisiana bayou, but it remains fascinating, though I always feel sorry for the alligators, being petted by lots of strangers. Some more months, and nobody would dare. They feel so cool, which is the most striking difference to touching the scales of a snake.
During the dawn expeditions, as the light grew stronger, one could truly admire the variety of birds – little ones with yellow heads and dark bellies, blue birds with red bellies, storks (or close cousins of same), and the hawks, again. One could also see the dolphins. I had assumed the talk of pink dolphins was just tourist teasing, and they were like the Yeti in Tibet, but no. On the first morning, I spotted them myself, as well as the more normal grey variety. The pink colour makes for far more visible – scales feels like the wrong word, since dolphins are mammals – pores? Skin patterns? It’s a washed-up pink not unlike the one from the opera house. Or of a salmon gone wild, though salmons tend to go to some orange part of the spectrum. There they were, two of them, coming up and diving down again, and I felt like a kid, squealing at the wonder of it.
Another animal I had never seen before was a sloth. I met two, on two different days. They are hard to spot in the green light falling between the trees, and they only moved because Hugo imitated the cry of a female. Then they moved ever so slowly, as if posing for a cameo in “The Matrix”. The term “slow motion” was invented for them. I never could see the form of the head, but the body looked roughly groundhog-like. Hugo told us they only came down from the trees once a week to relieve themselves.
We did make walking excursions, too, after drenching ourselves in insect repellents. This was, after all, a malaria-infested era. (And yes, we took the drugs first, too.) The repellents worked fine for the first hour or so. Then, the moskitos decided they really liked my hands. Ah well. I got to drink Entdraught which more than made up for this.
No, really. There were a lot of vines hanging from and between the trees – which led to a lot of bad Tarzan jokes, the worst of which was “why does Tarzan cry out? Because Jane grabbed something other than the vine” -, and the local farmer leading us through the forest, who was called Renato, demonstrated to us why one does not need to fear dehydration here, despite the heat. The vines are full of water. If one cuts them open, which he did with his macheta, one can drink from them. I did, and can report the water has a slight wood taste, not in the sense of old, rotting wood, but really refreshing. I felt hyper afterwards and decided that this is what the hobbits got from Treebeard. Expect growth reports from me any day now.
We were shown Kautschuk trees – rubber trees – their bark full of old cuts, so many, and so old, that they looked like old healed scars. Rubber was of course the reason why people originally had come to the area, and made a lot of money for a short while.
Wearing any kind of make-up was obviously superflous in the heat and humidity, so Leanne and myself didn’t, but Hugo decided to rectify that by opening a thorny fruit with red seeds, which the Indians had used, and painting stripes all over us. Then the Spaniards decided they wanted stripes, too. We looked as silly as you’d expect, and had great fun.
The second afternoon was spent fishing Piranhas. Or feeding Piranhas, depending how you look at it. To this end, we were given a cup with cut meat as bait first, and sat on our little life-saving boat with nylons and hooks (no rods necessary). Finding Piranhas was easy – pretty soon, you felt that small tug on your finger, over which the nylon ran, which showed they had started to nibble the meat. But jerking the whole thing back most often did not result in any Piranha. They are very smart, and usually manage to get at the meat without getting hooked. Usually, but not always. Hugo and David between them managed to get four or five. For the longest time, the Spaniards got only one, and the Canadians none. Neither did we. Finally, with only four more pieces of bait, I managed to catch my first Piranha. (And yes, there is a photo.) I was ever so proud. Incidentally, I hadn’t known before that there were many different kinds of Piranhas. The ones with the red-gold bellies are nicknamed “film stars”, because they are the ones made famous by the movies, but there are other colourings, down to completely black. Mine was mostly silver. If you want to know what we did with the Piranhas – if possible, Hugo liberated them from the hook and threw them back into the water. Only if the hook had gone through the eye did we keep them. (These ended up as soup in the evening.) I had always imagined fishing as boring, but this afternoon I began to see the appeal, and felt like Tom and Huck on their island. If, you know, those fish in the Mississippi would have had really sharp teeth. Seeing them close-up didn’t make them look any more harmless, but otherwise the Piranhas disturbingly resembled nothing so much as goldfish.
Next: The mother, father and deity of all waterfalls, and a Mexican stand-off with the hotel management at Iguassu.
citizengkar is there, ttheatrical_muse is becoming ever more addictive. The bickering is everything I (and my muse) have hoped for. *g* Manaus’ great claim to fame is its opera, immortalized by Werner Herzog in his movie “Fitzcarraldo”. It’s also the only thing worth visiting in this rather dirty and dull town. Think Art Noveau, think fin du siècle, all pink and white on the outside, with a cuppola covered by rainbow-coloured bricks. Inside at first we weren’t supposed to go, it being Sunday. However, we noticed that a group from cruise ship docked in the harbour was let in. It turned out to be a group of Brits, so I did my best to look English and polished up my
kathyh imitation accent. Apparently it worked well enough to impress Brazilians. They believed us when we said we were from the ship as well and had come on foot in order to explore the town. And we got our guided tour. Inside, it’s all painted columns from England, mirrors and chandeliers from France and red marble from Italy. Oh, and Louis-Quinze-chairs to sit on when watching the performances. Which rather recently have resumed after a long period of only guest ensembles using this house. In Europe, this opera would be a pretty but not magnificent bauble, more candy than cake. In Manaus, surrounded by lots of ugly concrete buildings, it’s a surreal vision.
The opera aside, the other reason to visit Manaus would be to embark on a tour down – or up – the Amazon, which is joined by the Rio Negro there. We had booked passage with Amazon Clippers, on a boat called the “Dona Selly II”, which had altogether nine passengers, us included, and four crew members.
“What happened to the Dona Selly I,” I wondered.
“Better don’t asked,” replied one of my fellow travellers.
Though the insinuation is somewhat unfair, the Dona Selly II being a fine little ship, and besides, I did ask. Hugo, our guide, told me that the boat was named after one of the owner’s former girl friends. The owner possesses altogether five boats. (Yes, I asked that, too.)
Our group consisted of two Canadians, Leanna and Roy, a very nice couple around 60, four Spaniards in their 20s or 30s who were slightly crazy but in a fun way, one South African from Durbin, David, who, being of Indian origin, looked way younger than he actually was, and the two of us from Germany. Normaly I try to avoid group travelling, but on this occasion not only was the group small enough but there was not a member I did not like. I felt positively social which was somewhat odd.
It was strange to listen to Roy and Leanne in their not-quite-US, not-quite-English accent, and to see Leanne smoke, when everyone on the North American continent seems to have gone off the habit. They started everyone’s interaction by introducing themselves, and reminded me why I am inevitably charmed by most Americans – the continent seems to come with a spontanous friendliness we Old Worlders can’t quite seem to manage.
(I am obviously less than charmed by present US politics; as it turned out, so were the Canadians and the rest of the group. We did have an internation Bush loathing session which ended on a positive note with the expressed hope the world will be rid of him (as US president) next year. Why, oh why can’t Jed Bartlett be the real thing?)
The Amazon, and assorted rivers leading towards same, is incredibly wide. I’ve seen the Mississippi, I’ve seen the Nile, I’ve seen the Yangtse. They still don’t hold a candle to this monster. The water is very dirty, black in the case of the Ponte Negro, a muddy brown in the case of the Amazon. Very soft, though. See, on board the showers used the water from the river, which was better than being covered in sweat. No, I didn’t shower long. But yes, it was soft. No chalk, I assume.
The ship itself looked like a small, small edition of the ships one imagines sailing up and down the Mississippi in Mark Twain’s time, and we did have a very Twainian moment later. Most of the time we were on it we spent on deck, watching the green shores with the wooden houses, the occasional piers and other boats, and the dramatic, intense colourings of the clouds who looked as if you could touch them, and often were flexed with sunlight. Further away from the city, there were even swimming petrol stations for the boats, pubs and restaurants. There are no roads there in the Amazonas – the Amazon river IS the granddaddy of all highways.
As the sun set, we noticed that some of the wooden houses had a mysterious blue light flickering in them instead of the usual yellow one. It took us some time to figure out that this was the TV. Duh! But genuinenly, no kidding: even pretty shabbily-looking boats had satelite dishes. We weren’t sure whether to be amused or appalled. Hugo told us that while people were poor here, they never lacked food, due to the incredibly fish life in the Amazon.
The moon was getting fuller, so the nights were very bright. We made nightly excursions with the kanoe, as well as very early in the morning, before breakfeast. Imagine gliding on the waves of the Amazon, hearing fish jumping all the time – they really did – the frogs, all the birds… it was eerie and beautiful. There were fireflies over the reeds that made it look like fireworks were happening all the time, oddly soundless in the middle of all the other sounds, and the eyes of owls and hawks blinking in red and gold as the boat drew closer.
In the first night, Hugo caught two little alligators. This I had experienced before, in the Louisiana bayou, but it remains fascinating, though I always feel sorry for the alligators, being petted by lots of strangers. Some more months, and nobody would dare. They feel so cool, which is the most striking difference to touching the scales of a snake.
During the dawn expeditions, as the light grew stronger, one could truly admire the variety of birds – little ones with yellow heads and dark bellies, blue birds with red bellies, storks (or close cousins of same), and the hawks, again. One could also see the dolphins. I had assumed the talk of pink dolphins was just tourist teasing, and they were like the Yeti in Tibet, but no. On the first morning, I spotted them myself, as well as the more normal grey variety. The pink colour makes for far more visible – scales feels like the wrong word, since dolphins are mammals – pores? Skin patterns? It’s a washed-up pink not unlike the one from the opera house. Or of a salmon gone wild, though salmons tend to go to some orange part of the spectrum. There they were, two of them, coming up and diving down again, and I felt like a kid, squealing at the wonder of it.
Another animal I had never seen before was a sloth. I met two, on two different days. They are hard to spot in the green light falling between the trees, and they only moved because Hugo imitated the cry of a female. Then they moved ever so slowly, as if posing for a cameo in “The Matrix”. The term “slow motion” was invented for them. I never could see the form of the head, but the body looked roughly groundhog-like. Hugo told us they only came down from the trees once a week to relieve themselves.
We did make walking excursions, too, after drenching ourselves in insect repellents. This was, after all, a malaria-infested era. (And yes, we took the drugs first, too.) The repellents worked fine for the first hour or so. Then, the moskitos decided they really liked my hands. Ah well. I got to drink Entdraught which more than made up for this.
No, really. There were a lot of vines hanging from and between the trees – which led to a lot of bad Tarzan jokes, the worst of which was “why does Tarzan cry out? Because Jane grabbed something other than the vine” -, and the local farmer leading us through the forest, who was called Renato, demonstrated to us why one does not need to fear dehydration here, despite the heat. The vines are full of water. If one cuts them open, which he did with his macheta, one can drink from them. I did, and can report the water has a slight wood taste, not in the sense of old, rotting wood, but really refreshing. I felt hyper afterwards and decided that this is what the hobbits got from Treebeard. Expect growth reports from me any day now.
We were shown Kautschuk trees – rubber trees – their bark full of old cuts, so many, and so old, that they looked like old healed scars. Rubber was of course the reason why people originally had come to the area, and made a lot of money for a short while.
Wearing any kind of make-up was obviously superflous in the heat and humidity, so Leanne and myself didn’t, but Hugo decided to rectify that by opening a thorny fruit with red seeds, which the Indians had used, and painting stripes all over us. Then the Spaniards decided they wanted stripes, too. We looked as silly as you’d expect, and had great fun.
The second afternoon was spent fishing Piranhas. Or feeding Piranhas, depending how you look at it. To this end, we were given a cup with cut meat as bait first, and sat on our little life-saving boat with nylons and hooks (no rods necessary). Finding Piranhas was easy – pretty soon, you felt that small tug on your finger, over which the nylon ran, which showed they had started to nibble the meat. But jerking the whole thing back most often did not result in any Piranha. They are very smart, and usually manage to get at the meat without getting hooked. Usually, but not always. Hugo and David between them managed to get four or five. For the longest time, the Spaniards got only one, and the Canadians none. Neither did we. Finally, with only four more pieces of bait, I managed to catch my first Piranha. (And yes, there is a photo.) I was ever so proud. Incidentally, I hadn’t known before that there were many different kinds of Piranhas. The ones with the red-gold bellies are nicknamed “film stars”, because they are the ones made famous by the movies, but there are other colourings, down to completely black. Mine was mostly silver. If you want to know what we did with the Piranhas – if possible, Hugo liberated them from the hook and threw them back into the water. Only if the hook had gone through the eye did we keep them. (These ended up as soup in the evening.) I had always imagined fishing as boring, but this afternoon I began to see the appeal, and felt like Tom and Huck on their island. If, you know, those fish in the Mississippi would have had really sharp teeth. Seeing them close-up didn’t make them look any more harmless, but otherwise the Piranhas disturbingly resembled nothing so much as goldfish.
Next: The mother, father and deity of all waterfalls, and a Mexican stand-off with the hotel management at Iguassu.
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-09 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-09 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-09 09:57 am (UTC)Glad to be of assistance *g*. If you managed my South London twang correctly there can have been no doubt about your authenticity.
Alligators and insects and piranhas, oh my! I think I'll stick to armchair travelling; you just go somewhere interesting but dangerous, and I'll read about it afterwards *g*.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-09 11:49 pm (UTC)