Amazonian Women

I had my first two friends from the states come and visit for almost 2 weeks. Our destination: The Amazon. And while it’s no big surprise that I had hesitations about a) wanting to go there, I mean it’s far away from the ocean, and b) if I would have fun being surrounded by trees the whole time, I was able to limit my forest freak outs to one per day and in the end was pleasantly surprised with the trip. (The look of the forest freak out below:)

First let me just say the Amazon is huge. It has many tributaries, which feed into it and little did I know in one spot it also has surfing! A place called Porrorroca, has at certain times of the month, the longest wave for surfers to ride. Surfers can ride for more than 20 minutes on a single wave in this part of the Amazon. Sadly, our itinerary did not include this spot, next time.

We boarded a houseboat in Manaus, and were pleasantly surprised to find out that we were the only ones scheduled for the week, therefore we had our own private cruising boat!!

Our first stop, a place called meeting of the waters, where two tributaries of the Amazon come together, but because of differences in temperature and current speeds the two rivers do not mix for about 15 miles. You can see each of the two rivers distinctly side by side, one a light brown color the other a dark blue brown color.

Next on the day 1 itinerary was a stop at the Lily Pad Pond. These Lilly Pads reminded me of the ones in fairy tales; they were so big and so green I could just imagine a frog jumping right off one and into my hand. If I kissed it would it turn into a Prince?

Next on our first day of the adventure, was Piranha Fishing! We used bamboo fishing rods andchopped up pieces of meat to fish for Piranhas in a tributary off the Amazon, while also seeing lots of birds.

Jen and Jennie were really good at spotting birds and me, well, I claim my marine biologist eyes couldn’t adjust to seeing non-salty wildlife. Weaver got really into the Piranha Fishing and within minutes had caught her first Piranha.

I struggled and first caught some algae and then finally caught a Piranha. And Jennie eventually, right before we left caught her very own little guy.

Aww Dean's cute little Piranha....isn't he vicious?

Other activities included on our trip in the Amazon, lots of kayaking and canoeing through flooded forests, hikes through the rainforest, caimon (crocodile) hunting and seeing lots of pink river dolphins! Once back on land, we took a few days to hike the waterfalls at Presidente Figueredo and then came back to Fortaleza to enjoy a few days at the beach! One nice side note, the bugs in the Amazon weren't bad at all. We spent most of our time on a smaller river that lacked sufficient oxygen for mosquitoes. So thankfully we kept the bug bites to a minimum! More photos of the Amazon and more stories in the next blog. BJS to both Dean and Weaver for venturing into the Amazon with a marine biologist with dendrophobia (fear of trees).