Conexão

Conexão...

Conexão...

After crossing the equator yesterday night at 23.40 we reached Belem in Brazil, this morning. We were a little bit delayed so that also the tours started later than they were supposed to start. Cristiane, Joyce, Mr. MacDonald and myself were the escorts for the Guama River Boat tour, which took us out to a wonderful island close to the city. We cruised for approximately 30 minutes on the river and saw a lot of river houses standing around. Most of them were made of wood and each one at a small canoe. It looked a little bit like in this “Waterworld” movie. Afterwards we reached the island were a few people lived as well. They don’t really have electricity over there and they are living directly in the rainforest. We had a walk through their village and found also a place were the huge anacondas are living. We didn’t saw any, but we were told that they are around 6 meters long.

Continuing our way into the rainforest our guides explained us different trees and plants and we saw a 65 year old Brazilian climbing up a really, really thin tree. It looked amazing how quick he was on top of the tree and even more amazing how he went down. He folded a leave of one of the palmtrees and made a kind of a rope out of it, which he twisted around his feet. It helped him to climb the tree, but was even more important for his way down. He jumped down from the tree. Which means that he just stopped holding on the tree and only used his feet one meter above the ground to stop his “free fall”.

We also met a tarantula, which seemed to be very nice, but didn’t wanted to sit on most of the guests, as nearly everybody used mosquito repellant. Our guide Pedro told us, that the tarantulas don’t like the repellant and therefore wouldn’t sit on anybody who sprayed such things on him or herself. ;)

Later on we found some interesting bugs and bats in the jungle, before we went back to the river boat and came back to our vessel. It was a very interesting shore excursion and I think that all our guests enjoyed it.

Where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic, the city of Belem marked the end of our Amazon river boat experience. Having completed the 48-hour boat journey and arriving in Belem at 7am, we got the local bus to the bus station and booked ourselves onto the midday bus to Brasilia, a mere 36 hours away. Hard core or what? (actually mad, stupid, idiotic etc are better descriptions to describe what we put our travel weary bodies through in one go).

To get to the coast we booked passage on an Amazon riverboat - fun, but not quite the romantic journey we'd imagined.  It's cramped, air-conditioned, and ruled by a couple of stern kitchen ladies who control your daily schedule.  More like joining the Navy than taking a cruise.