Tuesday July 6

July 6

Another early morning! I rose early to meet my driver to take me to my first jungle lodge at the Rio Negro. the drive started out with a ferry trip from Manaus to the other side of the Rio Negro where one can still see floating houses. Most of them were dispersed by the government a few years ago because they cause a lot of pollution.

The drive for the most part of the 78 km took the route parallel to the Amazonas which remained invisible. We passed many a house and lots that were settled by the poor from elsewhere in Brazil--the settlement strategy is ongoing causing major deforestation along the roads. Just like the transamazonian highway-- roads help deforestation along. The agriculture in this particular region is for fruit some small cattle ranchers and fish by means of aquaculture. Fish apparently is the latest craze: there are plenty of them, they don't require all that much care and they bring in a lot of money. At a road stand one could try coca milk from a green-colored coca nut.

Once arrived at the very nice lodge ( with wi-fi  in the common area) I was subjected to one of the best lunches in my life-the food is amazingly tasteful! 

With others forming a small group we set out to feed pink dolphins. OMG--they are amazing. Much bigger than I pictured them, the longest can get 2 m. these guys were almost as big as the manatees in Florida. Huge beaklike mouths with little teeth, very tame and loving human contact. There were many--ten were given names since they are regulars.

I didn't mention that I am emerging myself in Portuguese --understand now quite a bit (sometimes I can detect Spanish words and sometimes French and there is also the Italian element) and then somehow I am trying to make sense of what is being said around me. Our guide speaks good English but since I seem to be the only one in the group requiring English, he forgets. The group helped me out tremdously; one couple with two kids lived in Lexington, Kentucky for three years and I ended up talking to their 15 year old quite a bit. They come from Sao Paulo. Another teenager lives in Switzerland with a German father and Brasilian mother so she helped out too. During this particular trip we watched the end of the soccer game Uruguay - Holland  with its graceful but disappointing ending. The couple from Uruguay was quite excited, so were all Brazilians.

We also walked for at least 45 minutes in the middle of the day to the foundation where a tour guide started a local craft shop plus training for the locals. There they use old wood and make it into beautiful object (animals, salad spoons, little jewelry boxes). We got back to the boat via motorcycle taxi... I was glad to be offered a ride in a car.

The evening saw me on a canoe yet again, this time to observe animals at night. We didn't see all that much but just to be on the Rio Negro at night is pretty daunting. We did see a tree boa, several tree frogs which happen to be the food source of those boas, a sloth, a tarantula-like spider and a young little caiman.

Quite an eventful and amazing day! Needless to say, I slept extremely well.