Manaus, Brazil

Monday, November 7th - Tuesday, November 8th

Monday, November 7th
Amazing Amazon
Day 14
M/S Regatta
Manaus, Brazil
The Amazon River
Arriving: 9:00 AM
60% Chance of Rain - 87 Degrees

The story of Manaus is the rise and fall of a bouncing ball.

There are countless species of flora and fauna in the Amazon that can't be found anywhere else on Earth. They are unique to this environment. We can't count them all because we haven't even discovered them all. We don't even know what we don't know. In the midst of this unmatched biodiversity, the very first European explorers were intrigued by one tree in particular. They watched as Indio tribes tapped these trees to collect a milky-white liquid that solidified into a pliable and elastic substance from which they made many useful things, and round balls for playing games. The Europeans had never seen anything like it, and added this bouncy stuff to the specimens they brought back to their home countries. An Englishman got hold of one of these samples and started experimenting. Of all the potential uses he found for this product, one was especially promising. It turns out that this substance was very effective at "rubbing out pencil markings." And so, he called it rubber.

For many, many years, rubber was just a novelty with limited commercial potential. Natural rubber is only stable within a certain temperature range. It becomes soft and sticky in extreme heat, hard and brittle in extreme cold. An American inventor solved this problem in 1844 with a process called vulcanization. You might recognize his name, Charles Goodyear. Vulcanized rubber is stable at any temperature, opening up infinite new possibilities, but two subsequent inventions exponentially expanded the market for rubber and changed the Amazon forever.

In 1888, a British inventor was trying to improve the bicycle. This new mode of transportation was just starting to take hold offering unprecedented freedom and mobility, but the ride was rough on the crude rubber tires of the time. The solution was to trap air between layers of rubber in the tire to absorb the shock and cushion the ride. The pneumatic tire. Its inventor, another recognizable name, John Dunlop. The rubber boom in the Amazon had begun, and Manaus was ground zero. Demand for rubber grew steadily and foreign business interests took notice. Tapping the rubber was a very labor-intensive process. Just 2.5 acres of land in the rain forest could have as many as 700 different species of trees, but no more than a few of any one kind. Rubber trappers had to walk miles to tap their trees in the morning only to retrace their steps in the evening to collect the rubber. There weren't enough men to do the job, so the rubber barons forced the Indios to work as slaves, and they started to make big money.

The invention of the automobile was the final catalyst in this runaway reaction. When Ford Motor Company introduced the Model T, mass-produced on the first modern assembly line, the demand for rubber to supply Ford's factories with tires exploded. And the Amazon had a monopoly.

At the height of the rubber boom in 1911, there were more than 100 rubber barons in Manaus. It became one of the wealthiest cities in the world overnight. The nouveau riche of the Amazon had built a city worthy of their place in the world. The very best in modern infrastructure, grand public buildings, graceful mansions, and the pinnacle achievement of the era, the Teatro Amazonas. The rubber barons of Manaus built one of the world's great opera houses, in the middle of the jungle.

The boom created by names like Goodyear, Dunlop, and Ford, was undone by an unknown name, Henry Wickham. The rubber barons of Manaus thought they had their game of Monopoly won, but Wickham had Boardwalk and Park Place in his back pocket the whole time. In 1876, Wickham smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of the Amazon and took them back to the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in London. The botanists at Kew planted the seeds in a greenhouse to recreate the conditions of the Amazon, and the rubber trees flourished. When the seedlings were old enough to travel, they were shipped to tropical plantations in the British colonies. By 1912, they were ready to come to market with this new source of rubber. Rubber plantations were much more efficient than harvesting naturally growing rubber in the Amazon. Vast forests planted row by row with rubber trees exponentially increased the yield of each tapper. Prices plummeted and the rubber barons of the Amazon couldn't compete. The boom had gone bust in just 30 years. Within a decade, Manaus was once again the jungle backwater it had been before. The city was literally plunged into darkness. They could no longer afford to import coal to run the generators. Even the grand Teatro Amazonas fell silent. It didn't host an opera for nearly 90 years, the stage turned into a football pitch, the auditorium used for petrol storage.

Modern Manaus is still a city of faded glory, home to two million people. It is the hub of economic activity in the region, a free trade zone since 1967, the "Hong Kong of the Amazon." It sits at the confluence of the three greatest rivers in the Amazon Basin: The Solimoes (as the Amazon is known on this stretch), the Rio Negro, and the Madeira, but the city isn't actually on the Amazon. Manaus is 5 miles up the Rio Negro from the "Encontro das Aguas," the meeting of the waters where Brazilians believe that the Amazon truly begins. Just as in Santarem, two rivers flow side-by-side for miles before they are fully integrated. The Rio Solimoes is a creamy light brown in color, alkaline, cooler, and faster than the Rio Negro with eight times more sediment. The Negro is almost back, acidic, warmer, and slower. When they come together, it looks like coffee with cream before the cream has been stirred in.

Manaus is host to the three quintessential experiences of the Amazon:

• The City
• The River
• The Jungle

We will take them in order.

Manaus has a number of lovely relics of the rubber boom, beginning at the banks of the Rio Negro. The Alfandega, the customs house prefabricated in England and shipped to Manaus in sections, has stood watch over the port area since 1906. The Mercado Municipal was built in 1902, a series of cast iron open-air market buildings, the design by Gustave Eiffel based on the grand public market in Paris, Les Halles. This wholesale and retail market is the commercial heart of the city, with row after row of tropical fruit, fish, and vegetables. The most famous of the mansions built by the rubber barons is Palacio Rio Negro overlooking the river. It was completed in 1913, after the collapse of the rubber market. The owner refinanced his grand home and retreated to Europe leaving his debt behind. The Palacio became a government building, home to the governor of the state of Amazonas.

Brazil is infamous for its favelas, vast slums of ramshackle houses made from scavenged materials, lawless, and historically without utility service. In Rio de Janeiro, favelas climb the hillsides above the city. In Manaus, the favelas are found in low-lying water-logged hollows, land unfit for habitation that no one else wanted. The city has relocated the residents of some of the downtown favelas into better housing, creating beautiful meandering parks in their place.

We toured the Indian Museum, a collection of artifacts from the local indigenous tribes housed in a re-purposed open-air schoolhouse. Next, we ventured just outside the city, to the campus of the Army Jungle Training Center, and the Zoologoico do CIGS, the military zoo home to more than 300 animals from the Amazon.

Our city tour is called "The Highlights of Manaus," but really there is only one, the Teatro Amazonas. The Manaus Opera House was conceived and built to be as fine as any in the world, and surely it is. This is the urban symbol of the Amazon, a grand reminder of the wealth generated by the jungle, in the city cut from the jungle. It is a fusion of Manaus and Milan, the architecture and materials imported from Europe, the design themes at home in the Amazon.

The auditorium, in the shape of a harp, seats 700 on the main floor and three wrap-around balconies. The seats, upholstered in red velvet, are fixed, but the backs are rounded and the armrests sculpted to give the illusion of chairs. The ceiling is painted as if looking up at the four pillars of the Eiffel Tower. From that is suspended a chandelier of French bronze and Italian Murano glass. The stage curtain was woven in Paris, and painted by a Brazilian artist to depict the Meeting of the Waters and the Indigenous goddess of the river, Iara. The hardwoods are from Brazil, but finished in Europe, the light and dark mosaic of the floors also meant to evoke the Meeting of the Waters. The marble is Italian Carrara, the stone of the facade Portuguese, the cast iron columns and banisters from England, the mirrors French, the porcelain Venetian. The cupola is adorned with 36,000 ceramic tiles from Alsace in the colors of the Brazilian flag. The park leading to the grand entrance of the opera house is paved in waves of black and white stone, again a reference to the Meeting of the Waters. This theme is repeated in the iconic paving at Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro.

The Teatro Amazonas is truly glorious, not just a museum and a monument to history, but a living part of the fabric of the city, the pride of Manaus. Fully restored most recently in 1990, there is a renewed commitment to live classical music and the calendar is full. The Opera House hosts a music festival every spring, and this week it is home to the Amazonas Film Festival.

After our morning in the city, we spent the evening on the river, in search of caimans. The caiman is neither alligator, nor crocodile, but similar to both, the only such creature in the Amazon.

It was a perfect night, the sky nearly clear, the moon nearly full, balmy in the mid-70s. We boarded a riverboat at the pier for a cruise to the jungle backwaters of January Lake, where we tied up to a floating dock. There, we transferred to "canoes," covered boats seating 10 people in 5 rows of two, with outboard Yamaha motors, the preferred form of transportation in the Amazon. Riding low in the water, we truly felt a part of the river as we went deeper into the night. The water, though, was not deep, maybe five to ten feet, grasses and reeds waved in the evening breeze, snags from submerged dead trees poked through the surface.

In the daylight, and in another season, the water would be covered with Victoria regia, the giant water lily of the Amazon, its lily pads reaching six feet across, so sturdy they can float a small child.

As we neared the hunting grounds, the guide began to scan the shoreline with a flashlight. Back and forth until he spotted our prey, the glowing orange eyes of a caiman staring back at us. Fixed on the target, another guide they called Caiman Boy jumped into the water to wrestle the caiman into submission with just his bare hands. He pursued the caiman with fearless abandon, neck deep in the inky murky waters of the river hiding a thousand unknown hazards. When the caiman, stunned by the light, was subdued, Caiman Boy climbed back into the boat, bringing the reptile with him. Fierce and pissed at his change of circumstance, the caiman thrashed violently and broke loose from his handler. The women screamed and the men recoiled as the caiman scampered toward the back of the boat. It took both guides to regain control of the beast and tie him down for the trip back to the floating dock where he was posed for pictures. When show and tell was over, the caiman was returned to the river.

Admittedly, this was not a PETA-sanctioned tour, but we have been assured that no reptiles were harmed in the filming of this movie. It was great fun just to be out on the river under the stars. With the motor cut and our canoe adrift, only the sounds of nature disturbed the peace, the call and response of a thousand living things.


Tuesday, November 8th
Amazing Amazon
Day 15
M/S Regatta
Manaus, Brazil
The Amazon River
Departing: 4:00 PM
60% Chance of Rain - 89 Degrees

City and river explored, the jungle awaited, "The Great Green Hell."

The Amazon rain forest is home to more than ten percent of all living species in the world. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 2,200 fishes, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. Every inch of space is put to its highest and best use, every resource is allocated according maximum efficiency, every opportunity is maximized in the never-ending struggle for life. This battle royalle is more vertical than horizontal, its front lines in the impenetrable canopy, the supply lines amid the leaf litter on the forest floor. Everything green must have access to water and nutrients in the soil, and the sunlight that rarely filters down that far. The fauna follows the flora up to the canopy, or down to the ground. In between it's no-man's land, a demilitarized zone. Much of the wildlife has adapted to stay hidden, sometimes heard and rarely seen, but it is there in overwhelming quantity and staggering diversity. Low to the ground, iguanas and snakes slither; giant and relatively cute capybara rodents scurry; tapirs, jaguars, and wild boar roam; and ants march in relentless precision. So many ants, in fact, that they represent 10% of the non-plant biomass in the Amazon. Billions and billions and billions of ants. Howler monkeys and sloths swing from tree to tree. Osprey, ibis, toucans, herons, kingfishers, and macaws fly above the forest and swoop down to the river below.

This biodiversity is not just key to the health of the rain forest and the Amazon region, but to the entire planet. The Amazon is the world's greatest carbon sink, removing pollution from the air, and producing as much as 40% of the oxygen we breathe. The Amazon is critical to the ecosystem of the planet, we cannot survive without it. And yet, over the last 50 years, 16% of the rain forest has been lost to deforestation and development. The tragic irony is that when the forest is cleared for agriculture, the soil that sustained the incredible life of the jungle is too thin to support crops for more than a few years. These trends must be reversed, and will be when it is in the interest of the Amazonians to do so. Eco-Tourism can help and we are here to do our part.

We boarded a fast boat on the pier for a ride up the Rio Negro to the site of our Jungle Trek. There are no bridges spanning the Amazon river, but a new one has just opened across the Rio Negro, linking Manaus on the North bank to the jungle on the South. The locals don't understand this government project. They say there is nowhere to go on the other side. But, traffic was brisk on the bridge as we cruised under it.

The Negro is running seasonably low, exposing deserted white sand beaches lined with palm trees for miles and miles up the river. The boat ride through paradise was lovely, but "The Great Green Hell" filled us with dread. The first challenge of the day began when we "docked" on the beach below the jungle. The "dock" consisted of a rickety portable wooden step ladder leading down from the bow and set into the sand in a few feet of water. Set on one of the lower steps, a ten foot plank extended from boat to shore, resting on a stump buried in the sand at the water line, another ramp down from that to dry land. On either side, guides took our hands as we tentatively made our way to shore.

We trudged through the sand up to the tree line and started into the jungle. Two planks bridged small streams along the way, the first very nearly split in two and submerged in the middle, the second in pretty good shape. We climbed the bluff above the beach and came to the jungle lodge that would be our base camp for the day.

After a brief orientation, we were assigned a guide and a woodsman and set off into the wild. Our woodsman blazed a trail, a path that disappeared behind us as we passed. In nearly 90 degree heat and high humidity, we climbed higher and higher into the jungle. As our woodsman led us deeper into the rain forest, machete in one hand clearing the way, he wove a crown of palm fronds for each of the ladies on our trek.

The ground was soft under our feet, roots and vines catching our boots, branches blocking our bodies, twists and turns in the trail as we hiked ever-higher, we were breathing hard and soaked with sweat.

This was not just an idle romp through the forest, but a serious jungle survival course. We paused to learn about the herbal remedies of the forest, how and where to build a shelter, how to find a dairy tree and tap its milk, how to climb a 30 foot tree without a single branch for the first 25 feet, where to build a fire and how to light it without a match, which liana vine provides clean refreshing water to drink, and which one is poisonous, how to set a trap for game. By the time we reached the crest of the jungle uplands, we were certified survivalists.

The long trek back down was proof of how far we had come. When we finally stumbled back to the lodge, refreshments awaited, served by the resident monkey. He was adopted by the lodge when his mama abandoned him. She carried her baby on her back, but he fell off when she was being chased by a pack of dogs and tried to escape up a tree. She was too afraid to come back for him.

Over and over and over again, in their descent of the River of Doubt, the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition faced impassable rapids and falls in the river. They were forced into the jungle to "portage" around the raging waters. They hauled their water-logged canoes out of the river, unloaded their supplies, and scouted the route forward. The rain forest is most dense at the water's edge where every living thing pushes out and up in search of light. They men had to clear a path, often a mile or more, through the tangle of jungle by hand and machete, under constant attack from insects, and sometimes from Indios. The party's massive canoes were too heavy to carry or even drag over the jungle floor, so the men had to create a "corduroy road." They felled trees, removed their branches, and laid them across the path to ease the way of the canoes. The prep work done, they were finally ready to drag the canoes and all their supplies down river and around the white water. This process would take a full day, or more, with their supplies dwindling, their health failing, and their strength waning. With their canoes reloaded and relaunched in the river, it was sometimes just another mile, just 15 minutes of relative rest, just around the next bend, that they faced another impassible obstacle and another struggle through the jungle.

Our jungle trek was literally a walk in the park compared to the ordeals that Roosevelt and his men faced every day, and we are exhausted. Their achievement is unimaginable. We are going to take a nap.