Last chance at the internet for a while so a few(!) photos of the people we have met and the area.
Well, our time in Brazil is nearly at an end. We are fully stocked and shortly Nicolas will take us (and Monika & Herbert) to complete our booking out procedures. This gives us about 72 hours before we have to leave Brazil (having said that we know one couple who booked out in July and are still here!!!). All being well, we will leave the marina this afternoon and hopefully set off on Friday. It will be a strange day – of course we are really looking forward to moving on and seeing more new places but we have had such an amazing time here - we have seen so much and had so many incredible experiences. Interestingly, however, strange as it may seem, I think the over-riding memory I will take from Brazil is of the people. Everyone has been so friendly and welcoming right from beginning (the guy we spoke to at the station on our first trip to Joao Pessoa) to the end (Wanderson, our landlord on the last part of our trip around Brazil (and the lady selling me some hammocks and then giving me a gift just on Sunday!) and everyone in between: Cida and her daughters in the village “mercadino”, Bella who does the laundry, the local fishermen sitting outside the “Associacao de Pescadores”, Bernardo the ‘marina’ taxi driver and all the others who have helped carry my bags, till girls, bag packers and carriers in the supermarkets, etc etc etc. This could go on for ever. Of course I’ve not even mentioned the marina ‘boys’ – just brilliant!! All such lovely, lovely people and all rather sad as we have spoken to most for the last time L So what ARE our plans? Well, the current idea is to head straight to St Laurent du Maroni in French Guiana. The Maroni river marking the border with Suriname. It’s about 1430 miles (almost as far as from the Cape Verdes to Brazil!!!) and hopefully with the current usually running quite fast in our favour it should be a shorter journey. HOWEVER………………………. However long it is, we’ll be out of touch for a while and I’m not sure what we will find in SLM as we have seen slightly conflicting reports! So I’ll post this now and be in touch again in October!!! Sorry, these are the best maps I can get at the moment and we're off to book out in a minute. If I can get a signal later on, I'll try to find some better ones!!
At last, I’ve found time to write about some of things that have been happening here since we returned from Rio. It’s been mostly hello, hello again and farewell. The exception to that was a couple of weeks ago at a Saturday “Sabadino”.
About 12 of us met up (some rather bleary-eyed!) at 11.00 am to catch the second to last train to Joao Pessoa. It stops running on Saturdays at 12.30! and we wanted to be sure to get there. We arrived early just as everything was setting up and soon the music was playing, people dancing and to a background of lively chatter. All at once this was shattered as we heard what sounded like gun-shots and people at the far end of the square started to run. The stall holders were calling “calme, calme” and we thought that maybe it had just been a car or something. Unfortunately not, there were two more bursts of fire and this time everyone scattered. One couple with us had their 3 year-old daughter with them and they immediately disappeared behind a nearby building! Luckily for us this was all and the gunman did not venture any further through the square. Salvatore did see one injured woman being carried to an ambulance and we heard later that a man had been killed. It was thought to be drug barons at work. Around 6 o’clock our party split up as Margot was flying back to Chile; the other 4 went off for dinner but as we had met up with one of the guys from the bar who was coming back to the marina, I was not abandoned!!! A very strange day!!! Since then it has been a lot of farewells; Salvatore and Julie left that week, Magali returned to France, Fonch sailed off, and number of others we have known slightly also left. There is a good possibility though that we see some of them as we are mostly heading in the same direction - the Caribbean via the Guianas. As I said at the beginning, there have also been some hellos.
We also met up with them on couple of other occasions and spent some really pleasant time - talking about good sailing adventures, not their horrendous experience. Re-meeting people is great –we first met Monika and Herbert on Mon Juan, in the Cape Verde Islands, saw them here before they flew back to Germany and have spent some excellent times with them just recently – it looks as if we will be setting off at the same time but taking slightly different routes still, hopefully we will see them again- perhaps in Trinidad!! Setting off soon also is Kevin (mentioned in my early posts) who has just returned from working in Australia for about 2months – another au revoir we hope! Rather than complicate this with our plans, I’ll post this now and post again with maps and plans tomorrow or Wednesday.
Have fun - we are! Last part of our trip - finally! Been having trouble getting a signal recently but really want to get this posted as it won't be long now before we're off again!!!
The next day we were up early again as our guide for the day, Vicente, was there to pick us up at 8.00 o‘clock.
Back to our car and we drove through the Tijuca Forest. This was an area that had been completely de-forested by coffee growing in the 19century but had been re-planted when the coffee crops were unsuccessful and it as realised that it was changing the climate around Rio. Unfortunately, to my mind anyway, it had been planted with trees and plants from all over the world rather than being taken back to its more natural state as perhaps it would have been today. A very interesting winding journeywith some lovely scenery and waterfalls. We stopped at one of Vicente’s favourite places – a wonderful viewing spot with a pagoda seat for those more energetic than us who were walking through the forest!!! Back to the city and our next stop was the modern cathedral, Cathedral of St. Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro which was built between 1964 and 1979. Pretty ugly I thought from the outside but quite amazing in! It was based on the Mayan style of pyramids (4-sided) and the ‘ceiling’ was a cross with the arms of the cross stretching 64 metres (210ft) from floor to ceiling with amazing stained glass in green, blue, yellow and red – Magnificent! These provided masses of light and in fact there was no artificial light in it at all! It has an overall height of 75 metres (246 ft) and the inside area measures 8,000 square meters and sufficient 5,000 seats or it has a standing-room capacity of 20,000 people. The other fascinating feature was that due to its shape and construction no air conditioning was needed but it kept cool as the air was circled continuously as hot air rose and escaped through open areas between the bricks pulling in cooler air below. SO clever and effective.
Of the 2000+ tiles, 300-odd are hand painted by him depicting a pregnant African woman he would not comment on this except to say that it was a "Personal problem from my past" In fact Vicente had worked with him on the steps for a while and said he could be quite a difficult character – a typical artist perhaps!!. Overall, quite incredible but I would have wanted to walk up them in the rain! That was about it for the day and Vicente drove us back to the pousada along the infamous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. Another incredible day! Unfortunately, the next day we were flying out (I should really have given us another day there) and so we had a leisurely breakfast and chatted to Wanderson. Most of the other guests were in their twenties and we realised that Wanderson would take them to the ever-present Ipanema beach parties and keep an eye on them while they partied. We thought was a really great way of doing things and he was so astounded to hear that we had sailed across the Atlantic, he offered us free accommodation at his own house next time we were in Rio!! Off to the airport and fight back to Joao Pessoa, taxi from airport and arriving safely back on Moontide at about 1.00 in the morning. All was well on board and after a round trip of roughly nearly 8000 kilometres (5000 miles) as the crow flies we just collapsed!
What an amazing 23 days!!! Next Episode!! Nearly there! At around 3.00 pm on Wednesday, we arrived in Manaus at a busy port with cars, lorries and taxis everywhere! We had been warned that the tax drivers inside the port overcharge for the journey to your hotel and certainly one who approached us would not put on his meter and wanted R$50 and the one we got outside on the road only charged R$20!!! Our room at the hotel was lovely – very spacious (yes including the bathroom!) and with a balcony from which we could see over downtown Manaus. A short rest and then off to the supermarket for supplies. On the way back I thought it would be nice to walk past the Amazonas Theatre and cross the square in front of it – making the other 2 sides of a square – only problem was we could not tell which road to go down then and definitely walked a lot further than necessary Unfortunately we realised in the evening that we were suffering from upset stomachs which incapacitated both of us all day Thursday and as we were still quite bad in that evening we decided to postpone our trip for a day until Saturday. (Rather a shame as I had hoped to have a bit of a tour round Manaus on Saturday but luckily nothing was booked!) So Friday was a quiet day but I felt up to rinsing out some clothes and drying them on the balcony. Luckily the air-conditioning in the room was very good so at least we could be comfortable there. Bright and early Saturday we and 2 other guys from the hotel were met and driven through part of the city to a small pier near a hotel in lovely grounds (can’t remember the name at the mo!) where we met up with everyone taking the tour that day. There were about 15 or 16 (including 2 young children) of us and we were directed into 2 boats with a guide. Our guide had been born nearby along the banks of the Rio Negro. He was working hard to move on and his boat was a really classy looking speedboat carrying 7 and the other boat more like a motor launch but almost as fast! It was a real touristy trip; it was MEANT to be eco-friendly but..……! We started off zooming up river – banging and shaking about with the lady next to Chris not feeling too good! Not quite as fast as the flying boat tho!! The first stop was at a place where we could swim with dolphins. Well, it was not really swimming as we were on a ledge round a river hut but the dolphins were free to come and go as they liked – but they also knew very well that they would be nicely fed if they stayed around!!
After a quick shot of coffee off we went again this time to see an “Indigenous Community”. Again, set up for tourists as the actual native Amerindians live further into the rain forest and no-one can go there without a permit. We arrived and were greeted by one of the men and shown a brazil nut tree – huge! Up to 200 ft high!! And possibly 500 years old!! Although a single mature tree can produce over 250 pounds of nits a year, due to a number of reasons (including the inevitable deforestation) they are under threat. Interestingly it is the little agouti (the small overgrown guinea pig look-a-like) that can penetrate the nut's seed case and bury some of the nuts that germinate - sometime many years later. It was also quite funny as our guide had been really taken aback when he heard that we had sailed across the Atlantic in a 10 metre boat – so small to him as his motor-boat was about 8 metres (although a very different style) and he kept checking that we could sleep on it, eat on it etc!!! He just could not get over it and told the Headman and his wife who were both quite shocked and amazed as well – it was good to be able to give them something back for the show of their culture. There have never been sailing boats on the Amazon so the concept is quite difficult for them to understand even though they have spent all their lives on the water!! And could probably swim before they could walk! After a time to purchase mementos we were off again for lunch. On the pontoon to the boat there were some amazing caterpillars more of which we saw again later. We then moved on to a hut (on stilts this time) where a lady and her 3 children were looking after a sloth, baby caiman and an anaconda!!! I did hold the sloth but passed on the others! The sloth was free to move round the hut as it pleased and I am sure that he/she could have easily (but probably rather slowly) climbed away if he had wanted. We think he was quite young and had probably been ‘rescued’ in the forest. He was quite amazing as he gripped with long claws with all four legs – often at impossible angles. The claws did not dig in but just due to the strength alone they left marks for quite a while. Next on the agenda was fishing!! But not your ordinary kind of fish – these are the largest freshwater scaled fish – the pirarucu. This was not really very nice at all – a number of the fish were kept in a small compound – deep but small. Everyone was invited to take a rod – really just a largish stick – with a string attached to it. On this was tied a small (dead) fish as bait – no hook though I’m pleased to say!! You could then fish until your bait was taken - apparently there was a huge pull on the stick as the fish grabbed and hang on but it was not something I wanted to try. Chris did and ALMOST got his out of the water! The fish looked rather like dog-fish but had beautifully coloured red edged fins. It was then off to see the Meeting of the Waters where the Rio Negro and Rio Solimeos meet. The two rivers meet to form the Rio Amazonas and due to differences in flow, acidity and temperature, they do not mix for a number of miles and clearly show the dark waters of one and the lighter waters of the other (can’t remember which way round although logically it would be the darker waters of the Rio Negro!). This is meant to be very impressive but having seen a similar occurrence at Alter do Chao which although not so long was in fact far more marked and obvious, it was a little underwhelming – at least on the day we were there! A fast ride back to the pier where we had boarded and that was the end of our Rio Amazonas trip – what a day!!!! The next morning we packed our bags again and booked out of the hotel. As our flight was not until later in the afternoon there was time for a short wander round – looking at the Amazonas Theatre again and nearby squares before taking a taxi to the airport – what a wonderful stay in the Amazon rain forest! Next stop Rio de Janeiro! |
Keren & ChrisFollow us again as we start the second part of our trip Archives
January 2016
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