On Friday we had a Semester at Sea trip called Amazon Explorer. Here are some fast facts about the Amazon River
· It It is the second longest river in the world
· It is the largest in the world by water flow.
· It has the largest drainage basin in the world, about 2,720,000 sq. miles, accounts for approximately one-fifth of the world's total river flow.\
· It varies in width between 1 and 6.2 miles at low stage, but expands during the wet season to 30 miles or more. T
· It enters the Atlantic Ocean in a broad estuary about 150 miles wide.
We boarded this double-decker boat for our Amazon exploration.
On our way down the river we passed many of the famous houses on stilts, not to mention the floating gas stations.
The highlight was our visit to the "meeting of the waters," where the Rio Nebro's dark water and the Solimões River's muddy brown water that come together to form the Amazon River. For 3.7 miles, both rivers waters run side by side, without mixing. This phenomenon is caused by the great difference between the water temperatures and current speeds. The Negro River flows approximately 1.2 mph at 82 °F, while the Solimões River flows 2.4 to 3.7 mph at 72 °F.
Here is Barry on the bow of the little boat with Ambassador Shannon.
After the visit to the meeting of the waters visited what was touted as Terra Nova Community, an indigenous community and rubber plantation. Here is a house in the village. Notice the water line on the house showing how high the water was earlier this year!
We would hardly call it a plantation – there were only a handful of trees and one old man cooking the rubber for us to see. It is really sad they way the folks make a living doing demos for tourist.
We did see a few cool things including: Guarana is a climbing plant in the maple family, Sapindaceae, native to the Amazon basin and especially common in Brazil. Guarana features large leaves and clusters of flowers, and is best known for its fruit, which is about the size of a coffee bean. As a dietary supplement, guarana is an effective stimulant: its seeds contain about twice the concentration of caffeine found in coffee beans (about 2–4.5% caffeine in guarana seeds compared to 1–2% for coffee beans).
We also saw madioca being roasted. In Brazil, a crunchy meal called farinha de mandioca "manioc flour") of varying coarseness is produced for use as a condiment, a base for farofa, or a stand-alone side dish. Detoxified manioc roots are ground to a pulp called a massa and squeezed with a device called a tipiti to dry it out (the liquid produced by this may be collected and dried to produce tapioca, locally known as polvilho). The dried massa is then toasted over a large copper stove to produce the dried meal. This process varies regionally and by manioc species, and may include additional steps of re-soaking, dying and re-toasting the flour. Manioc agriculture and refinement to farinha is a major economic activity in the Western Amazon
From the village we went to a floating restaurant for another wonderful Brazilian buffet. No steak this time, but lots of fish dishes and some other interesting Brazilian dishes we can't describe!
The original plan had been for us to visit an ecological park between the rivers called Lake January. We would have boarded little small boats to get a closer look at the rain forest and fish for Piranha. Unfortunately, the water level is so low we weren't able to go there. We did take a short walk to see huge water lilies. Along the way we met a group of little girls dressed up in grass skirts and feathers – wanting us to take pictures with them and then to pay them. Once we were at the water lilies there was a little boy who had a sloth and he out right asked for money for us to take our picture with the animal!
After dinner on the ship we went to hear a celebration of 30 years of Celdo Braga, a local poet and composer at the Teatro Amazona. Our seats were in the second balcony – 5 per box. It was a little hard to see and the padded seats were hard. The music was very good. We hadn't know exactly what to expect but were anticipating poetry set to traditional indigenous folk music. That wasn't what it was at all. It's a bit hard to describe, but let's call it contemporary Brazilian folk-rock. There were three (mostly) acoustic guitar players, a bass player, drummer, and percussionist, plus Celdo Braga who sang, recited poetry, played a wooden flute and some percussion instruments. It was very well done. The musicians were all fantastic and the arrangements were quite interesting. There were some really interesting percussion instruments used, including a rain stick, and halved gourd shells floating in a pan of water. That was the coolest! A variety of singers came on stage to do a song and pay tribute to the composer. Apparently, many of the folks had been part of his band over the years. The evening concluded with a completely different ensemble that played very upbeat stuff, almost like reggae. The crowd really got into these songs and someone later suggested that was his original band and some of his oldest hits. We're not sure about that.
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