Everyone that knows me, knows how much I like Brazil but this trip was something that I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.
A wise person once said that travelling is not about reaching your destination, it is about the journey in itself and I think in this trip it was the first time I actually understood what those words really meant.
But let's not get ahead of myself. This is a story about survival in the Amazon, maritime disasters, fights, pure unadulterated luck, ceasing opportunities, music, diving and much, much more.
I've been a bit reluctant to post this trip because I don't think I can make it justice with just a few comments and pictures but on the other hand this is the only missing big trip from the past few years so it is about time I get on with it.
So without any more delays, I present you... Brazil 2008 - the once in a life time trip.
On paper this excursion was very, very different from what it actually ended up happening. María, Susana and I (the usual suspects) had plans to travel to Manaus , Capital of the Estate of Amazonia (see map below).
I've taken the liberty to highlight the three major points of interest. Manaus, Natal and Fernando de Noronha.
The original plan was to spend 3-4 days visiting the town and perhaps if we got lucky we could go and see the jungle in one of those tourist trips where they take all tourists to see where the local monkey goes to pee in the mornings and everyone goes there and takes the same photo. As we were strapped for time and the jungle is a bit dangerous, we decided that we would be happy with just doing the tourist thing, just this once.
After that we would be taking a boat down the Amazon river from Manaus all the way to Santarem, then spend a day visiting the town and catch a flight the following day to Recife and from there another one to Fernando de Noronha were we were planning on staying for a week doing some diving and enjoying the amazing local beaches... and then we would just go back to our favourite town in Brazil... Natal. Just in time for the CarNatal. :-) Have you heard of the Carnivals in Rio... it turns out, they also have one in Natal...but in November-December instead of February.
It sounds like a solid plan, doesn't it?
well, scratch all that. This is what really happened...
We did go to Manaus... so far all good and according to plan. Right after leaving the hotel we were kinda peckish so our first stop was a local shop where they were selling juices and pastries.
This was my introduction to the wonders of the Abacaxi juice (abacaxi is a type of pineapple, but sweeter). You could get a juice of anything you could think of. We've never heard of half of the fruits they had in there. It was so good that we even took a picture of the place. :-)
Look at all those fruits at the end! I bet you can't tell what most of them are.
Manaus turned out to be quite a small town. When people say that Brazil is a developing country and you go and visit Rio or Sao Paulo you get to wonder why they call it a developing country when any of those two cities have nothing to envy to the likes of London or New York, but then when you get to go to the Amazon area you get to see "the other Brazil".
The other thing I found quite striking was that the population in the area was almost exclusively indigenous and although they all also spoke Portuguese, it wasn't their main language.
As you can see, all their buildings are from the colonial era
The hygienic conditions in the local market let a lot to be desired. It's a pity you can't capture smells with your photographic camera, sometimes a smell speaks by itself better than a couple of images. I would have to say that rotten meat was the more prevalent smell.
The harbour was a bit of a surprise as well...
The loading and unloading is all done by people, no machinery of any kind. Just the old fashion guy carrying a lot of weight up and down the harbour, time and time again.
Although I have more pictures from when we took the boat a few days later.
All in all what we did on the first day was just to walk about and see the place. On the second day in the morning we went to "an agency" (trust me, I didn't put the word in quotes by mistake) with the intention to arrange a one day jungle trip for the following day. We got the address from María's guide book.
So we turned up there, a local guy greeted us at the door and took us upstairs to the first floor to what it turned out to be his house!
He told his children to go and play in the room next door and led us to a small room all painted in dark green and decorated only with a desk and two chairs.
I am not sure what María and Susana where thinking in that moment but I was ready to go to the next agency on the list.
I have to admit that although he lacked the lavishly decorated leaflets with glossy photographs that we are all used to see in any travelling agency, what he had instead was the best selling tool I've ever seen.
He handed us a booklet with hand written comments from tens and tens of his previous customers... all written in different languages, there was English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian. German... Tens of them!
We scanned through them and read the ones we thought were the most interesting and I have to admit that despite of the initial shock, our confidence in that "agency" grew considerably. It was clear they were genuine comments from other fellow travellers and they opened our eyes as to some of the possibilities. From some of the comments it transpired that some people were going for more than one day...
The "travel agent"/"Agency" owner asked us how long we where planning on spending in the area and we said that about 4 days. He considered that and after a brief pause he replied saying that he could organise a 3 day trip in the jungle for us.
We stared at the guy for a few seconds as if he were trying to pull our legs, then we stared at each other wondering whether this was for real or not and then back to the guy. We asked him what he meant by 3 days. Did he mean WE WOULD BE SLEEPING IN THE JUNGLE? for real?
"If you can't do three days we could organise it for only two but it's a long trip so it's best if you can spend at least three days" he replied.
I remember we all stared at each other with total incredulity on our faces. This trip was meant to start the following day in the morning... not even 24h notice and he wasn't offering the tourist thing, no, this was the real thing... just the three of us somewhere in the middle of the jungle with a local guide and all we could carry with us.
We smiled at each other and without a second thought we all decided to accept. This was far better than what we thought!!
Taking some tourists to the jungle is quite a risky operation... no just because of the hundreds of different poisonous snakes, tarantulas, black widows, ... you get the picture... but on top of that you also have the heat and the extreme humidity that not everyone can take.
I don't think there is an insurance for this kind of thing and if something bites you in the jungle... you'll probably die because going back to civilisation may take you hours (if they can actually take you back).
I don't think I need to state the obvious but the jungle is a very dangerous place where anything can happen despite of all the possible precautions you may take, and we did take as many precautions as we thought of.
Extremely poisonous snakes and spiders nasty plants and animals, not to mention how easy it is to get lost in it. Finding a tour operator willing to take the risk of taking a few clueless tourists about is quite a finding in itself so you can imagine our delight when we got offered the opportunity to spend 3 days in the jungle.
We would be going with a native guide to a place that was 4 hours by bus + one hour by boat. When I say a native guide I don't mean some random guy from a village, our guide was ex-military with extended periods living in the jungle and as he proved to us time and time again he knew every plant and insect in the jungle... he was a walking jungle encyclopaedia!
We weren't as crazy as just going with anyone... we did ask! ;-)
Let me tell you... the expression "in the middle of nowhere" doesn't describe how remote this place was. You could only reach the base camp by boat... no roads...
And that was only where the base camp was. From there we would walk further inside the jungle and away from the river. It was in the middle of the jungle by one of the Amazon affluents. The plan was to spend the first night there in the base camp, on the second day we would go and walk in the jungle to an older part of the jungle where we would make camp to return the following day in time to take the boat back, and then catch the local bus back to Manaus.
We couldn't believe our luck! :-)
The three of us were really excited about this new turn of events and we went back to the hotel early because the following day we would be having an early start in order to catch the bus to take us to the base camp.
From the day we spent in Manaus it became very clear that there wasn't much more to see and do over there so leaving the town three days earlier than anticipated wasn't a particularly difficult decision to take, we wouldn't be missing anything important.
No comments:
Post a Comment