Rollin’ Down the River

In keeping with the song title theme, I bring you Amazonas Part Two: Water Adventures. After our misadventures in the jungle, we decided to stick to the river. Our tiny native guide, Fabio, took us piranha fishing, alligator spotting, and sludge paddling. Fabio (pictured below) exemplifies my favorite Portuguese expression, “suave na nave” or, in English, chill bro chill. 

Our first activity, piranha fishing, proved that Americans are better suited to producing chemically laden foodstuffs and thinking of clever ways to market them than catching real food in its natural habitat. While Fabio caught at least one fish every five minutes, it took me thirty minutes of losing my bait to catch a prized piranha.

I had to throw it back because it was too small, but that does not negate the fact that I caught a piranha, by myself, using raw chicken bait and a bamboo pole.

Elliot and Ricky also caught piranhas. Even though he was on anti-anxiety meds, Ricky still screamed when he caught one, and Fabio had to release it for him. We ran out of chicken bait, so Fabio unhooked Elliot’s piranha and cut it alive, explaining that piranhas are carnivorous and we could use one as bait to catch more. True story.

After we had our fill of fishing, we rowed to another island to watch the sunset.

During the North American winter, millions of bird migrate to the Amazon. Everyday at sunset, they fly from one island to another in a mass 30-minute migration. They flood the sky like locusts, and you can hear thousands of wings flapping in the wind like helicopters. It’s borderline terrifying and beautiful.

Click below to see an alligator and read about how we became the star attraction of the biggest Valentine’s Day transvestite drag show in Manaus. How’s that for a cliffhanger?

Once the sun had set, we set off in the darkness to search for alligators. They are nocturnal, so we were supposed to look out for their glowing red eyes. We searched for over an hour, until suddenly Fabio reached into the water and pulled out this baby.

Our final water activity consisted of a “leisurely canoe tour of the Rio Negro”. Really, we tried to paddle through a swamp of low hanging trees. Fabio would try to grab nearby trees and use them as leverage to push us forward since our paddles were stuck in the river. We also had to duck thorny branches every five seconds and assure Ricky that the bugs in the boat weren’t deadly. 

With our jungle adventures over, we took a boat back to the main city of Manaus. We took the best showers of our lives, ate at a restaurant in an old converted garage (we saw old tires in the back), and tried to see the sites.

The fair in Manaus, where we ate delicious açai and tapioca. 

This is açai, the fruit of the Gods that grows in the Amazon. Elliot loved it so much he bought a one-liter bag of it and drank it on the spot.

This is the main attraction in Manaus, the Teatro Amazonas. During the rubber boom in the 1800s, some rich Brazilians decided to build an Italian-style opera house in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, with the goal of making Manaus “one of the great centers of civilization” (according to Wikipedia). The opera house still stands, but they didn’t quite achieve their goal of making Manaus as awesome as say, Rome.

The next day, we ventured to the Science Forest/Biological Preserve of the Amazon, a zoo-like park on the edge of the city. There we encountered chirping otters, embalmed anacondas, and evangelical religious shrines.

Manatees, if you please. 

Unfortunately, it started to rain as we exited the park. Despite the fact that it is in the RAINFOREST, the city has no infrastructure to deal with rainwater. Before we left the hostel, we asked the front desk clerk if we should bring umbrellas with us. “No, it’ll probably rain but you don’t really need them,” he advised. 

And so we waded through the flooded sidewalks, trying to find our way back to the hostel. During this endeavor, one of Elliot’s flip flops floated away in the water. As he ran after it, his other shoe fell off, leaving him barefoot. Fun fact: there are zero shops open on Sundays in Manaus, much less shops that sell shoes. So Elliot got to walk 2km back to the hostel barefoot in the rain. 

Ricky, personifying our despair. Meanwhile, Kaly waited under a nearby awning and refused to forge on. Eventually the rain let up and we made it back by some miracle. It’s lucky we survived, because the greatest party of all time was awaiting us. 

We somehow wandered into the annual pre-Valentine’s Day funk/axé transvestite drag show street festival. It was just as entertaining as it sounds. There was a Michael Jackson impersonator dancing on stage, men selling light-up devil horns, and several other things I can not describe on this public blog that my grandparents read. 

At first we stood around awkwardly, but then we decided to let go and dance like crazy to classic hits such as Rebolation. Somehow the DJ/announcer noticed us and decided to interview us over the loudspeaker. We explained that we were from America and he asked us how we liked Manaus. He then hit on Ricky and invited Kaly up on stage to take photos. The whole audience found this hilarious and laughed at our Portuguese.

With our fame solidified, we fled to the airport to catch the earliest flight possible back to civilization (aka São Paulo). I did not catch malaria, get attacked by indigenous tribes throwing poison darts, or encounter any man-eating snakes. Thus, I consider my trip to the Amazon a success and my childhood dreams were fulfilled.