Good Friday, April 10 Manaus (day two)
Because it is good Friday in this very Catholic country, everything is closed. Yesterday our guide Andres
told us that even if you wanted to buy a bottle of milk on Friday, you couldn't. So, we decided it would be a good day to take the riverboat tour. After a lot of negotiating on Ronit's part, she found a boat tour at a very good price. We were on a maximum 10-person motorboat with a covering awning, much like the longboats in Thailand. The four of us had our own boat pilot, our English-speaking guide, whose name is O'Reilly (!) and a handsome young man we believe is the owner of the boat
. Passengers on the ship took large boats to the lake, and then got into small boats like ours; but we got to travel the whole trip on the Rio Negro (Black River) in our small boat. It was a gorgeous ride. On the way, we saw grey dolphins, lots of them, not only surfacing, but also leaping fully out of the water. We saw many, many beautiful herons, eagles, hawks, buzzards and a yellow-winged bird that was gorgeous in flight. We also saw iguanas in trees, a few of which jumped into the water. There were gorgeous flowering trees, and the most beautiful thing was the many shades and gradiations of green. We passed many houses on stilts and floating houses,
which we would call houseboats. On one of the houseboats, a man was taking a shower outside, and I thought he was wearing a bathing suit, but Richard pointed out that his body simply was darker in some places than others.
Then we came into the meeting of the waters, as the clear, dark Rio Negro met the brown, muddy Rio Solimoes (the continuation of the Amazon) O'Reilly told us that the Negro flows at 6 knots, while the Solimoes flows at 3. The Negro is also warmer. We were able to test this for ourselves, putting our hands in the water in each river. Yup, the Negro is quite a bit warmer. At one point the river got so large, I asked if we were in the lake. But, no, still just the river. Not long after, we reached Lago Janauari (Lake January) and sailed across to a little dock, which boasted a large open-sided restaurant and bar, and an amazing market, full of stalls with high quality native art and artifacts. Of course, Richard and I love to shop, so our eyes got huge. We went directly to the shopping, and were going great guns, with O'Reilly following us around, carrying our purchases and translating for us. After a few minutes, however, he told us we were going to walk into the jungle. This is not a prospect that thrills either of us. We are wary of mosquitos, mud, and other jungly things. However, O'Reilly said it would only be about 300 meters into the jungle. He probably encounters a lot of nitsy tourists. We allowed ourselves to be dragged away from shopping -- Ronit and Jacob were eager to go. To our relief, the walk turned out to be on a wooden boardwalk, suspended above the flooded floor of the jungle, with a sturdy handrail. The boardwalk led to a platform reaching into a lily pond. We had the bad luck to be following a huge group of tourists (none that I recognized from the ship, and the guide was speaking Portuguese and English.) The platform was crowded and overloaded at first, but they soon left, and we had it all to ourselves.
What a sight! The lilypads are huge --big enough for a person to sit cross-legged on, although they can only bear about 12 pounds before they sink. The Port Lecturer on the ship said he once saw a woman washing clothes in a pond, and she put her baby on a nearby lily pad while she worked. They'd be great for that. They're shaped like dinner plates, with a turned-up edge all around. Underneath, they have huge thorns, which keep them from being eaten by fish and bugs. The lilies are large and beautiful next to the pads. They bloom at night, close during the day, and bloom in three colors: white the first night, the same blossom is pink on night two, and purple on night three, then it wilts and dies, and the lily pad slowly decays. On the boardwalk, we saw many flowers and an uncountable number of termite nests, which look like huge lumps of tar, bigger than a football, hanging on the side of the tree. The termites also protect themselves from being eaten by birds (who relish them) by creating covered pathways to travel out of sight up and down the trunk. After a while, we realized that the termites knew in advance about the rising water, and placed their nests higher than the high water level. The jungle was flooded to a depth of about ten feet, and the boardwalk and platform were built higher than the high water level, on stilts. O'Reilly told us that in the dry season, you can walk on 
the dry jungle floor, and showed us some stairs leading down from the boardwalk to a "telephone tree" which is a huge tree that the natives used to beat with a log, so the sound would carry for miles. It served as a communication device before any phones were developed.
After the lily pond, we returned to the market and finished shopping. This was the best shopping for native goods that w
e've seen on the whole trip, at low prices, and directly benefitting the artisans, so we made the most of it. Then, back to the boat for the best part of the trip. Shortly after we left the dock at the market, we motored close to shore, seeing monkeys jumping in the trees, as well as many more birds and flowers. Then, the pilot turned right into a channel into the jungle. At this point the cruise became amazing. We were boating through the actual jungle, with the trees creating a pleasant green canopy over our heads. We saw more monkeys, leaping from tree to tree, and we heard tree frogs trilling. Other than that, and our own voices, there was silence. The green, lovely trees as far as we could see, the boat silently floating along, and the cool jungle air created a magical atmosphere. Vines hung down, looking like someone hung clotheslines down from the trees. We were in awe of the amazing opportunity we had to be in this Amazonian jungle. We were also grateful for our expert pilot, who probably has guided boats through this jungle maze for his whole life. At one point, a small speedboat came toward us, piloted by a boy who seemed no older than 10. Our boat owner called out "Cuidado! Cuidado!" --which is "Careful! Careful!" in both Spanish and Portuguese. The kid slowed down a bit until he was just past us, and speeded up and was gone. It made me think that our boat pilot, who was deftly guiding the boat and also slashing with a knife at tree branches that were in the way, had been just such a boy.
We oohd and aahd at the beauty of the jungle for about an hour, sailing in and out of jungle channels, 
watching monkeys and birds, and verdant trees and flowers. I'll never forget the experience. O'Reilly said that in dry season, you could walk these paths, and I replied "I'm so glad we don't have to." We had seen everything we wanted to, and we turned down an opportunity to fish for piranha.
Out of the jungle, and on the way back to Manaus and the ship, we experienced a little sprinkle of rain, but not much. When we got back to the ship, we found that it had rained quite hard there. We reached the ship at about 4:30, so we had been boating for five and a half hours. We were ready to go "home" to our comfy cabin on the ship. It's a new cruise, and about half the passengers left this morning, and a similar number of new passengers got on. We "turnaround" passengers have now become an insider's club, and greet each othe like old friends. We smugly watch the newbies getting lost and fumbling around the ship.
There's just time for a light snack, a nap, a swim and dinner. Tomorrow, we plan only to walk out to see the cathedral right in front of the ship, and maybe do a little walking in town.
