Manaus Day Two: The Amazonian Experience
This morning, Tracey and I were breakfasted and on the quayside by 8am, ready and raring to escort a tour grandly titled ‘The Amazonian Experience’. Because each river boat (of which there were three) had 60 passengers on it, two escorts per boat were assigned, which meant we got to enjoy the tour togevva…
Our all-day tour began with a trip to the Meeting of The Rivers. The Solimoes River and the Black River are very different in temperature, density and speed. Because of this, they are very different to look at; The Solimoes is sandy-coloured, while the Black River, not surprisingly, looks much darker. Because of their component differences, when they meet, they don’t immediately mix together. Instead, they run alongside each other for several miles, and create the phenomenon known as The meeting of the Waters. Only when they do finally mix together do they officially become The River Amazon.
We hung around the Meeting of the waters for a while, so that everyone could take photos and look out for dolphins, which are often in the vicinity. From here, we headed off towards a small floating restaurant and visitors centre known as Lake January, pausing only briefly to view a floating village; something we haven’t done on past visits, but was only possible this time around because the river is particularly high this year, considering the time of year.
The river rises and falls throughout the year, which means that the locals either have to build their houses on stilts, or actually build them as floating homes so they can rise or fall with the water level. One of the fascinating things that the guide pointed out to us was a visible line on trunks of nearby trees, signifying last year’s high point.
At Lake January, we decamped into smaller boats for the next section of our trip. Because there are 60 people on the boat, and the smaller boats take 10 people, they had arranged 6 boats. Unfortunately, the 60 didn’t include the two escorts, so for a few worrying moments it was looking like Tracey and myself were going to be left on the quayside. Fortunately, they were able to rustle up a seventh boat, which meant we got to have a boat all to ourselves.
The trip around the lake was fun, but with the waters being as high as they are, navigating it wasn’t quite so exciting (there are usually far more twists and turns, and interesting inlets to explore). We did see an assortment of birdlife, though, and at one point, when we were paused by a small village, a young boy brought a massive anaconda down to the river to show us. I was particularly excited by this because in all the Amazon trips I’ve done, this was the first anaconda I’d seen.
The small boat trip took about fifty minutes. Back at the floating restaurant, we were treated to a buffet lunch, followed by a walk along a raised wooden walkway into the nearby forest to see the giant water-lillies. It was when we were about half way along the walkway that it started raining. And then it rained some more… before long it was literally bucketing down, and everyone got quite drenched. We all stood under the roof of the raised viewing platform at the end of the walkway, hoping that the platform would take the weight of us all, and looking out at the giant lily pads through the driving rain. Eventually, we had to return to the boat, but not before we all got right royally drenched even more.
Sadly, the rain wasn’t going away any time soon, and followed us the whole way back across the river, to Manaus, and our staring point.
After the awesome sunset of the previous evening, it was a shame that our stop in Manaus should end with such dismal weather. This is as far up the Amazon as the Marco Polo (and most other cruise ships) can navigate; so we’ve turned around and are on our way back now, heading towards our next stop on the river, Parintins…
