Parintins

This morning, we dropped anchor near the small town of Parintins, and tender operations began right away to get passengers ashore as quickly and efficiently as possible. Early tenders were for independent passengers; from 1pm onwards, however, tender boats were used exclusively for those on excursions, of which there were two today. The one involving the greatest number of passengers was the ‘Boi Bumba Show’, which would disembark first, followed by a smaller number… those on the tour we were escorting; ‘Parintins Highlights’.

It should be said at this point that Parintins is world famous for one thing; its Boi Bumba Festival, an annual festival and carnival where the the whole of Parintins is split into two sides – the Reds and the Blues. The one-hour Boi Bumba Show is a cut-down version of some of the dances and costumes involved, performed exclusively for cruise ship visitors. We attended it one year, and it was truly memorable; maybe we’ll get to see it again another year… today, however, we were escorting an on-the-bus-off-the-bus tour around the town. It wasn’t a tour that filled us full of anticipation; Parintins is a small place, and the only thing that we’ve hitherto considered to be a highlight (other than the Boi Bumba show) is its Cathedral… yet, today, I think we were both pleasantly surprised to have guides who showed us what can be done with a little bit of thought and planning… and bucket-loads of enthusiasm…

We were in three minibuses, each of which took a maximum of about 16 passengers; I had 13 on mine. Our first stop was at the Boi Bumba Coralle of Team Blue, where dancers are auditioned and trained in a small arena, and costumes are created and fitted. My guide demonstrated a particularly large ‘Shaman’ costume that didn’t look like a costume at all. Instead, it looked like some giant sculpture, incorporating colourful birds and jungle. He demonstrated how it worked by climbing into it and lifting it off the ground, rotating it slightly, and then lowering it after a couple of minutes. My guide wasn’t particularly solidly built, and commented on how heavy it was, and invited others to try it out. Since no-one put themselves forward, I volunteered, and was amazed at just how heavy it was, indeed, and couldn’t imagine how fit and strong one would need to be to endure that for an hour-long show.

Our next stop was at Liberty Square, which was an area of three-dimensional friezes, and gardens; clearly a work-in-progress.

After that, a short drive brought us to the Bumbodromo, an impressively large arena able to accommodate an audience of 35,000. Parintins has a population of around about 100,000 people; when the festival is on, however, that number increases to a massive 700,000. It is in this arena that the two sides compete, by performing their two-hour-long routines in turn. Each routine illustrates some local folk tale, and features incredible dance routines and massive, animatronic puppets. Ten judges adjudicate over the proceedings, marking every aspect of the presentation; the costumes, technical abilities of the dancers, the music and the musicians all come under scrutiny. Having now stood in the arena where it all takes place, I can only think that it must be quite an awesome spectacle.

From the arena, we were taken to what the guide described as the Puppet Funhouse. This is where the huge animatronic puppets are stored; giant figures, birds, snakes and dragons towered above us, all brightly coloured and quite stunning. At one point, our guide had us acting out a folk ritual… he definitely knew all about using audience participation to connect with the passengers.

And finally… our final stop was at the Cathedral, where our guide took out a guitar and sang for us…

It was so refreshing to have such an enthusiastic and creative guide. Not only did he bring the whole Boi Bumba thing to life for us, he did it with humour and wit, and he’s the only guide I’ve know who insisted on taking a selfie with the whole of the minibus at the very end of the tour. This was a ‘city tour’ that I actually enjoyed… and I learned something about Parintins along the way…

This evening, we shared our dinner table in Raffles Bistro with Christine the Creative Writer and Ian, the Photography lecturer. At some point the subject of darts came up, and guess what… we all ended up playing darts again, in the the Taverners Pub. Another thing we discovered while we were there was that there is a free digital jukebox, so we were able to make up for the awful Burns Night music of the previous evening by selecting our own favourite tracks to throw darts to…