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MANAUS - AMAZONE
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Manaus is a really large city: more than two million people live in what was once tha capital of the Amazone jungle. Today the jungle is not "around the corner" anymore: if you want to see trees and wild animals you gotta go at least half an hour out of the town, which, of course, needs the help of a guided tour.
We are going to explore the jungle in the next couple of days; in the meantime we visit Manaus downtown, whose main feature is the Amazone Theatre, a remarkable building that was built at the beginning of the XX century when the rubber plantations brought fame and wealth to the whole region.
We have the chance to visit the theatre inside while a ballet company is up to its training activity...
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At night, Manaus downtown is a lively place: our attention is caught by a wrestless, rhytmic music. It comes from a religious meeting of an... unidentified religiuos group, whose adepts keep singing and chanting until they are en trance in a sort of social game. You play like this: first, you find a mate, then you hold each other,... and the winner is who... falls to the ground first... If others step on you, you go to prison!
Accomodation-wise, after the terrible experience of the last pousada in São Luís, we are fed up with mickey-mouse places, so we go for a five-star hotel: the Taj Mahal!
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«White» water...
...«Black» water |
But, of course, we've not come to the very heart of the Amazone to stay in a town environment. We do want to see Mother Nature at her best, so we join a guided-tour that includes a cruise along the Rio Amazonas. The first "must-see" is the meeting of the waters: black water from Rio Solimoes and white (actually, brownish) water from Rio Amazonas join into one single stream, but they have different chemical and phisical features, so they do not mix and keep flowing in parallel, separate courses for miles and miles...
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During the cruise we can see hundreds of square miles of flooded jungle. There is not even one single inch of dry land for miles and miles: this is the reign of crocodiles, piranhas, anacondas and "inias" (the fresh water dolphins)...
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We have lunch onboard: we eat some fish that have been caught in the river and whose names are almost unpronounceble, but, man, if they are delicious! We sprinkle the juice of an Amazonian fruit on top of it: it's supposed to be lemon, but inside it's as orange as an orange(!), but it tastes like lemon!
After lunch we meet two tiny boats with some indios who have got some of their... "pets" with them: an anaconda, a crocodile, several snakes, monkeys and the sweetest of all: sloths!
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