Manaus, Brazil

Meeting the Meeting of the Waters


socializing at the door
Christ is the compass
desana
Boto's Profile
a black porpoise
End of Fire
grilled on board
The Dessana community
Shipping notices
Dolores pine
Negro vs Solimões
The phenomenon is not unique, but in Manaus it has a special beauty and solemnity. At a certain point, the Negro and Solimões rivers converge on the same Amazonas bed, but instead of immediately mixing, both flows continue side by side. As we explore these parts of the Amazon, we witness the unusual confrontation of the Encontro das Águas.

It's Sunday. Just after 8:30 am. In the middle of the dry season, Manaus and the Amazon wake up lightly sprinkled with clouds, as far as rain was concerned, just and only decorative. A good part of its inhabitants are far from awakening.

This is not the case with Mr. Francisco, the guide who welcomes us and the other passengers on the boat and opens an intense multilingual narration. We set sail from the dock just in front of the old Alfândega and Guardamoria, with the river as shallow as, in September and October, the dry summer of the region usually makes it.

We sailed up the Negro River. We pass under the huge Jornalista Phelippe Daou Bridge that crosses the Negro and allows the AM-070 route to flow from the big city to the western interior of the Amazon and in the opposite direction. The bridge was inaugurated in October 2011 by the then President of Brazilian Republic, Dilma Roussef, who promised local politicians that the Manaus Free Trade Zone would extend for another half century with all the tax and commercial benefits it has enjoyed.

The conurbation of four nearby municipalities and the intensification of the progress of these stops in remote and feared times of the Brazil, quickly made itself felt, against the natural and luxuriant essence of the Amazon. As much as we wanted to abstract from that, the truth was that the tour we participated in sailed in the same direction.

Rio Negro upstream in search of the Amazon's dolphins

The first objective of the embarked tour was to find pink dolphins, the Amazon dolphins, something that the massification of tourism around Manaus made almost guaranteed. Porpoises are still at large in the Negro waters and tributaries.

But now, to make life easier for tourism businessmen and their clients, the natives operate small platforms to welcome mammals: both cetaceans and humans who flock there to live with them.

We landed in one of them. A caboclo descends a short staircase onto a submerged plank. There, he takes a small fish and shakes it under water. To Mr. Francisco's astonishment, the botos ignore the challenge. Not because they had walked away autonomously. The lure of a competing platform led them astray.

Over time, these dolphins got used to the fact that, at those times, they could get food without effort. All that was needed was for them to approach the platforms and circle between the visitors' legs, vulnerable to the caresses and contacts that almost everyone dedicates them to feel the incredible texture of their skin.

Pink dolphin dyed by the ocher water of the Rio Negro.

"Watch out for him girls, you don't want surprises, do you?" He tosses one passenger to the other and thus generates an almost hysterical communal laugh. “Hi, he's right there with you, get out of there, girl,” replies a second.

Contact with botos can be an exciting novelty for those arriving from other parts of the Brazil and the world. But it is common among Brazilians – especially those from the north of the country – a legend dedicated to these creatures.

According to this legend, the pink dolphins are transformed into elegant young men dressed in white and wearing a hat, in order to disguise the nostrils that, according to legend, this metamorphosis does not usually change. Well, it so happens that, during the time of the Festas Juninas, this boy seduces girls without a partner.

He takes them to the bottom of the river and often makes them pregnant. The old legend even justified that, when young people show up at parties, wearing a hat, they are told to take it off in order to prove that they are not dolphins. It is also the raison d'être of the expression “is a boto's son”, applied to children with an unknown father.

Another Endangered Species

In the realm of reality, similar to what happens with so many other species, it is humans who veto the porpoises to a distressing existential fragility. Much more serious than the intrusion of visitors to the Amazon, the customs of its inhabitants have been proven.

Despite its status as a protected species, the Amazon's inaccessibility makes it possible for thousands of specimens to be slaughtered every year. The environmental authorities found that the fishermen catch them because their meat is ideal to serve as bait for the piracatinga (Calophysus macropterus), a species of catfish with great commercial value.

Mainly for this reason, it has been estimated that every ten years, the pink dolphins decrease by half. Even though they resist in much of the Amazon, including the Araguaia river – but below the vast Pantanal -, as females have a single offspring every four or five years, the prospects for the species' recovery are bleak.

Even though the tourist invasion of humans into their habitat has proved a lesser evil, IBAMA agents deployed to Manaus they are present on the platforms, in charge of controlling the time each group spends with the pink dolphins and limiting their interaction with the animals.

A native from the vicinity of the Rio Negro feeds a dolphin (Amazon dolphin).

At first, the agent present on our platform is limited to taking notes in any notebook, but when some of the maidens insist on prolonging their relationship with the dolphins, the officer does not shy away from cutting their tricks and forcing her own outflow of water.

Visit to the Dessana-Tukana Indigenous Community

We return on board. Mr. Francisco announces new excerpt. We sail from the middle of the Negro to a secluded and parched river beach. Still from the boat, we detected several malocas and other smaller buildings, all of them built with logs and covered with dry huts.

The closest one seems half sunk in the sand discovered by the retreat of the river. We walk to its entrance. There we are welcomed by a native of the small Tukana community that groups indigenous people from the Alto Rio Negro area of ​​São Gabriel da Cachoeira, 850 km away, along the border with the Colombia.

This is the cultural core of a vast territory of the Amazon jungle where twenty-six different ethnic groups live together and share the same linguistic family, the Tukana. The community we visited comprises only five of them: Desana, Tukana, Tuiúca, Bará and Makuna.

Native of the Dessana-Tucana indigenous community, on the banks of the Rio Negro.

Under a large headdress made of red and blue feathers that look like macaws, Tutuia, the native with the most distinctive indigenous features and the profile of a charismatic chief, welcomes us. First in Tukano, then in Portuguese, with several roosters crowing in the background.

He then leads us into the gloomy interior of the maloca, which the natives use as a house of wisdom or traditional medicine. A pajé fire burns there, which the hosts feed the resin, in order to protect their spirits and those of visitors from ill health.

Tutuia ends the welcome and the community presentation. Soon, it passes the prominence to four other natives, all men, since the ritual that follows is forbidden to women and children.

Jurupari: an Esoteric Cult of Evil

The natives inaugurate a Jurupari ritual, played with wind instruments made from paxiula, an Amazon palm tree that produces a characteristic sound. They play it back and forth inside the maloca, from door to door and backwards. They produce a movement and reverberation that proves mystical and leaves us intrigued.

We had reasons for that. Jurupari defines a complex mythological cult of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. It is evil in person, the origin of other secondary demons with the most diverse names, depending on the different tribes and ethnic groups.

When the Portuguese and the Spaniards arrived in the Amazonian lands, in the XNUMXth century, they realized that it was the main cult of the natives. Concerned about his popularity and competition for biblical characters and beliefs, the missionaries did everything to associate him with the Christian devil.

Jurupari's mysterious music continues to seduce us. Until their obscure dance gives way to a completely contrasting one, which follows the sound of Amazonian wooden flutes, unfolds in a circle instead of straight paths and already has women and children.

Native young people at one of the entrances to the wisdom and traditional medicine house of the Dessana-Tucana Indigenous Community.

Precious time among the Tukana community is gone. Re-embarking. This time, we travel Negro down, towards Manaus. We went back under the Jornalista Phelippe Daou Bridge and left behind the vast area of ​​riverside houses in the city.

Rio Negro below, to the Meeting of the Waters

We approached a large river tongue that concealed a border there. On our side, the Negro River continued to flow. On the other side, another one glided.

At a certain point, the Coca-Cola do Negro water, with very little sediment but immense dissolved vegetable raw material, gains the company of Solimões, thus the Iberian explorers baptized the upper stretch of the Amazon River.

The latter appears with a caramel tone given by the quantity and diversity of sediments (sand, mud and mud) that the Solimões accumulates on its descent from the distant slopes of the Andes mountain range.

Meeting of the waters, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

Small boat sails over the Encontro das Águas, a few kilometers downstream from Manaus.

For about 6km, the two streams flow side by side, in an enigmatic river pride that science has had no problem unraveling.

Between the two, almost everything is different: the Rio Negro slides at just 2km/h. Solimões flows between 4 and 6km/h. Negro water has a temperature of 28ºC. Solimões measures only 22ºC.

As such, the density of both streams proves to be quite different. The physicochemical peculiarity of each makes them take a long time to accept and mix in the unique flow of the Lower Amazon – the great Rio Mar that, until it flows into the true Atlantic sea, to the east of Belém, still welcomes “ encounters” similar.

Next to Manaus, the resistance of both is illustrated by the competing tones of the water, but not only that. Installed on the upper deck of the boat, vulnerable to the torrid tropical sun that whenever it sets free reinforces the phenomenon, we appreciate the curvilinear shapes and borders of the Encontro das Águas. And also the coffee-colored whirlpools that, from time to time, the fight between the two forces generated.

A denser mantle of nebulosity hides the sun again. Mr. Francisco and the boat crew had been with us for almost eight hours. One Sunday, they yearned more than ever for their own reunion with their families. Accordingly, we reversed course once more. Against our will and that of the Negro, we returned to Manaus.

 

TAP – flytap.pt flies directly from Lisbon to several Brazilian cities. In terms of flight hours, the most convenient to get to Manaus are, in this order: a)  Fortaleza or Brasilia b) São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.  c) via Miami, United States.

manaus, Brazil

The Jumps and Starts of the former World Rubber Capital

From 1879 to 1912, only the Amazon River basin generated the latex that, from one moment to another, the world needed and, out of nowhere, Manaus became one of the most advanced cities on the face of the Earth. But an English explorer took the tree to Southeast Asia and ruined pioneer production. Manaus once again proved its elasticity. It is the largest city in the Amazon and the seventh in Brazil.
Passo do Lontra, Miranda, Brazil

The Flooded Brazil of Passo do Lontra

We are on the western edge of Mato Grosso do Sul but bush, on these sides, is something else. In an extension of almost 200.000 km2, the Brazil it appears partially submerged, by rivers, streams, lakes and other waters dispersed in vast alluvial plains. Not even the panting heat of the dry season drains the life and biodiversity of Pantanal places and farms like the one that welcomed us on the banks of the Miranda River.
Miranda, Brazil

Maria dos Jacarés: the Pantanal shelters such Creatures

Eurides Fátima de Barros was born in the interior of the Miranda region. 38 years ago, he settled in a small business on the side of BR262 that crosses the Pantanal and gained an affinity with the alligators that lived on his doorstep. Disgusted that once upon a time the creatures were being slaughtered there, she began to take care of them. Now known as Maria dos Jacarés, she named each of the animals after a soccer player or coach. It also makes sure they recognize your calls.
Iguazu/Iguazu Falls, Brazil/Argentina

The Great Water Thunder

After a long tropical journey, the Iguaçu River gives a dip for diving. There, on the border between Brazil and Argentina, form the largest and most impressive waterfalls on the face of the Earth.
Itaipu Binational Hydroelectric Power Plant, Brazil

Itaipu Binational Hydroelectric Power Plant: Watt Fever

In 1974, thousands of Brazilians and Paraguayans flocked to the construction zone of the then largest dam in the world. 30 years after completion, Itaipu generates 90% of Paraguay's energy and 20% of Brazil's.
Pirenópolis, Brazil

Brazilian Crusades

Christian armies expelled Muslim forces from the Iberian Peninsula in the XNUMXth century. XV but, in Pirenópolis, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, the South American subjects of Carlos Magno continue to triumph.
Pirenópolis, Brazil

A Ride of Faith

Introduced in 1819 by Portuguese priests, the Festa do Divino Espírito Santo de Pirenópolis it aggregates a complex web of religious and pagan celebrations. It lasts more than 20 days, spent mostly on the saddle.
Goiás Velho, Brazil

The Life and Work of a Marginal Writer

Born in Goiás, Ana Lins Bretas spent most of her life far from her castrating family and the city. Returning to its origins, it continued to portray the prejudiced mentality of the Brazilian countryside
Curitiba, Brazil

The High-Quality Life of Curitiba

It is not only the altitude of almost 1000 meters at which the city is located. Cosmopolitan and multicultural, the capital of Paraná has a quality of life and human development rating that make it a unique case in Brazil.
Brasilia, Brazil

Brasília: from Utopia to the Capital and Political Arena of Brazil

Since the days of the Marquis of Pombal, there has been talk of transferring the capital to the interior. Today, the chimera city continues to look surreal but dictates the rules of Brazilian development.
Marajó Island, Brazil

The Buffalo Island

A vessel that transported buffaloes from the India it will have sunk at the mouth of the Amazon River. Today, the island of Marajó that hosted them has one of the largest herds in the world and Brazil is no longer without these bovine animals.
Chapada Diamantina, Brazil

Gem-stone Bahia

Until the end of the century. In the XNUMXth century, Chapada Diamantina was a land of immeasurable prospecting and ambitions. Now that diamonds are rare, outsiders are eager to discover its plateaus and underground galleries
Serengeti, Great Savannah Migration, Tanzania, wildebeest on river
Safari
Serengeti NP, Tanzania

The Great Migration of the Endless Savanna

In these prairies that the Masai people say syringet (run forever), millions of wildebeests and other herbivores chase the rains. For predators, their arrival and that of the monsoon are the same salvation.
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 5th - Ngawal a BragaNepal

Towards the Nepalese Braga

We spent another morning of glorious weather discovering Ngawal. There is a short journey towards Manang, the main town on the way to the zenith of the Annapurna circuit. We stayed for Braga (Braka). The hamlet would soon prove to be one of its most unforgettable places.
A Lost and Found City
Architecture & Design
Machu Picchu, Peru

The City Lost in the Mystery of the Incas

As we wander around Machu Picchu, we find meaning in the most accepted explanations for its foundation and abandonment. But whenever the complex is closed, the ruins are left to their enigmas.
Adventure
Boat Trips

For Those Becoming Internet Sick

Hop on and let yourself go on unmissable boat trips like the Philippine archipelago of Bacuit and the frozen sea of ​​the Finnish Gulf of Bothnia.
Military Religious, Wailing Wall, IDF Flag Oath, Jerusalem, Israel
Ceremonies and Festivities
Jerusalem, Israel

A Festive Wailing Wall

The holiest place in Judaism is not only attended by prayers and prayers. Its ancient stones have witnessed the oath of new IDF recruits for decades and echo the euphoric screams that follow.
Dusk in Itzamna Park, Izamal, Mexico
Cities
Izamal, Mexico

The Holy, Yellow and Beautiful Mexican City

Until the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, Izamal was a center of worship for the supreme Mayan god Itzamná and Kinich Kakmó, the one of the sun. Gradually, the invaders razed the various pyramids of the natives. In its place, they built a large Franciscan convent and a prolific colonial houses, with the same solar tone in which the now Catholic city shines.
Meal
World Food

Gastronomy Without Borders or Prejudice

Each people, their recipes and delicacies. In certain cases, the same ones that delight entire nations repel many others. For those who travel the world, the most important ingredient is a very open mind.
Tatooine on Earth
Culture
Matmata Tataouine:  Tunisia

Star Wars Earth Base

For security reasons, the planet Tatooine from "The Force Awakens" was filmed in Abu Dhabi. We step back into the cosmic calendar and revisit some of the Tunisian places with the most impact in the saga.  
Swimming, Western Australia, Aussie Style, Sun rising in the eyes
Sport
Busselton, Australia

2000 meters in Aussie Style

In 1853, Busselton was equipped with one of the longest pontoons in the world. World. When the structure collapsed, the residents decided to turn the problem around. Since 1996 they have been doing it every year. Swimming.
Herd in Manang, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal
Traveling
Annapurna Circuit: 8th Manang, Nepal

Manang: the Last Acclimatization in Civilization

Six days after leaving Besisahar we finally arrived in Manang (3519m). Located at the foot of the Annapurna III and Gangapurna Mountains, Manang is the civilization that pampers and prepares hikers for the ever-dreaded crossing of Thorong La Gorge (5416 m).
shadow of success
Ethnic
Champoton, Mexico

Rodeo Under Sombreros

Champoton, in Campeche, hosts a fair honored by the Virgén de La Concepción. O rodeo Mexican under local sombreros reveals the elegance and skill of the region's cowboys.
ice tunnel, black gold route, Valdez, Alaska, USA
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Got2Globe Portfolio

Sensations vs Impressions

View from John Ford Point, Monument Valley, Nacao Navajo, United States
History
Monument Valley, USA

Indians or Cowboys?

Iconic Western filmmakers like John Ford immortalized what is the largest Indian territory in the United States. Today, in the Navajo Nation, the Navajo also live in the shoes of their old enemies.
Ribeira Grande, Santo Antao
Islands
Ribeira Grande, Santo AntãoCape Verde

Santo Antão, Up the Ribeira Grande

Originally a tiny village, Ribeira Grande followed the course of its history. It became the village, later the city. It has become an eccentric and unavoidable junction on the island of Santo Antão.
Boats on ice, Hailuoto Island, Finland.
Winter White
Hailuoto, Finland

A Refuge in the Gulf of Bothnia

During winter, the island of Hailuoto is connected to the rest of Finland by the country's longest ice road. Most of its 986 inhabitants esteem, above all, the distance that the island grants them.
Kukenam reward
Literature
Mount Roraima, Venezuela

Time Travel to the Lost World of Mount Roraima

At the top of Mount Roraima, there are extraterrestrial scenarios that have resisted millions of years of erosion. Conan Doyle created, in "The Lost World", a fiction inspired by the place but never got to step on it.
Camiguin, Philippines, Katungan mangrove.
Nature
Camiguin, Philippines

An Island of Fire Surrended to Water

With more than twenty cones above 100 meters, the abrupt and lush, Camiguin has the highest concentration of volcanoes of any other of the 7641 islands in the Philippines or on the planet. But, in recent times, not even the fact that one of these volcanoes is active has disturbed the peace of its rural, fishing and, to the delight of outsiders, heavily bathed life.
Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

Lost among the snowy mountains that separate Europe from Asia, Sheki is one of Azerbaijan's most iconic towns. Its largely silky history includes periods of great harshness. When we visited it, autumn pastels added color to a peculiar post-Soviet and Muslim life.
Piton de la Fournaise, Réunion, the volcano path
Natural Parks
Piton de la Fournaise, Reunion Island

The Turbulent Volcano of Réunion

At 2632m, the Piton de la Fournaise, Réunion's only eruptive volcano, occupies almost half of this island we explored, mountains up, mountains down. It is one of the most active and unpredictable volcanoes in the Indian Ocean and on Earth.
Van at Jossingfjord, Magma Geopark, Norway
UNESCO World Heritage
Magma Geopark, Norway

A Somehow Lunar Norway

If we went back to the geological ends of time, we would find southwestern Norway filled with huge mountains and a burning magma that successive glaciers would shape. Scientists have found that the mineral that predominates there is more common on the Moon than on Earth. Several of the scenarios we explore in the region's vast Magma Geopark seem to be taken from our great natural satellite.
Ooty, Tamil Nadu, Bollywood Scenery, Heartthrob's Eye
Characters
Ooty, India

In Bollywood's Nearly Ideal Setting

The conflict with Pakistan and the threat of terrorism made filming in Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh a drama. In Ooty, we see how this former British colonial station took the lead.
Princess Yasawa Cruise, Maldives
Beaches
Maldives

Cruise the Maldives, among Islands and Atolls

Brought from Fiji to sail in the Maldives, Princess Yasawa has adapted well to new seas. As a rule, a day or two of itinerary is enough for the genuineness and delight of life on board to surface.
Ice cream, Moriones Festival, Marinduque, Philippines
Religion
Marinduque, Philippines

When the Romans Invade the Philippines

Even the Eastern Empire didn't get that far. In Holy Week, thousands of centurions seize Marinduque. There, the last days of Longinus, a legionary converted to Christianity, are re-enacted.
End of the World Train, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
On Rails
Ushuaia, Argentina

Last Station: End of the World

Until 1947, the Tren del Fin del Mundo made countless trips for the inmates of the Ushuaia prison to cut firewood. Today, passengers are different, but no other train goes further south.
Kogi, PN Tayrona, Guardians of the World, Colombia
Society
PN Tayrona, Colombia

Who Protects the Guardians of the World?

The natives of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta believe that their mission is to save the Cosmos from the “Younger Brothers”, which are us. But the real question seems to be, "Who protects them?"
the projectionist
Daily life
Sainte-Luce, Martinique

The Nostalgic Projectionist

From 1954 to 1983, Gérard Pierre screened many of the famous films arriving in Martinique. 30 years after the closing of the room in which he worked, it was still difficult for this nostalgic native to change his reel.
Everglades National Park, Florida, United States, flight over the Everglades canals
Wildlife
Everglades National Park, Florida, USA

Florida's Great Weedy River

Anyone who flies over the south of the 27th state is amazed by the green, smooth and soggy vastness that contrasts with the surrounding oceanic tones. This unique U.S. marsh-prairie ecosystem is home to a prolific fauna dominated by 200 of Florida's 1.25 million alligators.
Full Dog Mushing
Scenic Flights
Seward, Alaska

The Alaskan Dog Mushing Summer

It's almost 30 degrees and the glaciers are melting. In Alaska, entrepreneurs have little time to get rich. Until the end of August, dog mushing cannot stop.