Tom and Noel's South America Cruise: Manaus, Brazil 3/6 and 3/7

Manaus is a city of nearly 2 million that is about 1000 miles up the Amazon river from the Atlantic Ocean. It is an industrial city with a large petroleum refinery and factories making several brands of motorcycles (even Harley Davidson) and electronics. Manaus was the center of rubber export beginning in the late 1800's and that boom lasted for about 25 years until the British planted rubber trees in Malayasia and ended the Brazilian monopoly on the rubber trade. The Europeans that were the exporters were called "Rubber Barons" and they built beautiful mansions and other buildings including a magnificent opera house. There is also a unique wrought iron market building that was designed by Gustav Eiffel. Most all the materials for these buildings were brought here from Europe. The city is actually located on the Rio Negro river which is a major tributary of the Amazon. The only road that leads out of the area goes north to Venezuela so most travel here is by river or plane. The traffic within the city is horrendous, there are thousands of buses, taxis, private cars and motorcycles crowding the narrow streets, our first tour was scheduled for three hours and it became a five hour tour after we spent about 1.5 hours sitting in traffic. There are literally hundreds of water taxis, ferries and small narrow motorized boats they call canoes. The ferries are referred to as "water buses", they are two or three decks and have destinations all up and down the rivers. They mostly travel at night and the passengers bring there own hammocks that they hang from hooks in the ceilings of the decks.

Ferries at one of the many docks

Our first day here we took a tour that included a small zoo that is part of the local army base, an Indian museum and the Opera House. About an hour into the tour the sunny weather turned to very heavy thunderstorm. As it had been quite nice when we left the ship hardly anyone in our tour group had rain gear, us included. One bolt of lightning hit very close to the museum we were touring, it sure made everyone jump. The rain was really coming down and many of the streets were quickly flooded, the locals take this heavy rain in stride as it is after all, the rainy season! When we were ready to leave the opera house it was really pouring so the tour guide got a couple of the employees to bring a huge market type umbrella from an outdoor table and walk five people at a time to our bus, we still got very wet. We were told that the river level can rise as much as 50 feet or more during the season.

Jaguar in the military zoo

Teatro Amazonas (opera house)

Inside the opera house

Rubber barons mansion from bus during rain

Our second day we took one of the ferries about 45 minutes down river to a lake where we boarded small motorized canoe type boat for a trip into the flooded jungle. Our boat driver was very young but really handled the boat very well, winding among the narrow passages between the trees and bushes. These areas are really hard to describe, quite exotic with strange looking trees and many different sounds, birds, howler monkeys, insects, etc. It was a great experience.