Swallows and Amazons

We spent the time before our flight to Manuas productively...Harry Potter 3 was brilliant (with or without Portugese subtitles). After a 6 hour flight with 3 changes, we finally arrived in Manaus - the biggest city in the Amazon region - at 4am. With an 8am start we overslept by an hour and it was a mad rush to pack everything needed for our riverboat tour for the start of our Amazonian adventure. Mark, a British-American-Canadian, and the owner of Swallows and Amazons, met us and introduced us to Anand (pronounced Anagee) who was to be our guide on the river boat for the next week. With a gold tooth, he looked more like a drug dealer than a tour guide! We boarded the lovely 'Socorro Maria 2' boat with two other German girls - the two Katharinas (or Katty and Katharina for differentiation purposes), both architectural students on a cultural month long tour of Brazil. We were really lucky with our travelling companions, they spoke great English and were great fun!

Firstly we were taken to the 'Meeting of the Rivers' - River Solimoes which is a light brown and Rio Negro river which is black. Due to high acids in the Rio Negro, the two don't mix and simply sit side by side contrasting brown and black like; coffee and cocoa, dark chocolate and milk chocolate or if you want to be really cynical, like an oil spill on muddy waters.

Most of our 6 days were to be spent along Rio Negro as there are less insects, however the first day and night were spent on the Solimoes to experience the wealth of wildlife, the rich mixture of plants...and mosquitos as we soon discovered. Firstly we took the canoe into some swamps to go Piranha fishing. Beth's nerves were not helped by Steve humming the Jaws theme tune every 2 minutes. With bamboo canes and hooks we caught 8 piranhas between us and Beth totally freaked the first time she caught one to the extent she almost capsized the boat in terror. Steve on the other hand caught 4 and calmly removed the hooks from their razor-teeth lined jaws. Boys are revolting.

After a scrummy dinner of fried yams, fresh water fish stew, rice, noodles and salad (blimey we're going to get porky), we took the canoe out again....to go croodile hunting. At night you can make out the gleam of their yellow and red eys. Some species can grow up to 7 metres long so Beth was desperately trying not to have a panic attack and think about the film 'Lake Placid'. The guide suddenly plunged his hand into the water and pulled out a two foot crocodile (see the photos to believe it!). He then carried this back (clutched tightly around the jaws we may add) to the river boat where we each took it in turns to hold it ourselves. Well, Beth held the tail as she wasn't going anywhere near those teeth! Anand then rubbed it's tummy and it fell asleep..would have been sweet if it wasn't for all those teeth...and then it quietly slid off the log into the water.

We spent our first night on the top deck in hammocks and fell asleep swaying to an orchestra of crickets, frogs, bush rats (they have the loudest croak of all in the Amazon!), birds and fish.

Mosquito bites: Steve 7, Beth 14