Arriving to Manaus, a large city (about 1,3 mio inhabitants) in the middle of the jungle was quite impressive. All the way there when you looked out of the window of the plane...only green. Trees everywhere! And in the middle of this a huge city with everything a huge city has to offer...but that not why we came to this place...we wanted to have jungle...and we got it.
After being picked up from our hotel, it was a 2h ride out of the city...left and right side of the street only palms, trees, gras...green everywhere.
We finally arrived at a small harbor...well, the street ended where the water started and some smaller fisher boats were waiting there...being picked up by one of them, we had 45min drive on the boat and finally arrived, in the middle of nowhere, in our lodge.
Welcomed with a fresh juice, we checked our bungalow:
Shortly after, the food bell was ringing...it was delicious! 3 times a day we had fantastic homecooked food, lots of fish, fruits, rice, Manioc fries and always a great desert. Some pics we will upload on the plate de jour tab.
Shortly after lunch, but not before having a relaxing siesta at the hammock...
...we had our first trip to see Rio Negro, one of the rivers which flows to the Amazon River. To get there, we of course went by boat...and through the flooded rain forest. This was very impressive, as we navigated our boat through trees, of which you could only see the top sticking out of the water...
This status is kept during 6months of the year...its quite fascinating, that the plants/trees can survive this time half under water. During the dry season however there is rarely water on the tracks we were driving with the boat...but mud all over. Beside the green view from our boat, we heard so many animals, monkeys, birds, all kinds of insects...but to see them thats an art (as most of them are quite shy).
As we arrived at Rio Negro, the whether changed slightly (yes, we were aware of the rainy season) but it gave the scenery a certain charm!
The next days, we did many more exciting activities.
The two most exciting for sure were fishing and "searching" for alligators.
Fishing...putting some vegetables on the hook and waiting for hours? Not when you fish for piranhas! You exchange the vegies with some chicken pieces, simulate with the fishing pole that "something is falling to the water" by hitting it with the pole, and off we go! The only thing is to find the places with piranhas...they like to swim close to the trees (remember the flooded rainforest) in the shade, but once you found a swarm, its only about to pull the pole at the right time and the result is this:
The other day then we left in the afternoon to visit a local family to learn about their way of surviving and basically living only by what they can grow/hunt.
On of the most popular plants they use is the so called Manioc Tree. The roots can be used to get nice sauces, but also the manioc flour which is then be used to make a sort of "french fries" but also some sort of pancake:
...and yes, in the background there are other tourists sitting...but seriously the only other tourists - besides the one which lived in the lodge - which we have seen during these days.
After that and seeing a Boa chilling on the floor, we finally went to my personal highlight of the days...watching the sunset in the Amazonas and after that visiting the alligators. The pictures speak for themselves:
Maybe a little explanation regarding the last two pictures. You might have asked yourself, what the guy is doing in the middle of the night in the water...well, if you check his left hand you can see, that he was hunting...for what? Just check what Karina has fearlessly in her hands...then you get the answer :-). And yes, we thought as well that its pretty crazy to just jump in the water (around it was full of alligators, and not only the small once but lets say its parents and grand parents) and Karinas first thought was that we found the guy being in the water and we help him (ok, he changed his t-shirt before he jumped in the water, but besides, he was with us on the boat the entire way already :-) )...but after a few seconds the mystery got also solved for her :-).
The other day then we went on a 2h "hike" to the rainforest...no picture was made during that time. Why? Because we were really busy with getting rid of all the mosquitoes trying to get our blood, even though we used plenty...and I really mean plenty of repellent. For me, it was fascinating on the one side, as we`ve seen natural gum, learned where to get water from, seen all sorts of different plants etc, but on the other side it was "just green". No nice flowers or similar things...but very muddy ways so that we got back with our shows fully brown.
Besides, we enjoyed the silence of the lodge very much...the hammocks and the nice wind made us sleep for some minutes in the afternoon and created a very chilled out atmosphere.
If you are interested in doing such kind of thing (and we can recommend it to everyone!!), here is the homepage of the lodge where we`ve been:
http://www.taririamazonlodge.com.br/eng/index.php
Its been a special experience during our traveling so far...not only the the place, but also our hosts were really great and we had a fantastic time there!! To be repeated at some time.
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