Our excursion, Meeting of the Waters, begins at 8am, so we are up early, around 5:30 or so. We enjoy our cappuccinos out on the veranda checking out river traffic and getting a good view of this bridge.
It is very pleasant at this hour, before it begins to warm up for the day, which it will for sure. We know that we keep bringing up the subject of the heat and humidity, but it is ever present and ever amazing. It is something we have always heard about the Amazon region, and something that, oddly enough, we wanted to experience firsthand.
We are at between 2 and 3 degrees south of the equator, where the temperature, we are told, never varies all year long. As if we needed proof, every day we have been on this river, the high temperature is forecast to be 86. But the corresponding humidity is even higher, somewhere in the 90s, or it feels like it anyway. We were told that the humidity is what makes the climate so oppressive.
And exhausting, so today’s 4 ½-hour boat ride is a welcome respite. We board our tender and arrive at the pier in fifteen minutes. There will be seven boats taking us all downriver, and we are to board number 7. We see D’Angelo and we greet each other enthusiastically. We are disappointed to hear he is the guide for boat 5, and we tell him so. Such a great guy.
We board along with around thirty others, and off we go.
We pass by what looks to be an impromptu market. The height of the wall is yet another indication of the river’s height in the rainy season. Our guide in Santorem told us 10 meters (approximately 30 feet) more than in the dry season. Steve thought he must be exaggerating, but now he’s becoming a believer!
Another sight we pass is a common one on the Amazon River and its larger tributaries around the larger towns and cities: a floating gas station and convenience store. There are so many boats on the water that these businesses must be pretty lucrative, and this is only one of several we see in Manaus alone.
We are heading downriver to an area clustered with small islands located diagonally across from the city. Customarily, our boat would take us to a dock where we would transfer to small boats (referred to as canoes in the tour description) for a trip around Lake January, our destination.
But we are nearing the end of the dry season, and the depth of the river is such that our boat cannot safely travel into the lake, so about thirty minutes into our trip down the river, we disembark on to a much smaller boat for a twenty-minute ride to the dock.
When we arrive, we are very relieved to see that these “canoes” are actually outboard-powered boats in themselves, and they are covered, so we won’t be out in the direct sun.
As we begin to board the canoes, our guide announces that this is a happy day for the canoe captains, as this is the first excursion they have hosted since Covid-19 began well over two years ago. This must have been devastating to this small village, as the tours provided significant income to the residents.
We head out into the lake surrounded by the rainforest. There are seven or eight canoes, each carrying 8-10 of us, plus the pilot, of course. We cruise along the lake, whose width varies but probably averages two hundred yards. We really don’t know what to expect, except that the tour description said that, “if the river level allows,” we will be seeing Victoria Amazonica lilies, giant water lilies that can grow to measure up to six feet in diameter.
In about fifteen minutes, all the boats converge on one spot near the shore, chosen because there is a small garden of these enormous lilies. Unfortunately, these are the only ones we will see, as the lilies grow in abundance only from January and after (we guess that the rainy season is the period of growth). Our guide from the ship is giving us information about both the lilies and the rainforest flora and fauna. There are many birds flying about as he speaks, and then he suggests this: “Let us be totally silent for one full minute so you can take in the rainforest and its total silence.” We do so, and it is an awesome experience as we look around us at this beautiful sight.
A minute goes by and the talk resumes. Then all the boats back out a few yards and each one has the opportunity to pass by the lily “corral” so we can observe and take photos of them. The largest appear to be about three feet in diameter, so we can just imagine what the immense ones would look like. But even these are something to see.
Our pilot, Adayuson, speaks no English and, needless to say, we speak no Portuguese. But no matter. He does know why we’re here, and points out the birds and gives us their names (but Steve still can’t understand what he is saying). He is very attentive to this task, and we get some really nice shots. Each time I get to take a nice phot, I turn around and give him a “thumbs up,” and he answers with the same gesture.
The ride lasts about forty-five peaceful and interesting minutes. We pass several more houses, and one larger building under construction. It gave us a good look at the huge logs that keep these raft houses afloat.
We also pass by a long, narrow dock. By the way it is constructed, we see yet another example of how high the water must get in the rainy season. No wonder all the houses are rafts! It would be quite a sight to see the same place in March or April and take a photo of this same dock. (Steve loves series photos).
We are back at the dock from which we started. Before we board our speed boat that will take us to our river boat, there is a souvenir shopping opportunity. We actually feel obligated to do our part to buy something after hearing how the pandemic slammed them for the past two-plus years, so we cruise the store. There are several friendly people to help us find things, and Cathy does find a t-shirt that we are sure grandson Karl will really like.
When we get set to pay, we encounter the same problem that Steve had in Boca Da Valeria trying to buy the small pictures: agreeing on what the proper exchange rate was on dollars vs. rials. Steve finally understood why this was occurring. Two years ago, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the exchange rate was 3 rials to the dollar. Today, it’s 5 rials to the dollar. But, in both cases, the Brazilians had not seen tourists in all that time, and were not aware of the current exchange rate. Both parties were bargaining in good faith, but with different assumptions. Again, in both cases, everything was priced in American dollars, not Brazilian rials, because that was the currency all the tourists carried. So the irony was that our thinking it would be more courteous to pay in the local currency was causing us to pay more because we could not communicate that the exchange rate had changed in two years. Just like Steve did, Cathy just gave up and paid the higher price. Lesson to Steve and Cathy for next trip: carry both currencies; the US dollar is welcome anywhere cruise ships travel.
We board our speedy boat, and, twenty minutes later, we are at the Rio Negro on our river boat, We are continuing downriver to the “Meeting of the Waters” location. Enroute to this spot, we pass no fewer than six oil tankers awaiting an opportunity to load at the oil refinery opposite where they are anchored. Just for fun, Steve has recorded the names of all six (and a seventh, which is a LNG tanker: Marta, Maersk Ceru, Clearocean Melod. Seatreasure, Kastos, Clearocean Magic, and the LPG tanker Jorge Amado. He thinks it might be finteresting to follow their itinerary to see where they deliver their load (Cathy is thinking: What a geek!)
We arrive at the Meeting of the Waters spot. The information on this subject that is on yesterday’s post bears repeating:
The more we learn about the phenomenon Meeting of the Waters, the more we hear about additional factors that cause it. We will go back to Wikipedia yet again for more information, this time about the merging of the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimões: it is “due to the differences in temperature, speed, and amount of dissolved sediments in the waters of the two rivers. The Rio Negro flows at near 2 km/h (1.2 mph) at a temperature of 28 °C (82 °F), while the Rio Solimões flows between 4 and 6 km/h (2.5–3.7 mph) at a temperature of 22 °C (72 °F). The light-colored water (the Rio Solimões (or Rio Amazonas, depending on the interpretation of the Amazon’s origin) is rich with sediment from the Andes Mountains, whereas the black water (the Rio Negro), running from the Colombian hills and interior jungles, is nearly sediment-free and colored by decayed leaf and plant matter. Smaller-scale meeting of waters of the Amazon River also occurs in the locations of Santarem (Brazil) and Iquitos (Peru).”
We will leave this subject with three more photos illustrating what we see, and another one with a guide showing the difference in the amount of sediment between the two rivers:
It is now time to start back to Manaus, which will take considerably longer than getting here because of the river current, which we are told is about 6 knots per hour, a very noticeable speed, to be sure. Our guide tells us that it takes fifty percent more time to go from Belem to Manaus that from Manaus to Belem, all due to that current.
As we motor upstream close to the city shore, we see some interesting sights. Of course, we pass all those tankers and the refinery that we saw shortly before. Then an anchorage for one tugboat company with many of their brightly colored craft tied up.
Then an interesting sight, for Steve at least: a half dozen or more interesting Brazilian Navy vessels. It’s difficult to determine quite what the purpose of each of them might be.
Now we pass the container terminals. The terminal is unique in two discernable ways. First of all, all of the loading/unloading docks are floating docks, built to deal with the enormous fluctuation in depths of the river from month to month. Secondly, because the terminal in on a river bank, the drop yards are up a hill from a dock, and much farther from the dock than they would be at a seaside terminal. (only Steve could find this so intriguing!).
We pass two Manaus neighborhoods overlooking the river. In this area of town riverfront property is not exactly at a premium. The houses seem stacked one on top of another, except for the ones closest to the river. Those are on stilts to keep them above the water during the rainy season.
We arrive back to the pier in downtown Manaus around 1;15pm. We board the Insignia tender immediately, and within twenty minutes, we are back on board our ship. We head for the Grand Dining Room and eat a huge lunch. Then we relax and wait for Sailaway, scheduled for 4pm.
Around 3pm, we hear an announcement about Sailaway being postponed. As we mentioned in an earlier post, we received a letter advising us of certain procedures that were going to be unique to our sailing in the Amazon River. One of them concerned water conservation. Normally the ship takes in sea water, desalinizes it and uses it for every purpose on the ship.
However, because the Amazon River contains so much silt, attempting to run it through the water purifying equipment aboard ship would ruin that equipment in short order. So we have been conserving water all the way to Manaus – quite successfully, we are being told by our cruise director.
And the ship is scheduled to have all the tanks filled in Manaus from their municipal water system before we leave. But … the barge with all the water hasn’t arrived, so our departure is delayed until that water delivery is completed.
We ate such a huge lunch, and had it so late, that we aren’t really hungry for a full dinner. So, at 7:30, thinking that the Terrace Café won’t be as packed as it usually is then, we venture up to Deck 10 for a light repast. Cathy has dessert and Steve has wine, salad and an assortment of cheeses with crackers. Still no barge with the water for the ship.
At 9:15pm, we see that the barge has arrived.
No telling when we will leave. The original announcement said that we would still easily make our scheduled 11am arrival in Parintins, Brazil, 246 nautical miles away. But now that we are at least 5-6 hours behind schedule, that seems highly unlikely. We are both thinking that the captain must be beside himself. Fortunately, there are no excursions scheduled for Parintins, just a show of local music being held for us at 3:45pm. We will arrive in plenty of time for that, we’re sure.
