Into the Jungle - Day 1

Phil y Crocodillo
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

Our jungle adventure started early on a Tuesday morning with a visit to the Meeting of the Waters on the boat that would later take us to the Anaconda Lodge, a few hours west of Manaus. The sky was overcast, so the waters weren’t as spectacular as the first time we saw them, and we spent the rest of the journey resting on deck.

Once we got off the main branch of the Rio Negro, Michael commented that the boat trip was already worth doing, and he was right. Cruising up the narrow tributaries, hearing animal calls all around, you feel like you’re in another time, completely removed from civilisation.

Afte a quick lunch, 9 of us headed off in a motorised canoe for some piranha fishing. We’re here in the wet season, and when they say wet, they mean it. The waters have risen 15 metres, so the paths that we take through the jungle are actually above the trees. The waters have risen as high as they will this year and it’s hard to imagine how much rain is necessary to raise the water level of the entire river by that much. We stopped at a couple of spots to fish for white and black piranhas, the “nice ones” that only attack if there is blood in the water and will only grow to half a metre. Our guide, Rubins, who constantly calls us Jungle Boy or Jungle Girl, and Maartje, a Dutch girl from the Belem boat, caught one each, but I was perfectly happy to sit in a canoe in the depths of the Amazon enjoying the scenery. Rubins wasn’t sure how much of the trip he would be our guide for on account of just getting out of hospital after being bitten by a snake on the 6th day of a 9 day hike with some German tourists. He, insanely, finished the hike before heading back to Manaus for treatment. Yep, the guides out here are kind of crazy.

After dinner we headed out under a clear sky to go caiman and alligator spotting. The view of the stars was incredible, with the entire milky way spread out above us. The calls of various animals accompanied us as we went into the trees in a leaky, paddle powered canoe, brushing tree branches aside as we went deeper into the trees, Rubins holding a torch between his teeth looking for the red reflection of alligator eyes, making occasional calls to them and checking the canoe to make sure we hadn’t taken on too much water... which we had. We stopped near shore for a while and he and Bjorn bailed water out of the canoe for about 10 minutes before we were ready again. Rubins instantly walked up to the front of the canoe and snapped his hand down, pulling up a baby spotted crocodile. After passing it around for photo ops we headed back for the first of many early nights.