Ev-We’re just now leaving Brazil (Feb 3), and finally I’ve scraped together a quiet moment to write for the blog. We arrived at the bustling port of Manaus, Brazil on Jan 31, ¾ of the way down the Amazon, at late at night. The city, home to some 2 million people, is completely cut off from the rest of Brazil, with dense rainforest surrounding it save for a sole road (and it’s more than a 10 hour drive to the nearest city on said road). Much of our first day in Manaus was spent wandering around the city, adjusting to the crowded streets, navigating rows of nearly identical street vendors, and protecting our valuables.
We had lunch at a small place in the back of a lingerie shop (it was very good) and it truly sunk in how serious the language barrier was. I had simply assumed that with my 11 years of Espanol, and with Cassie as a Spanish Minor, we’d be able to communicate at least moderately effectively. I mean how different could Portuguese be? But as I later found out by both listening and reading along to the national anthem in a museum, many words that look etymologically similar due to their romance language origins were actually pronounced completely differently. A simple word for thank you in Portuguese, ‘obrigado’, must have sounded completely foreign to them when I pronounced it as I would had I read it in espanol. But regardless of the difficulty communicating, we managed to get by (with hand gestures aplenty) and had a great lunch. The food was much less fruity than the island-fare of Dominica, but with similar emphasis on fish dishes in accordance with our location on the Amazon. After lunch we went to a supermarket and saw dozens of fruits and juices we’d never even heard of, and I even bought a few to bring on the ship with me. Cassie spent the remainder of the afternoon at an Orphanage.
That night we participated in a Caiman hunt. A caiman is a fresh water relative to the alligator and crocodile, although larger than the former and smaller than the latter. We got into small 10 person motor run canoes with a top and scanned the edges of the marsh with flashlights until we saw a reflection of the light in a Caiman’s eye. We even saw the light of owls’ eyes that were farther away. Our guide was a ~14yr old native boy who grew up on the water maneuvering the boats. The village he was from, which is where we went, was built on the water. They use canoes to go to neighboring houses, the bar, the restaurant and the school. They can move their house by undocking it and dragging it to a different location. When it rains, the water level and the houses rise as well.
Our tour guide, who was from that area, almost treated the caiman like pets. His mom would throw the remains of the dinner into the water for them and he used to catch them for fun. He told us how the older kids would maneuver the boats and spear the fish while the younger kids would sit in back to balance. It was a cycle of learning and passing on traditions. We also saw 3 boys in a canoe, one was holding a sloth and the other had a anaconda, those were their pets. These people have such a connection with nature and their environment that I really admire. The kids in the US are using and adopting the skills to succeed in our society by using tablets and the internet, but for the Manaus kids interact with the plants and animals. Their society mainly gets all of its money from tourism and doing tours. Also, I saw a lot of children around and asked why but apparently they have a 3 month break. Their school year goes from Feb- November.
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