December 24 - Manaus, Brazil (Amazon River)

blue dot = the eco lodge

Weather – 35º, humid, wet, sticky, kinda, sorta hot

river boat to the lodge

Steps – 10,668

Today we visit Manaus, another city Brazil where the Amazon converges with another river…the Rio Negro. When we first look out, we can tell we’re no longer on the Amazon because of river is no longer a muddy brown.

We, along with a group of 6 other guests and one ship’s casino worker (they like to send one worker on over nights) are the first ones

small river shacks for rent to party in

off the ship in the morning and onto a

making it through the grass

bus with Angelo our fantastic guide. The bus will take us 30 minutes to then board a small river boat for an other 30 min ride up the Tarumã River, a tributary of the Rio Negro to the Amazon Ecopark Jungle Lodge in the heart of the JUNGLE. We are hoping to see monkeys, caiman, bugs, piranha and JUNGLE.

The river boat ride to reach the lodge along the Tarumã River is full of grasses growing from the bottom of the river. Typically, these grasses would be submerged because the

Capuchin monkeys

river level would be much higher. If you didn’t know better, you might think the river wasn’t as wide as it was and there were narrow bits of water beside land…nope…it’s all water covered with grass. This makes it tough on the boat’s motor. Every so often, we stopped, and the boat’s driver would pull out a knife and chop off a giant mass of tangled grass around the propellor. 

Once we arrived, we had to climb about a 500m hill to the lodge – this climb is because of the drought. Typically, the boat should have delivered us right to the lodge. We saw one group arrive after us with someone in a wheelchair…wow! I didn’t see, but I suspect the lodge workers helped…they were great.

white part is sand, should all be under water

We were supposed to have some

Englishman monkey I fed!!

down time, lunch before heading out. Angelo suggested that we visit the Eco Lodge’s monkey sanctuary today because the weather was good. We were all up for it.

I’m a bit fuzzy on the story of the sanctuary - I was mesmerized by the 60-70 monkeys living there. What I think Angelo explained was that the sanctuary was started by the government as an antidote to black market

woolly monkey reaching for food

plant and animal trade in Brazil. The monkeys are rescued or orphaned. The monkeys are free to leave, but don’t because they are well fed.

THIS WAS THE BEST

We stayed there about an hour (time flew, I could have stayed all day.) We fed them, learned about them, and just watched them. This is the absolute highlight of the trip so far. 

At one point Angelo showed me how to hold a Brazil nut (still in the shell), stand with my back to the Englishman monkey, walk slowly backward and the monkey would take it from me. At first, I didn’t want to, but

my arm - take my word for it

I’m so glad it did. The monkey took the nut so fast it was hard for Chris to capture it in a photo.

how about a mango??

She sat on my back for a while and hung out. After a minute or so (which BTW is long when a monkey is on your back) she jumped off. She was surprisingly light, almost what I’d think a cat would weigh. I can’t say enough a

watermelon feast

bout freaking fun it was!

We hand fed them mangos (ate around the seed in minutes), eggs (they cracked the shell and sucked the egg out), papaya (they

want an egg?

obliterated the inside and left the peel.) They also ate watermelon from a raised platform. Some took food hanging from a tree. Just when you thought there was no way they would reach you somehow, they got lower, one even seemed to have a friend make the branch heavier for access to the food. And some took food from you just by standing next to you. It was fascinating.

mowing a papaya

At one point I counted at least 20 monkeys, but there were for sure ones I didn’t count – they don’t sit still to be counted. The sanctuary has 3 types of monkeys…Capuchin monkeys (small

eco park info

timid) many babies on mother’s backs, woolly monkeys (the bosses around there) and Englishman monkeys (red faces). They all had names.

Eventually we had to leave. At this point I would have been happy to leave the eco lodge all together I felt so satisfied by the monkey experience.

On the was back at the lodge Angelo showed us endless evidence of how low the river was. We saw sea sponges 15 feet up trees that would normally be submerged. We saw ropes hung from trees overhanging what should be pools of water to swing and jump from. We saw

sea plants 

high water marks on trees. It was mind blowing

lodge cascading pools

to see that kind of evidence.

Next was a buffet lunch of salads, fish, chicken, pork, rice, and milk pudding for dessert – a kind of vanilla cake soaked in a syrup topped with an even sweeter syrup.

We had some time before our next adventure, so we decided to check out the rest of the lodge area. The lodge is a series of 25 or 30 buildings. Most of these are small cabin type buildings with 2 or 3 rooms each, plus reception, the restaurant, an events centre. We also found their 4

striped forest whiptail

cascading pools and where in non-drought

natural water slide

conditions they have a natural water slide to the river. These pools are fed from inland streams and are a kind of brown colour – not a brown like the Amazon, but brown kind of like Coke. This is due to the acidity of the river which evidently discourages mosquitos…nope…I got MORE than my fair share of bites.

Then it was back to our room for some down time. The AC was incredible. I always

boxer mantis

lodge pathways

hope for great AC, but honestly didn’t have high hopes for this place…I was shocked at the power of the AC. The WIFI was great too. The bed was another story…think sleeping on the hardest mattress you’ve ever slept on and then think harder...at least we weren’t sweating at the same time. In fact, we cocooned trying to stay warm. We didn’t want to mess with the AC for fear of turning it off altogether - eventually I messed with it, and it was fine.

black vulture

Our late afternoon/evening activity started with a visit across the river (via the small boats again) to see some

Cuban Tree Frog

traditions of jungle life. Roasting Brazil nuts, jungle medicines made from plants, and roasting a type of root to make flour. Angelo stopped to show us a tree where the bark is entirely covered in spikes. This was wild – these were serious spikes, He pulled off a bit of the bark and out jumped a Cuban Tree FROG! Over our 2 days here, we saw many trees with spike covered bark.

Back to the boat, to a floating platform to try our hand (again) at piranha fishing. One person caught a fish, but similar to our last piranha fishing, we only fed the fish with our bait.

drying manioc/cassava/yuca

As the sun was setting, we cruised around the waterways looking this and that waiting for dark, to begin our

piranha fishing, not catching

caiman search – alligator-like animals in the water. Angelo has his high-powered flashlight scanning the water and the grass, but nothing. What we did find were BUGS. We couldn’t really see them, but we felt them. Before we left the lodge, Angelo told us not to worry about mosquitos until our jungle trek tomorrow and to save the long pants and long sleeves until then…so

Amazon moon

I did. Boy did the bugs find me. I got eaten alive. Angelo had some spray, but it didn’t

Christmas Eve beer

work. I’m not itchy but look like I’ve been trekking through the jungle…check! I am so used to NOT being bothered by bugs at home that I’m not as diligent as Chris is at making a constant sweep of his limbs – Amazon bugs are NOT like Canada bugs…Amazon bugs love me. Chris is trying to make me feel better by telling me they are my battel scars and evidence of an amazing experience, he’s right, but I’m still not happy about the constellations on my body!

manioc/cassava/yuca

Back at the lodge we had a quick shower (we were

more monkeys!

sweaty and covered in ineffective bug spray), took our malaria pills – AMEN for those, had Christmas Eve dinner washed down with a couple of Brazilian beers listening to a guitar playing singer, and were off to bed…at 9:30! Good thing we went to bed early because it was a restless night on that rock hard bed…I think (no, I know) we’ve become spoiled by the ship bed. One thing that I was glad to be up in the night to hear was a cacophony of animal sounds. It was super cool to hear the jungle all night long.

This was an AMAZING day!