THE BRAZILIAN GROOVE

The Currency Exchange Office.

The night before leaving Bolivia to cross into Brazilian territory Emi was very nervous and anxious. Continuously, he repeated that he wished there were other tourists crossing the Brazil border the next day. In Argentina, Brazil has a fame of being unsafe and even violent especially to tourists. It comes from the animosity between the two countries and also the occasional news about Argentine vacationers being robed or even assaulted in Rio or Sao Paulo during the tourist season. It also did not help to see posters on every corner of Guayaramerim (the Bolivian border town where we were) announcing a monetary prize in exchange for information about a young French couple which disappeared around that area in August of 2010. Emi was convinced that if we found more travelers to join us, it would be much safer to travel in a group through that part of the world. We didn’t exactly go looking for more people, but somehow travelling through the Amazon in a group was in our destiny.

Short distance river transportation.

Mauricio appeared out of nowhere at the money exchange post when Emi, in his porte ño manner, was loudly expressing his frustration about something. Argentino?! – exclaimed Mauricio. He was just as happy to find us as we were to find him. At least Emi and I had each other, and Mauricio’s only company was his bicycle Rosa, which he ended up donating the following day. An hour into meeting Mauricio he told us that he was not really a cyclist, and travelling by bike was an impulsive last minute decision. He said that because of one reason or the other he was not able to bike as much, and often he had to travel by bus paying extra for Rosa’s place in the baggage compartment.

Casa de la Cultura museum in Manaus.

When he heard that in the Brazilian Amazon it was dangerous to be on a bike by himself he was done with it. The bike went to the next nice person we met, who happened to be Sr. Pimienta, an ex senator candidate at the local municipal administration, and the owner of the hostel where we stayed. Mauri was like this with everything. He travelled with the flow (almost literally) and made decisions on the spot when things came up. Surprisingly enough, we learned that just a few months before our encounter, Mauri was an owner of a mid-size agro-enterprise, raising cattle and managing acres and acres of land. As soon as Mauricio graduated from college he put his agro-engineering degree to practice in the endless grazing fields of the Argentine province of Santa Fe. Nevertheless, wealth and professional success did not make him happy, and at the age of 40 he sold everything and set off to explore the world. Mauricio became our friend and companion for almost a week with whom we not only crossed the Bolivia-Brazil border, but also took a bus to Puerto Velho, travelled by boat to Manaus and even went to see Jazz at the grand Teatro Amazonas.

These guys look for gold in the Amazonas.

Our first night in Brazil was a pleasant surprise. We arrived to Porto Velho as it was getting dark. The city did not strike us as safe and cozy, so we decided to find a place to stay close to the terminal and wait till morning to go explore. Despite a questionable appearance of the front façade of the hostel that we found, for only 10$ a person it offered newly renovated rooms with a private bathroom, TV, a mini-fridge and an AC!!! After a day of wandering in a 100% humidity and 100 degree weather with a 16 kilo backpack behind your shoulders an air-conditioned room feels like heaven!

The modern day "garden city" huts.

The next day we marched to the port to find a boat that would take us to the heart of the Amazon – Manaus. We did find it, but not after doing some rounds around the city trying to follow directions to locate a bank and an internet cafe. We found out that asking for directions in Brazil is pointless. In that country people would send you places without knowing where those places are without any problem. They would never say “sorry, I don’t know”. It is just unacceptable there. After a while we decided to rely on maps, our intuition, or at worst ask three different people to compare the answers. With the boat schedules it was a similar story. We were never told the actual day and time of the departure. You’d probably ask - “How do you know when the boats leaves to make it?” Well, schedules exist, but they are not really observed and boats leave according to how quickly cargo is loaded. Of course, all of this we did not find out until a couple of boat trips in. The boat we boarded in Porto Velho did not leave until the following day and we spent our first night on the water in a boat docked at the port.

Teatro Amazonas in Manaus.

The boat ride from Porto Velho to Manaus was great. For me it was like a three day cruise with everything included. I spent hours watching pink river dolphins play in the water as they followed along side of our boat. I loved hanging out on the upper deck or in my hammock, talking to our new friends, making earrings (I even sold 2 pairs!) or writing. Mauricio was always up for a conversation or some refreshing terere (yerba mate with juice) that we shared with another Argentine (a park ranger from one of the national parks of the Tucuman province). If the Argentines were not there, my Brazilian hammock neighbors were always excited to teach me new words, or laugh at me when I did not understand what they were saying. The meals (3 times a day) were homemade and really tasty, and one day we even got a churrasco (a Brazilian BBQ) in between the meals. The Brazilian BBQ is something special….It turned out, they do not use any plates or cutlery, or any manners when it comes to meat. If you want some meat you have to get it right from the knife of the person cutting the stakes. It was quite hilarious how you had to fight for your piece of meat, however, at the same time it was not exactly funny because the guy could easily cut off your fingers at any moment.

A local pharmacy...

In between the meals and especially in the early hours of the first part of the day before it got unbearably hot we spent time on the upper open deck of the boat enjoying the view and chatting with the fellow boat travelers. One of them was a German scientist travelling to the middle of the Amazon (now for the 3d time) to study the way ancient inhabitants organized their cities and how they managed their waste water. He was an agro-engineer, who now worked for a water management company in Hamburg, and his role was to come up with new ways to manage waist and waste water. As they say, “anything new is a well forgotten old”, so he went to the Amazon to dig up this once forgotten old. It was very interesting to learn that the river backs of the Amazon with its poor sandy soil used to host greatly populated “garden cities” which were self sufficient, sustainable and thriving. I’m not sure what lead to their destruction, but there are certainly none of those lush communities left, and what you see are barely standing wooden huts on stilts. The same scientist also told me that there used to be a city called Fordlandia, located a few miles down from Manaus. And yes, Fordlandia comes from Henry Ford, who built the whole city with a sole ambition to harvest rubber trees for his automobile tire production. This whole tire business together with Fordlandia didn’t really work out, as around the same time the Brazilian rubber boom was over. In 1895 a number of caoutchouc trees were secretly taken to South East Asia (Singapore area), which by 1910 became the new main producer of rubber. We did not mange to visit what remains of Fordlandia, but I am sure it would have been quite a unique experience.

Brincos, brincos!!! Pulcerinhas! Baratinho!

After Manaus, where we spent a couple of days we took 2 more boats to reach Belem, one of the main cities on the northern coast of Brazil. Unfortunately, those 2 boats were not of the level of the first one, neither in conditions, nor in quality of service so we were really happy when we were finally in Belem. Even thought I liked the experience as a whole, I was a little disappointed that we did not see any of the exotic things that one imagines when talking about the Amazon. The main rivers are commercial travel routs with little possibility see lush tropical nature, or native tribes. From what I understand, the “exotic Amazon” is preserved in the Protected Areas, which are far and very difficult to get to. It is of course possible, but was completely out of our budget, as we would have had to go with a local guide, pay for additional transportation and accommodations. Crossing the Amazon was fun, but I feel like I have to return to experience the Amazon I could not afford this time.