Saturday, July 19

Location: Ariau Towers, Amazonas, Brazil

Today's weather: 35░C, Sunny

This morning I woke up at 6.00 am. I had arranged to be downstairs at 7:15am to travel out to Aria· Towers. I needed to repack my bags and get myself ready. I wandered out to some shops to buy a big bottle of mineral water for me to drink through the day because I was sure that I would get thirsty, and there mightn't be any shops around when I do.

At 7:30am, I jumped into a mini-bus with some other visitors who were also transferring to Aria·. We were driven across the city to a private dock. There we got into a waiting speedboat, called the Bill Clinton, which would take us to the lodge – usually we'd travel by slower riverboat (two hours), but the speedboat was the only boat available and cut down our travelling time to one hour). The speedboat was really just a long narrow aluminium canoe, with a canopy over the top which sheltered everyone from the sun. I watched small rainbows form in the spray along the side of the boat as we sped to our destination. On the way to the lodge, I chatted with another visitor, called Chris, who was also travelling around Brazil. Chris was from Michigan in the United States and had been to Brazil previously when, like me, he also fell in love with the Amazon region.

We arrived at Aria· shortly after 9am, and everyone from the boat checked into the lodge. We were all given keys and shown to our rooms. The person who showed me to my room was a 14 year-old caboclo boy. I felt guilty because my backpack was almost bigger than he was, so I just gave him my camera case then strapped on my backpack once more for the walk to my room. Aria· is a set of towers linked together by a series of wooden walkways in the tree-tops along which there are monkeys and exotic birds. As such, the walk to my room involved climbing several sets of stairs, crossing the walkways, and then descending several more sets of stairs until I reached my room on level 1 of tower 5.

Aria· is different from my first visit in January. My first visit was before the wet season, so the rivers were at their lowest point. You could see riverbanks and walk around on the forest floor outside the hotel. But it is now the end of the wet season, and the rivers are much higher. There are no riverbanks to see. The lodge buildings are all raised up off the ground, on high poles several metres high – enabling the floodwaters to pass beneath the lodge without causing damage. Right now all the land below the hotel is flooded, so I can look out of my window to see water and hundreds of tiny catfish swimming below. I think having the river right below the hotel is much more fun and interesting.

I spent the next few hours try to catch up on my diary and some other tasks. But it was very difficult. I had chosen to work at a table outside, in a nice cool, shaded, spot just outside the dining room. There were lots of monkeys around me, and a few big colourful parrots called Macaws. Lots of people passing by stopped to play with the monkeys – a few had to chase after them to retrieve drink bottles, sunglasses, and other items which took the monkeys' interest. While I was working, lots of people came up to me to see what I was doing. This included another New Zealander. His name was Caleb Foote, and he now lives in Manaus with his Brazilian wife who is a doctor here. Caleb and his wife have just returned from a visit to New Zealand, where they got married a few weeks ago. Caleb intends to stay in Manaus and teach English while his wife continues her work.

In the afternoon, I went with a group to visit a small caboclo village nearby. On the route to the village, our boat travelled through flooded forest. There was thick forest canopy overhead, birds, and butterflies. We could reach out over the side of the canoe to touch the trees which emerged out of the water (and we occasionally had to duck to avoid low branches). Travelling through a forest by canoe is a very unusual experience.

Once we got to the village, we all had the opportunity to see the local people live. They are caboclos, which means that they are descended from the early settlers and from the Indians who first lived in Amaz⌠nia. Their lifestyle is a mixture of European and old Indian methods. They have very simple wooden houses, and live mostly on fish and food which they grow themselves. They grow mangoes, oranges, brazil nuts, cashews, and a little coffee and sugar. We stopped outside a school in the village where the children were gathered together drawing pictures and singing songs. The class was outside because it is more comfortable outside, in the breeze, than inside. I think that school days in the village are shorter than in New Zealand because of the difficulty of concentrating in the heat. This is why the school also operates on Saturdays. In the cities, where there is air conditioning, schools run much more like ours. There was only a primary school in the village. Students wanting to attend high school or university must go to live in Manaus.

On the boatride back from the village, we paused to watch the sunset. It was very beautiful, much more beautiful than any that I've seen in New Zealand. The sun appeared very big, and bright orange. The sky was still blue, but with shades of pink, red, and orange. All of this reflected off the water, so that we could see the scene and its mirror image repeated below.

In the evening we went on a jacarΘ (alligator) hunt. It took about half and hour to find one – so wasn't as easy as I'd thought. The guide stepped down from the canoe into the water, and quickly grabbed hold of a small jacarΘ hidden in floating weeds close to the riverbank. It is easiest to hunt jacarΘ at night because it gets hot for them during the day, so sleep floating underneath the water. JacarΘ can sleep underwater for six hours. At night, they rise to the surface, and can be found by shining torchlights which reflect in their eyes. Big jacarΘ can grow to 3 metres long, and feed mostly on fish – but big ones can also catch dogs, pigs, and even small monkeys. Fortunately, the jacarΘ that we caught was only about half a metre long. The guide told us how jacarΘ lived, then tapped its nose so that it opened its mouth for us to see its teeth. Some of us held the jacarΘ. Its skin felt soft and smooth, but also very tough. We then released the jacarΘ back into the river.

We returned to the lodge. I went to bed about 10:30pm.