We docked this morning in Manaus and will be here for two days. Manaus is where the Rio Negro and Solimoes rivers meet in the heart of Amazonian wilderness. It has a population of over 2 million and looks now to be a semi-modern city with high rise buildings. The rubber industry back in late 1800's brought Manaus enormous wealth with many large old mansions. Some British citizens illegally took some rubber tree seeds out of the Amazon and planted them in Malaysia in early 1900's. Within a few years rubber was being produced less expensively there and Manaus's rubber industry died. Today, Manaus has several soap and electronics manufacturing plants along with petroleum refining, production of chemicals, and exports Brazil nuts and forest products. Eco-tourism is also a big boost to the economy.
Our tour today was "Highlights of Manaus". Boy, am I glad we were doing the "Manaus Jungle Trek" tour like many of our friends, because at about 10am a monsoon started. It rained hard for a couple of hours. They were probably drowned rats out there in jungle with very wet, expensive cameras. Anyway, our first stop after a bus drive though old Manaus was at a zoo. Now this zoo was not nearly as nice as our US zoos but we did see some animals indigenous to the Amazon basin. This was a military zoo just outside of a Brazilian army jungle survival school. Soldiers from all over the world come here for jungle survival and operations training, including the US military services. I tried to get some good photos of the animals but sometimes my auto focus camera focused on the wire cages instead of the animals. Wanted a photo of a huge python but it was lying under the water.
Just as we were leaving the zoo, the skies opened up. The streets as we returned to old Manaus were flooding and our next stop was to be at the "Teatro Amazonas" or Amazon Theater. It was raining so hard and sidewalks flooded too, that our guide decided to go on to what was to be our third stop, an Indian Museum. It was still pouring there so returned to the theater. (We never did go back to the Museum) We were then able to leave the bus and get inside the theater. It had been built around turn of 1900's during rubber boom and Manaus was wealthiest city in the world. The 700 seat opera house was built with bricks from Europe, French glass, and Italian marble. It has been recently renovated and was beautiful. Just as we were ready to leave there the skies opened up again. After waiting quite a while for it to slack off as our bus was parked 100 yards away, one of the theater employees shows up with a huge umbrella used normally for street side cafes. He took us 4 or 5 at a time to the bus. We did not get back to the ship until after 1:30 so had a quick lunch. This is the rainy season here and our guide said March was wettest month of the year. Too bad it messed up our ship's tours today however. We are docked just a couple hundred yards from old town and especially the markets. Maybe it will be drier tomorrow and we can just walk over there. We have been invited by the general manager, and I suspect the chef will also be included, to accompany him tomorrow morning to the fish market to buy fish for the ship. That should be interesting for sure. Should have lots of fish from the Amazon photos.
You will see in today's photos the many two and three deck river boats that are parked just out our balcony. These boats are being loaded with supplies including building materials, food, clothes, people and just everything imaginable. They will go to the remote villages up and down the river as this is the only way to supply these places. Some of the boats' journey will take 3 days to get there. It is very interesting to watch this activity taking place on the pier. Trucks coming and going with the supplies. It's another thing that makes the Amazon basin so amazing.
At 6pm a local folkloric troop will be aboard to entertain us with "Music from the Amazon". We will be dining with our next door neighbors again, Fred & Susie.
