Manaus, Brazil March 13

We arrived in Manaus about 45 minutes late because of a strong current.  The rainy season has finally started so the water level is rising and there is a lot of debris floating down the river.  Manaus is about 1000 miles from the Atlantic and has a population of over two million.  It is located near the confluence of the Rio Negro (black river) and the Amazon.

Our boat tour took us to the area where the two rivers meet, it is quite a contrast between the muddy light brown (about the color of coffee with cream) Amazon water and the clear dark brown water of the Rio Negro (about the color of Coca Cola).  We did see a lot of dolphins in this area.  After visiting the "Meeting of the Waters"  we traveled into "January Lake" where we boarded wooden motorized canoes that held about 10 people plus the boat operator.  These boats are not in what we would call great shape.  They had water sloshing around in the bottom and the driver had to keep bailing with a plastic pail.  Our boat had a rag stuck in the top of the gas can instead of a cap and our engine died and we had to be towed by one of the other boats for a while.  We did see the huge lily pads and lots of bird life.

It is amazing to see how people live in these areas, mostly in floating houses.  They can move these homes to different areas depending on conditions along the river.  We were told that they don't own the places where they "park" their homes but when they return to the same place no one would have taken their spot, sort of an honor system.

We had three of these police boats as escorts into Manaus

 There are lots of these floating gas stations in the middle of the river.  This is one of the larger ones, it even had a convenience store.

The "Meeting of the Waters"

Our tour guide said these people were probably going to a party and that they had better not run into the police boat as they were severly overloaded

There were building storm clouds and we saw lots of lightning on our way back to Manaus but we managed to stay dry. 

We saw hundreds of these white herons

The giant lilies were just starting to mature (they only grow in the rainy season) and we saw some with closed blooms.  Our guide stated that they bloom late in the afternoon into evening.

These boys (age 5 and 8) were selling candy to the tour boats 

Some of the floating houses

Because of our late arrival into Manaus our tour left about 45 minutes late and then it lasted about an hour and a half longer than it was scheduled so we ended up missing lunch. Luckily they always have some finger sandwiches at tea time and Noel was excited that today they had peanut butter!