The meeting of the waters

The city of Manaus is located where the two great rivers (the Solimoes and the Negra) that form the Amazon come together. This is the spot that Brazilians consider to be the beginning of the Amazon, while we consider the Solimoes to be the upper part of the Amazon. These two rivers are really different: speed temperature, acidity, and color all differ greatly. The Solimoes is light gray, from sediment from the mountains of Peru. The water is colder and faster because it is running down from a great elevation. It is also less acidic and contains many more fish. Millions more people live on this river than on the Negra, it simply supports more life. The Negra is dark, the color of strong black tea. The color comes from all the organic matter. There are fewer species of fish in this river, and it supports fewer animals and people, but the good thing is that it is too acidic to breed mosquitoes. Our ecolodge was on a tributary of a tributary of the Negra. Our little tributary was at least a quarter mile wide, though, which gives you a sense of how big the water is here. Today we were upstream at a spot where the Negra was almost 10 km across!

At the meeting of the waters, the two great rivers swirl together but don't mix. They run light gray and dark brown side by side for miles. We had the chance to see this phenomenon from our boat, watching the waters swirl next to each other as far as we could see.

It took us two hours to go by river boat down past the city, under the gorgeous new river bridge that crosses the Negra, and then down past the city to the meeting of the waters. Our boat was a kind of double-decker old fashioned river boat, looking a bit like a miniature version of something from the Mississippi 100 years ago. We piled onto the upper deck for the view, and it promptly started to rain. And then it really started to rain. The wind and rain made it quite cold, which surprised most of us who had prepared for the usual steamy hot weather. We were pretty cold, even when the crew closed the sides by rolling down blue plastic sheeting. The view of the meeting of the waters was marked by rain as well.

On the way back, we stopped at a floating river restaurant, which was exactly what it sounds like--a kind of diner on a covered sort of homemade barge in Amazon style. We had the chance to eat a lot of fish and tropical vegetables and fruits, as well as beans, rice, and manioc and tapioca dishes.

Behind the restaurant was a raised walkway back to a lagoon in the rainforest. We walked back about 3/4ths of a mile on raised decking, and got to see a kind of swamp forest. These trees and plants live for about 6 months of the year in or under water, as the water levels drop and rise about 50 feet through the seasons each year. When we got to the lagoon, we could see patches of giant lillypads. Some of these were at least 5 feet across! They were huge and deep green and beautiful, and there were even a few giant buds about to bloom.

On the way back our boat took some narrower waterways, and at one point we were just squeezing through the branches and trees. Of course, the water is in the high season now, so we couldn't see any shoreline in most places. Instead, we saw trees descending right down into the water, in some places, just the crowns of the trees show above the water line. Our boat was in a waterway that would not be accessible in the low season, but we had the chance to see the rainforest close up from the water. Branches slapped our boat, and at one point, a long pod of tropical fruit was ripped off a branch and fell into our boat. This was a marimari fruit, and our guide spilt it open to let us taste the small green disks. We agreed that they tasted a bit like a chewy kiwi.

We got back to the lodge with a little daylight left--the days here are almost perfectly 12 hours long because we are do close to the equator. And instead of heading off back to the cabins, a number of students decided to swim in the river in front of the lodge. The water was warm, and it was so brown that you couldn't see down more than a foot into it. Jasmine and Mariam swam out pretty far, but most of the rest floated and splashed and squealed closer to the shore. After seeing what was living in the water--oh, piranhas and caiman and such--just swimming there was quite an act of bravery!