I spent a two-week Christmas break in the Amazon Rainforest a few years back. I know Christmas and the Amazon are awkwardly juxtaposed; it’s not quite a winter wonderland or even a Caribbean Christmas getaway, but I wanted it, so I went for it.
The Amazon is so big it really is difficult to comprehend. But it is dwindling. By the time it takes you to read this blog the equivalent of about 200 football fields will have been deforested. It’s disgusting, and we should all do something about it.
I was travelling through South America when I decided to go, and if you have never been, believe me: it’s awe-inspiring, its mindblowing, and it’s whoppingly hot!
For those that don’t know, the Amazon Rainforest cover vast amounts of Colombia, Peru and Brazil and also Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Bolivia, Guyana, and French Guiana. It is5.5 million km² That’s about 1.5X bigger than India, and more than half the size of USA. So, we’re talking about a huge piece of the planet.
I had been in Colombia for about a month before flying into the Colombian Amazon, and as I was coming into land, my panoramic view from the airplane was a clotted blanket of dense grey cloud. As we descended lower and finally got through it, the immensity of the Amazon hit me. It was quite an emotional experience seeing the titanic green fleece for the first time. There it was just a few hundred metres below me, and a few thousand kilometres all around me. Boom!
After a night in Leticia, I was ready to move in. An Amazonian Colombian/Brazilian border town isn’t the most exciting of places, and anyway, I had a boat to catch. I had heard of the boat trip from fellow travellers and it sounded quite romantic: A steam boat cruising down the Amazon, for 3 days - 3 nights, watching the sunsets and reading a book while chilling in my hammock.
The sunsets behind the Amazon were amazing, the cruise down the Amazon was nice and picturesque at times, but my hammock (bedroom) wasn’t as exotic as it sounds. When I got on the boat, I pitched my hammock in space and thought I was sorted, but as time went on, more and more hammocks went up until we were basically on top of each other. I protested at first, but realized it was just the way it is. Why should I have a detached hammock while everyone else is living in terraced hammocks?
It was hard work, uncomfortable, and although the views were delightful, it was pretty boring on the primitive boat. But, hey, I did it, and finally I got to Manaus.
Manaus is the capital of Amazonas. It’s the capital city in the state of Amazonas, and with a population of over 2 million it’s quite a big city.
It’s an interesting place. There’s no road in or out, as it’s completely surrounded by the rainforest. So, the only way to get in or out is to fly or cruise down the Amazon River.
I had a couple of nights there and saw some interesting sights, like the Teatro Amazonas, which is a nice colonial building, had a few beers with some locals who were excited about the World Cup in a few months time and wanted to talk football all night. But really Manaus isn’t that good. It’s the place to go to start an Amazon trek, and that’s what I did the following morning with a group of likeminded trekkers.
My new friends and I boarded a boat to go deeper into the jungle, but funny enough our first stop was just a few hundred metres outside of the port to see Manaus’ most famous landmark: The Meeting of the Rivers.
It’s where two rivers meet but don’t mix. It looks like black coffee and milky tea side by side, and it’s quite extraordinary to see. The Solimões River forms the lighter half, with its ‘cafe au lait’ colouring owed to the rich sediment that runs down from the Andes Mountains, including sand, mud and silt. Known as a ‘white water river’, the Solimões River stretches over a 1600 km distance.
The darker side is the Rio Negro, and it gets its ‘black tea’ hue from leaf and plant matter that has decayed and dissolved in the water. It might look dark and murky, but the Rio Negro carries little or no sediment. The two rivers never mix because of the stark differences in temperature, speed and water density between the two. The Solimões is faster, cooler and denser, its waters flowing up to 6 km/h at 22c, and the warmer, slower waters of the Rio Negro flow at a more leisurely 2 km/h, and maintain a temperature of around 28c.
Once we were deep into the jungle we stayed at a riverside loghouse for a few nights and then had 5 days hiking though the jungle, learning how to survive and seeing as much of the animal kingdom that habitats there.
My favourite animal I came across was the Sloth. They’re amazing! I had never even heard of them before I went into the Amazon, but they really are the cutest animals ever. Billy caught one for us so we could hold it and all it wanted to do was cuddle each and every one of us. We all wanted to keep it, but obviously it is comfier in the jungle than my home.
We were trekking and cruising lakes in our little boat. While trekking we saw some amazing animals, like the Glass Frog. They’re actually see-through and you can see all their organs pumping away. I’m not sure why they’re see-through, I’m no Charles Darwin, but believe me, they’re an amazing specimen to see. We saw giant spiders, monkeys and everything you might expect. No Macaws though ☹ It is a big area!
We learned how to get water from the vines. Chop them down and just tip them up and natural mineral water will cascade from within the vine. So refreshing.
A specimen of ant has actually got natural UV protection. Let them cover the part you want protecting and then when they’re swarming, just rub them in (euphemism for kill them) and let the natural UV protect you from the blistering sun.
Crusing through inner Amazon away from the main rivers is quite an exotic experience. With the sun beating down and all the greenery reflecting off the smooth and still lakes, it makes for quite a tranquil setting. But there’s nothing really tranquil about the Amazon. Our guide (Amazon Billy – you can find him on Facebook and I recommend himif ever you fancy an Amazon Trek), showed us everything, quite literally by hand. He scooped a caiman out of the lake so we could see it up close and personal, he saw things that none of us would have seen in a million years in there.
Christmas morning was nice to wake up in my hammock with the density of the rainforest above me and the natural cookaws reverberating around me. It was a really cool way to wake up on that special day. I was in a slumber as I made my way to the picnic table, and an American trekker wished me a Happy Christmas and said there were some crackers on the table.
I said to the group how nice, they’ve even got us some Christmas Crackers to feel all Christmassy. And as I looked for a partner to pull my cracker with I realised he meant crackers with butter. We all had a good laugh anyway.
We needed something for Christmas dinner and Amazon Billy told us the Amazon is littered with piranha. Uh oh, stay out of the water then, we all said.
“But they’re not man-eaters, they don’t go for humans,” he told us. ”Only if you’re bleeding profusely will they go for a human.”
It took me a few hours to be convinced, but once I was I was in and out of the river cooling off and swimming with the piranhas and pink dolphins, and caimans. It was refreshing and also exhilarating to know that I was safe (probably) and swimming with piranhas. It became a daily hobby.
Piranhas might not be maneaters, but man is definitely a piranha eater (part of the survival trip). They’re greedy little buggers, and when fishing for them, you pop a maggot on your line and within seconds you have one hook line and sinker. The survival way to kill it is by crushing its skull with your teeth. That way, you know it won’t jump about the boat and bite you in a panic. Anyway, we caught a few and had Piranha Curry for Christmas dinner. A far cry from Roast Turkey, but it was different and Amazonian.
That night we had a few beers around a campfire and celebrated our very survival.