December 11 - Manaus, Brazil (Day 2)

 We had an early tour today meeting at 8:15 so we were up early in order to have breakfast and time to prepare for the tour.  The dining room didn't open until 8:00 am (out of the question) so we went up to the buffet, but it didn't open until 7:00 am so we went to the outside grill area by the pool.  All they had was a simple continental breakfast.  I got some fruit while we waited for the buffet to open, at which time I got some protein.

We tendered in and got on our boat for our excursion to see the Meeting of the Waters - where the Rio Negro comes together with the Amazon.  Fortunately it was overcast and with the breeze from being on the upper deck of the boat, it was actually quite comfortable and we didn't use our neck cooling scarves.

Leaving the pier for the tour

You can see the two rivers running side by side.  The darker is the Rio Negro and the brown is the Amazon.

It would have been easier to see in full sunlight, but I was happy for the cloud cover.

Our guides today were good and gave us lots of facts about the rivers and the area.  As I mentioned yesterday, Manaus has over 400 factories and Samsung TVs are assembled here.  If your TV has PIM on the back, that means it was made here.  And the only assembly plant for Harley-Davidsons outside of the US is here in Manaus. The only way here from southern Brazil is by river or plane.  Getting to distant places in Brazil can take many days on the river.  

The two rivers come together but run alongside each other for up to 8 km downstream where you can finally no longer see the difference.  There are a few reasons for this.  The Rio Negro is about 6 degrees Celsius cooler than the Amazon (which also means fewer mosquitoes).  The Rio Negro is much more acidic (4.5 compared with 7.2 for the Amazon.)  The Rio Negro runs more slowly - 6 kmh vs about 12 kmh in the Amazon.  One of the guides showed the difference between the two river waters:

These were collected on the tour.  The Amazon is on the left - murkier although lighter in color.  The Rio Negro on the right is clearer but darker in color.  

Sand and particles are blown to the Amazon basin from the Sahara Desert and western Africa along with moisture.  This brings nutrients to the forest.  The sediment that collects along the over 2,500 miles of river is eventually washed into the Atlantic Ocean at a rate of 350 tons each day.

Many of the people who live along the river are in floating houses built on huge logs, some of them are balsa wood that will last for 50 years.  But this year, even some of the floating houses are left high and dry because they weren't moved in time.

Floating houses no longer floating.  The water is right up to those trees normally in June.

There are floating restaurants and other businesses along the river.

We stopped at a floating business where you could buy souvenirs or try to catch the Piracucu fish which can grow to 6 feet long or more.  I tried to get good pictures of them in the pens they had, but between the murky water and the speed of the fish, wasn't terribly successful.

You can just see the two at the bottom of the picture while Bill is trying to catch one above.  No one caught any of course.  They need bigger hooks and poles.

On the way back we passed close to the industrial part of Manaus.

Such colorful cranes

Good-sized container ships get up here.

More pretty cranes

A floating gas station - pull up and fill up

This is one of the many traveling ships.  If you are spending the night on one of these, you bring your own hammock to attach to the provided hooks.  If you have the money, you can get a cabin in the front with a real bed and AC.

It's a little hard to see, but there is a big pile of garbage that wasn't there when we left the pier.  (Clicking on the picture will enlarge it and make it easier to see). There was a big wind that came through and blew all this into the water.  The guide said that there are garbage barges that regularly patrol to pick up stuff like this.  Some of it had blown all the way out to the ship.

Back on board, we hustled to the launderette and were able to find an available washing machine - Yay!  We threw in our load and then I took a shower.  After moving it to the dryer, we went up to the buffet for lunch since the Dining Room was closed for lunch.  Again, lunch was just so-so.  Down to the coffee bar for a beverage and ran into Tom and Jan who decided not to do their tour - which it turns out was our tour.  They thought 5 hours yesterday in uncomfortable chairs on a boat was enough, although they did get some good photos of the pink dolphins and visited a real native village where you weren't asked to pay to take a photo.

Not sure what this barge was doing.  Probably not a fuel barge, but perhaps delivering fresh water or taking away the brown water that we've been holding since entering the Amazon.  It pulled away just as the last tender returned for stowing away so we could depart.

We were really bad at trivia today, but so was everyone else so Peter took pity on the crowd and gave out points to practically everyone.  We had part II of the Houdini lecture and it was interesting like before.  I didn't remember that he was heavily into debunking the whole spiritualism scene which was very big then (seances and contacting the departed) which made him quite unpopular with many people.

Last week the four of us were scheduled to have dinner with Cruise Director Peter, but he had to cancel because that was the day that our schedule got all changed and he was really busy rejiggering everything.  He said we'd find another day and a couple of days ago we all got printed invitations to join him tonight in the Grand Dining Room at 7:00.  We confirmed that we would be there with Reception as requested on the invitation and were there tonight.  At about 7:10 Janet, the gal who signs everyone in and assigns the table, paged Peter because he was late.  (She knew we were having dinner with him.)  She spoke with him for a minute and then asked one of us to talk with him, so I went to the phone.  Turns out he knew nothing about the invitation and was quite surprised.  He had other things scheduled so he couldn't even drop everything and join us.  He was most apologetic and isn't sure how it happened.  When we were taken to the table, there were name tags at our places, so clearly everyone but Peter knew about the dinner plan!  Poor Peter, he was obviously embarrassed, but we just laughed it off.  I told him to pick another date that worked for him and we'll be there - I'm sure he will.