Manaus, Brazil

February 28-29, 2008

We finally reached Manaus the most remote of the stops along the Amazon that we will make. What a surprising place Manaus is. With almost three million!!!!! inhabitants it is amazing to think that this large city thrives out here in the middle of the Amazon rain forest. It is, of course, that rain forest that is the very reason for this large city being here in the first place.....rubber!

Back in the middle of the 19th century, rubber barons discovered this place and set up their operations here. Many people became very wealthy from the local forests and lived a most grand lifestyle.

We visited the former palace of one of these rubber barons. Huge tall ceilings with beautiful winding staircases and intricately inlaid parquet floors, stained glass windows showed that these people really knew how to live.

The highlight of Manaus is the famed Teatro Amazonas Opera House built in 1896. This marvel of architecture features a dome of 36,000 vitrified ceramic tiles imported from Europe, set in a mosaic of the colors of the Brazilian flag. The amazing painting that graces the inside of the dome is a recreation of the view you would have if you stood under the Eiffel Tower and looked up. The dazzling auditorium boasts perfect acoustics, which we were able to hear because we were lucky that on our visit the Amazon Philharmonic Orchestra was rehearsing. What a thrill! We strolled the ornate ballroom and visited some small side rooms where they have a few costumes and memorabilia of the hundreds of artists that have graced this stage from all over the world. Anyone that is or was anyone in opera and ballet has been here...amazing when you think that we are in the middle of the Amazon rain forest.

Having two days in Manaus, I spent one of them in a small ferry boat traveling in the back waters to see the floating houses and local villages. We dined in a most extraordinary fashion in a floating restaurant. We walked along a rickety boardwalk to eventually come to a lake filled with the large over-scaled water lilies. We boarded small canoes and slowly made our way deep into the flooded forest where local families met us in hand-hewn canoes laden down with large anacondas, sloths, monkeys, and caymen....wanting us to take their picture and....of course, give them some dollars. We stopped at one man’s small family compound where his wife show us how she digs up the room of a local potato-like plant, boils it, grinds it to flour and eventually makes a fried bread that is a staple of their table. The husband showed us a stand of rubber trees and demonstrated how by using a special tool and gouging the bark that the sap...or milk as the locals call it....can be collected. We marveled at the hundreds of floating houses....even floating barns...for the livestock. One small community of maybe five or six houses had three churches! The whole experience was great to see how these people live and thrive in this most humid and amazing place called the Amazon.

So now we sail back downstream stopping tomorrow in a small village where we are promised a spectacular show of local folklore....stay tuned!