Around Brazil – Journey to the Jungle

What a time, what a place, what an experience. With no ayahuasca hangover at all, we stopped for supplies and headed for the dock. The twice weekly big boat to Manaus took an age to load. Uncle Mad had to follow us with his own little rib boat to fool the river police, big boats towing little boats being illegal in Crazy Town. He roared out of the darkness, circled Big Boat like a sheepdog with its flock, threw his rope to the crew, ran up Little Boat and climbed up Big Boat like a monkey to join us at the back. What an entrance.

Not finished with climbing, he decided we should go up to the roof. What a move. A crate of beer, the roof of the boat, a clear night, the jungle going darkly past, what more do you need? How about a full moon? One was rising over the trees, huge and round and yellow. We drank, we talked, we laughed, with journeys down to the toilet becoming more and more precarious. One slip, one stumble meant disappearing with a splash to alert the caimans and piranhas. We´d wanted to bring one of the 5 litre jugs of ayahuasca from the ceremony. Probably a good job we didn´t. Well...

As the moon died, we stopped at the Village of Mud and unloaded, loaded up Little Boat, climbed in, and headed down Wood River spotting caimans on the muddy banks with the spotlight. Turning up a tributary, we headed through the half-submerged trees into areas where the river widened into a lake or narrowed so we had to thread our way between the trunks.

All this as the sky brightened softly in front. The dawn chorus was starting, with huge groups of macaws screeching, flocks of parakeets panicking, and toucans gliding effortlessly into the tree-tops, wings closed. A million more birds, unidentified or unseen, added to the racket, and they do this every dawn of every day in the Amazon. Huge fishing birds fly down the tunnel of trees ahead of the boat, swallows dart, dive and skim the surface as they catch the morning insects. Neon-blue butterflies bigger than your hand dazzle in the first rays of dawn, others crackle like electricity as they dance together, spiralling like smoke towards the sky, and still more covered the floor and our skin, licking salt off the morning sweat. We could enjoy all this in silence.

The silence had started when the engine of Little Boat was turned off as we turned on to the sand of a tiny river beach four hours from Wood River and the Village of Mud, six hours further to Crazy Town but possibly four days, we were a long way from civilisation as we strung our hammocks up between the trees.

This was it. We´d made it. We were deep in the Amazon Jungle.

Around Brazil – Crazy Town Ceremonies

It was only a week or two but the area left on impression on four of us that will last a lifetime. We went to school, we went to church, we went driving, we went camping, and we went out on a boat. If it all sounds like a Surrey Sunday School outing, it was about as far removed from that as possible. We met the family of Uncle Mad, who bizarrely all seemed sane. He´d downsized from living with three women as his wives to just one, but children from these and other women kept appearing at the house. (“Meu filho” Another?)

After the oldest student by decades had taken us to his school to embarrass his English teacher, and for a night of heavy drinking, he drove us around Crazy Town in a friend´s Beetle – to the train station and Wood River, and on to a deserted mansion on the banks where Uncle Mad said a friend of his lived. Nobody answered the gate. We did some off-roading along the historic tracks and stopped to look at some of the rapids that made them necessary. We were joined by three women of various ages who lit candles, chanted a little in some strange language and threw offerings at the water. We stood quietly by and watched candomblé with interest, wondering which orixas were receiving the offers and which were listening. They left food and drink behind, possibly for Iemenjá, the goddess of the sea. Crazy Town is a whole long way from her home, but I guess people have to make do as best they can. Other foods, candles, gifts and incense marked it out as a spiritual spot but not for us. We left the booze behind though, which did show a certain level of respect I thought.

The ceremony had seemed like a lament for some lost loved one. Our first of the day. On the way home we stopped off at the local branch of the Santo Daime Church. They too were holding a ceremony that night to honour their ex-chief who´d died ten years before. We were invited to attend. How could travel-happy gringos refuse an offer to witness such a cultural event?

Especially when it involved ayahuasca. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca)

The ceremony takes place in an open church, all white except for the chessboard floor. The participants all wore white except for the green sash of the ladies and girls. We sat around the edges of the church while hours of hymns were chanted to the accompaniment of shaking maracas made from latas full of dried peas. This may sound more tedious than any other religious ceremony, but not with the help of ayahuasca. Used by Amazonian Indians in their own shamanic ceremonies, the drink is made from fermented vines and barks which together give it hallucinogenic properties. This and the rhythm of the chants and the beats of the beads help to transform the experience into a riot of colours, geometric shapes and contacts with the spirit world, if that´s your kind of thing.

After a glass of the bitter elixir, I never made it as far as the next dimension. It was too fascinating in my own to leave it, with generations of both sexes from twelve to twelvety taking a full part in the ceremony. They were going through until dawn, including a man who had known Blondie´s father many moons and many miles away. He´d ended up in Crazy Town because of the ceremonies. Or maybe because of ayahuasca. I couldn´t blame him. It nearly convinced me to stay too. We had to be sensible and duck out at half time though. We were heading into the jungle the next day.

Around Brazil – Crazy Town

Uncle Mad lives in Crazy Town. When you have somebody who lives on the edge of the Amazon Jungle and thinks he owns it all, it would be stupid not to pay him a visit. It sounded like it could be an adventure. The journey there from Manaus was either a six-day boat trip sleeping with the goats, or a flight for about R80 more. Covardes that we are, we flew.

Money well spent. Flying over the Amazon Rainforest is special. It ain´t called the rainforest for nothing though, but when all those clouds clear, the view of nothing but green trees all the way to the horizon, very occasionally slashed by a winding silver river, can´t be described in any lesser terms.

Coming in to land at Crazy Town, it seemed like we were dropping onto the tree-top. Like the rest of Crazy Town, the runway has been cut from the trees that used to cover the area. The furthest navigable point on a major tributary of the Amazon, the town used to be on the part of the South American map that had the giant word ´Jungle´ across the middle and no more details. It grew around the train station that was supposed to bring rubber from deep in the interior, avoiding rapids and waterfalls, to send it all the way to Europe. Henry Wickham put paid to that idea.

Like thousands of the people who worked on the line, the train died a slow death. The road that connected the Mato Grosso plantations to the wood river in the 1980´s has had more success, if success is the correct word. A wave of loggers, ranchers, chancers, gangsters and traffickers flooded the area, arriving on the newly paved road, while hardwood trees, cattle, soya and cocaine flooded out. Many people believe that cocaine comes from Bolivia, but they´re mostly wrong. Coca leaves come from Bolivia, form an important part of the cultural fabric of the High Andes (especially with regards to altitude sickness) and are generally farmed by poor Bolivians such as President Evo Morales once was. With US DEA officials burning and bombing the farms, it makes no sense to produce cocaine in the same place. The leaves are taken away and formed into a paste which is then shipped secretly down empty Amazonian rivers and across unmarked borders to end up in factories hidden around Crazy Town and such places. Only here is it processed in the powder, which in turn heads along that paved road to favelas in cities around Brazil, and from there - the world!

There are risks to be run, fortunes to be made and lives to be lost in trafficking as well as the other legal and illegal trades of the area. Crazy Town and its airport might not be on the edge of the shrinking Amazon Jungle for much longer, but it will likely remain at the front edge of a few of Brazil´s internal battles in the coming years.

One of the battles involves the Movimento Sem Terra group, which fights for land and rights for those who have neither (http://www.mstbrazil.org/). A part of the group won land concessions on the outskirts of the expanding town back in the 1980´s. He wasn´t connected to the group in any way but, chancer that he is, Uncle Mad joined the scramble and he´s been there ever since. He doesn´t have a crocodile in his swimming pool any more though.

Around Brazil – Manaus

Most Brazilian Amazon journeys start or end in Manaus.

Manaus happens to be 1500km upriver from the sea but it is still a port and has all the attributes that a port should have – water, land, goods that come in from all over the world, and that crazy air of edginess. The air of edginess had been present since some of our group had their bags slashed on the boat up from Santarem. Some couldn´t handle the idea of another boat ride and flew instead, but the rest of us were pleased that the boat was quite plush compared to our first one. We even got to steer the big wheel for a bit. The cameras and wallets had been stolen by someone small enough to crawl around in the small space under the hammocks, but the crew still searched the only black man on the boat as he´d been closest.

The river police searched the boat too, just as we arrived in Manaus, but not for our gear.

The British-made dock in Manaus floats to cope with the fluctuating river levels. Things are hectic, with bags, boxes and boats, people, gangplanks, sellers, touts, taxi-drivers and tourists to negotiate, with smells and sounds that belong to every port in the world. Rotting fish and fruit, diesel and petrol fumes – the kind of place to get away from as soon as possible.

Manaus has been a tourist centre for may years and this brings surprising consequences. As well as the dodgy tour operators, there are guides that have lived in Manaus all their lives and speak five languages fluently including Japanese. The jungle excursions can be mixed, with a lot of the vegetation around the city having been cleared to feed 1.5 million people. The river also feeds them and the market has fish of every size for sale, from 2m monsters to tiny piranha. There are piranha for sale in the streets too, preserved and mounted on wood with teeth bared. The sharp triangular teeth are an Amazon classic, also for sale in sets still attached to jawbones that can be used to cut hair. Many strange objects are sold in Manaus and many strange fruits, herbs and potions including Amazon Viagra.

One animal that wouldn´t need Viagra is the sloth. I saw my first one in a Manaus tree. Their reactions dimmed by lack of predators, they are built for comedy. Tap them on the shoulder and they turn around ten minutes later. I don´t know how sloths mate, apart from slowly, but I´m sure the herbal potion would wear off long before our hero realised what was happening. Spiking a sloth with Viagra – it´s an idea that sounds like fun for my next Manaus visit.

Around Brazil – Santarem & Alter do Chao

Santarem is probably the second biggest port on the Brazilian section of the Amazon. After seeing all the tiny towns along the way, a proper city came as a bit of a shock. The huge grain tankers aren’t, as they regularly pass silently downriver as they head for the Atlantic. The structure that fills the containers shouldn’t be a shock but it does stand out a little from the trees.

The construction of this structure is claimed to be an environmental disaster and not just because it was built without proper planning permission by one of the largest agri-businesses on the planet. It is closed at present and Cargill may have to remove the structure at some point but don’t hold your breath.

http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/cargill-amazon.pdf

http://www.cargill.com/news/issues/issues_greenpeacereport.pdf

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2007/2007-03-29-02.asp

With Santarem being on a deep part of the Amazon, so close to the junction of the Madeira with the Amazon, the southern edge of the world’s largest jungle is being cut down rapidly. Not for cattle, as in Mato Grosso in years past, but now for soya plantations. The soya beans were shipped down the Madeira by smaller boats and stored at the grain facility until one of the tankers arrives. This ease of transportation means that many people want to cut down a patch of forest to plant soya. With nobody around to stop them, the jungle shrinks by around 6 football pitches per minute, according to Greenpeace estimates.

Now don’t go blaming our vegetarian friends and their burgers for this. The biggest buyer of Brazilian soya is China, where the soya is the fuel for the animals that fuel the people that fuel the booming economy. The joys of globalisation mean that China’s development is one of the biggest threats to the Amazon Rainforest. Interesting huh? Obviously Europe takes in huge amounts of Santarem soya too, so don’t think we have no effect.

Alter do Chao is a short drive and a whole world away from Santarem. On the edge of a lagoon formed by the Rio Tapajós, the entrance to which is partially blocked by a 2km sandbank. This is just one of the stunning river beaches in the area which were mostly under the highest waters for 25 years when I was there. It didn´t matter to the locals or tourists, though. Life carried on, with the waters so full of people that one ice-cream seller was pushing his cart through three feet of water. What a dedicated salesman. The bars on the sandbank were all full - of water. Some almost up to the roof and some halfway up the legs of the chairs, tables and drinkers outside.

We hired a rowing boat to cross to the sandbank and climb the hill on the far side of the lagoon. It looked like the views across to the other side of the river and over to the main artery of the Amazon would make it a fantastic spot for a good old English picnic. We never made it. Never found the path, not even close. Instead we had our picnic, our champagne and our beer in a rowing boat as another Amazon storm came over the hill we´d been trying to find. We sheltered under an overhanging tree, pulled in the oars and drifted gently. Our tree made me realise why snakes evolved such patterns to disguise themselves as branches. See?

We toasted the tree, the storm, the boat, the bars, the jungle, the river, everything. Everybody should go to the Amazon. You get such magical moments there.