The Mighty Amazon.
The Amazon forest is truly fantastic, you have to see it to believe it, but even when you do, it is hard to absorb and take in. See the dark waters of one river that do not mix with the muddy waters of another, labyrinths of narrow water channels and marsh forest amidst dense jungle, where it is easy to become disorientated and lost, a place where even your sense of reality may desert you. Unexpectedly, you glimpse a rare, single colour Iris, a splash of scarlet against the ultramarine blue sky. Just as the sun begins to set over the Mangroves, the tropical Scarlet Ibis perch among the trees in the Mangrove, decorating the green as a child decorates a Christmas tree.
The forest is a place to open your mind and absorb new wonders. You are surrounded by bountiful proof of the eternal delights of the Amazon. It is hardly surprising that the first Portuguese frontier explorers, confronted with the magnificence of the rivers and forests of their newfound territory, wrote to their King on the eighth of January 1606 describing the wonders they had discovered, adding “what we have described is not fiction or fable”.
To imagine the Amazon forest, with its delirium of vegetation, sounds and aromas is insufficient. You need to experience for yourselves the sensations of your surroundings. Visit the indigenous riverbank dwellers, where legend and myth, which recognise no concepts with which we may be familiar, still play an integral roll among the people, but creates within us, a deep desire to learn and understand more. Perhaps it is exactly this mystery within the greatest of tropical forests that explains the fascination that it holds over so many people.
Manaus is one of the entry points into this magical universe which offers the greatest bio-diversity on our planet. From Manaus, the visitor may start a dream adventure, moving along the Rio Negro. Your first stop is Barcelos, the “ornamental fish” capital.The city of Barcelos, situated some 400km north of Manaus, sits by the dark waters of the Rio Negro, habitat of more than 1800 catalogued species of ornamental fish. Of these, 240 species may be legally sold, including the Scalar, Cichlids, Neon, Cardinal and Sarapo. To the river bank dwellers, the importance of commercialisation of ornamental fish is such that they hold an annual festival in their honour, similar to the Parintins Festival.
In addition to being the world ornamental fish capital, Barcelos was, until 1758 the State capital. With an area of 122.500 sq.km, it is the largest municipality in Brazil, and the second largest in the world, behind Kiev, in the Ukraine. It is also has the largest fluvial archipelago on the planet, Mariua, whose 750 islands exceeds those of Anavilhanas, also situated on the Rio Negro.
It is within this archipelago that we find a true monument of the forest, the “Sumaumeira” or “Silk Cotton” tree (Ceiba Pentandra), one of the largest Brazilian trees. They can easily reach 50m in height and occasionally produce a trunk with a diameter of eight meters. However impressive these dimensions are, they are as nothing compared to the immense, buttress like roots. The magnificent tree seems not to be real, something from the pages of fable and fantasy, a living thing to be embraced and even reverenced. It has one other curious feature; it’s enormous trunk stores water, but when a storm is imminent, due to a change in atmospheric pressure, the tree discharges water into the roots, the rush of water making a sound that may be heard at a considerable distance.
So, this is the Amazon, offering an invitation to venture into an unreal world, combining dark waters, wild and interlaced branches, blustery winds and intense aromas. A region that keeps within its confines, surprises which blend fable with reality.