Rainforest

Manaus, day 2 and 3:   Maeve woke up feeling much better, testimony to the resiliency  of the very young. And this was good news for all of us, because we were able to go on our major planned expedition in Brazil, an overnight to the rain forest. Yes, we became eco-tourists, which put us in good company in Manaus, which clearly has a fair number of tour operators setting up visitors with excursions of varying degrees of rigor.  We did not exactly rough it or go too deep into the rainforest; our "ecolodge" was only about six miles downriver -from Manaus, and close enough to Manaus's sprawl that we could see condominiums across the river from the lodge's main building.

Aidan at the Tiwa Ecolodge

Still, we got to see quite a lot. Our first stop was a nineteenth-century rubber plantation, preserved for tourists to show how the incredibly brutal system of rubber extraction worked. It was a system of slavery, really, with local people lured by rubber barons with the promise of money, but everything worked to keep them in bondage, starting with the difficult process of extracting rubber from the trees themselves. 

In the evening, Vic and Aidan joined other members of our group and went piranha fishing.

Aidan didn't catch a piranha--this is the one that got away.

Aidan got to hold a caiman:

The next day, we all took an hour-long hike in the jungle. An hour in the jungle is plenty long, actually, particularly when you're carrying a two-year-old, as Vic and I did in turns on the hike, a highlight of which was seeing monkeys in the trees. Unfortunately, the monkeys didn't stay still long enough for us to take a very good picture.

Maeve bravely facing the jungle.

Then, another sortie by boat to a floating restaurant for lunch, and  a visit to some giant lilypads:

And, finally, our boat went to the famous "meeting of the waters" where the Rio Negro, the tributary that passes by Manaus, comes into the Amazon proper. It's a remarkable sight, one not fully captured by the camera; the dark waters of the Rio Negro (it's well-named--the water is dark and very reflective, particularly at night) and the brownish waters of the Amazon run side-by-side for miles, not merging together as you'd expect. Differences in temperature, speed, and acidity keep the waters apart until, I guess, they find an equilibrium point downriver.

The Meeting of the Waters

Vic and I went to dinner at an outdoor restaurant on the square outside the Teatro Amazonas.