The Lungs of the World & The Scary Candiru

Location: Jungle
Day: 148
Weather: 37
Tour Operator: Green Planet Tours , cost: 75 euros for the entire trip! Hotels: Hotel Monoco *** and The Tropical Hotel ****

The Amazon houses and possess a mountain of interesting facts figures and statistics that are hard to digest- here are a few openers that you might be interested in: it touches nine of the thirteen countries in south America, it covers 42% of Brazilian land mass, it is the world’s largest concentration of flora and fauna, it is home to the world’s largest river in terms of volume constituting 30% of the world’s river water. Some local academics also contend that it is also the world’s longest river currently attributed to the Nile and at this time are researching that its source is further up in the Peruvian Andes. I could go on forever but I won`t. If you want to know more buy a book or get down here on your next holiday.

Chief and I started our brief exploration of the Amazon in the capital of the state of Amazonian: Manuas. Manuas is situated on the Rio Negro seven miles upstream from the impressive convergence of the Solomines and Negro rivers, which join to form the birthplace of the Amazon River. Manuas is a strange city. There is a huge population of over 2 million and it is juxtaposition of a high tech urban economy, reminiscent of a colonial past and a present day struggling lower class that predominantly come from a poor Indian heritage. It houses some of the biggest manufacturing, research & development, petrol, telecommunication and computer internationals on the planet but at the same time has a very poor infrastructure and has widespread prostitution and unskilled labour. My recommendation would be to come into Manuas and get out to the jungle as quick as possible to utilise all the precious days of your trip to the Amazon. There’s not a lot to see in the city except for the ornate opera house which is a symbol of the opulence that once thrived in the region due to the rubber industry boom that happened two hundred years ago.

A bit like the mosquitoes in the area the tour operators and jungle lodge owners in the Amazon swarm around tourists the minute they step through arrivals. They sell their journeys when you queue for the taxi, they peddle their goods when you are trying to go to the toilet, they tip you on the shoulder when you are shopping in the local supermarket or when you are having a maracuja fruit juice. There buzzing can be heard in the streets. And like their two winged friends they are dangerous. If they bite you your experience of the Amazon could be a disaster. Poor sleeping facilities, slow boats, poor food, non-English speaking guides, etc. I wish their were a Larium, Malarone or Doxiciclina that you could take to prevent their bites but unfortunately our best minds haven’t come up with a repellent yet! Maybe the answer is somewhere deep in the jungle !When picking a tour it is recommended that extreme caution and forward planning be used. Its worth doing your research before you get here as the tourist office in the town is a disaster with little or no literature and staff that can only speak Portuguese. It is as if the there is a tour operating cartel in operation! After a stressful day of shooting around in a taxi trying to find information to compare on tours Chief and I decided after, some debate and haggling with a local weird and wacky Portuguese German eccentric Irish looking tour operator called Nelson to take a two night three day tour with a company called Green planet. And boy was it some experience. It was about as strange as a Daddy Long Legs being put in the heart of an invested jungle lake and told “There you go boy , you’re home, you’re back in the wild, go forth and multiply”. It’s new territory. It’s an unfamiliar world. Having said that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and we rose to the challenge.

Home was a floating lodge 30 feet wide by 50 foot long. Bit like a floating school gym with a tin can roof. Sleeping facilities consisted of several low maintenance rooms consisting of beds and ripped mosquito nets. On the front deck were twelve hammocks. Food was dished up by a one armed chef and consisted primarily of pasta, rice, fried bananas, white fish I don’t know the name of, the smallest and sweetest bananas you’ve ever seen and orange juice, hot milk and water. Sanitary conditions were modest but effective and the seating area to the front was spacious and comfortable and provided a good area to watch the local boats occasionally go by.

Day one of our trip into the unknown consisted of taking a boat from the dock in Manuas to the meeting of the waters. This is a strange phenomenon where the black water of the Rio Negro from Colombia merges with the Solimoes river of Peru. Brought me back to one of my science glasses when I was a kid. If my memory serves me right it was the same effect when you mixed water with oil. Anyone know the technical term send me a mail. Can`t recall it. Anyway they don’t mix so the effect is like a crack in the water where on the left of the boat you have black water which is 5 degrees hotter than the brown water which is on your right. After the meetings we went to our floating camp and within the space of a few hours headed out piranha fishing and crocodile hunting at night. Myself, Chief, Eusebius, Brutos, four friendly Spanish, two beautiful Italian women, a stoic Japanese axe-murder looking man, Flavio our 16 year old ship captain and coconut tree climber, and last but not least, our excellent multi-linguist, ex-army, avid flora and fauna hunter and guide Naronha set off up one of the plenitude of tributaries of the Rio Negro (which is one of the main supplies of cocaine from Colombia in the world) to see what the Amazon would throw at us. After experiencing piranha fishing in the Panthanal, the fishing on the day was a little less fruitful. However what we lacked in luck and skill with our fishing we made up with verve. It was great fun hearing all the members of the boast shouting obscenities at the fish in Japanese, Irish, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese and English. On more than one occasion, Chief almost had a catch, but, mischievously, they kept nipping at his bate and cheekily stealing it from under his nose. He wasn`t happy. Same held through for Eusebius, no luck; and Brutos was getting so upset, at one stage I had to restrain him from throwing himself into the water to hunt with his paws and teeth! To date he’s still zero for zero on the fishing front!

After a quick bite of grub we went out again, this time at night, wearing full length clothes and with flash lamps to hunt for crocs. It tooks us hours but we eventually caught a little baby male which we all got a chance to handle. It was only two or three feet long (but will grow to about twenty foot when an adult). Felt like holding a scaly snake! The best part of the trip for me was the experience of listening to the boat glide through the river and dodge the various tall towering trees that sprung up from the river forest. It was a constant feat of dexterity on the part of Flavio the navigator at the back of the boat from keeping us from crashing into a giant tree and capsizing. The beauty was in the symphionic choruses, blurbs, oinks, chirps, whistles, squeeks and sounds that surrounded us from all the various wild animals. There night talks and screams were like a beautiful orchestral performance. Most impressing on my mind was the very clear picture of the heavens dotted with an uncountable amount of starts and clouds, all reflecting off the water below. The water was so clear it acted like a mirror and gave a surreal effect of two night skies. To make things even better. Fire flies kept shooting past the boat in the night making it look as if there were shooting stars in the water and only a mere hand grasp away. A beautiful experience. And one which I hope comes out some what well on the cam corder so I can relive it again.

On another Amazon high pitch note I need to explain something to you!!! You’ve all heard of your fair share of frightening animals that exist in the Amazon? Permit me a minute to remind you of a few. You have Malaria carrying mosquitoes, stinging ant armies that march in huge phalanxes, a wide variety of frightening spiders- tarantulas and black widows- and a hoard of other spiders that hunt with webs that they throw at their prey, spiders that hunt in packs for snakes and birds and others that create webs that are the size of big fishing nets. Then there are the cats: the majestic but deadly Puma, the noble but lethal Jaguar, the slender but cunning Oclet, and much more. And let’s not forget the birds of prey, the hawks and eagles that patrol the skies. And unfogetably we have the snakes, which are world famous: lightening quick vipers, strangulating pythons and bone crushing anacondas and a multitude of highly toxic brightly coloured snakes, frogs and insects that vary in length and girth that you simply don`t want to get into an argument with................. I haven’t even touched on what lives in the waters......... Creatures, which in my opinion, are some of the most frightening animals in the world. Razor sharp piranhas, snapping and wrestling caymens and up to 13 stone clandestine man eating ugly looking pucajuras ….but let’s forget them for a moment. There is one that you might have never heard of which for me is the most frightening of them all. One of the most fearsome animals of the human race anywhere on the planet. Let a 25 foot crocodile attack me and bring me to the bottom of a lake, let a 30 foot aconaconda digest me over a month, let the razor sharp claw of a jaguar rip at my back and tare at my neck before letting me be taken by this abomination. His name is the "CANDIRU" and he frightens the living day lights out of everyone I know. I need to tell you a little about this merciless, bringer of EXCRUCIATING pain, mother f*c*er, enemy of the human race. There are actually two distinct groups of fish known as candiru in Brazil. The so called “whale catfish” famous for the rapaciousness with which they attack hooked fish much like piranhas and bathers alike, and the smaller, gill dwelling catfish that have become legendary for swimming into unlikely human orifices (including the vagina, anus, nose and ears). These needle shaped fish are adapted to dwell in the gills of large catfishes where they extract muscus and blood. Traditionally, menstruating women avoid candiru infested waters for fear their blood may attract these water demons. According to native folklore these fish are also attracted to urine and they are reputed to be able to enter the penis of a man urinating by the side of a river by swimming up the urine stream. Reports are no doubt apocryphal. Candiru do on occasion however enter the urethra by both male and female bathers more than likely attracted by the urine. However remote the likelihood of this unpleasant event the mere prospect is sufficient to cause even the most avid bather of thinking twice before he enters the water and has made Chief develop an unusual technique of diving into the water with one hand protecting his grind and the other guarding his back passage!

Day two consisted of trekking into the jungle for a class on flora and a spot of torantical hunting . It only lasted a few hours but it was action packed. The guides were brilliant. They showed plants that produce sap that make anti-cancer remedies. Trees that produce rubber, and produce the primary ingredients for bubble gum, and others which branches act like filters to retain water for the locals to cut down and drink from when trekking through the jungle for days on end. Very educational. And straight out of a Michael Pallin documentary. I really enjoyed it. Later in the day we did a little canoeing up the creeks to see some more flora and then went to a local woman`s house which in the space of half an hour turned into a pub come, smallest night-club you`ve ever seen. Strangest, but one of the coolest bars i`ve ever been in: the pool table had a 20 degree slant on its left hand side, you had to go through the old woman`s sitting room to get to the one tiolet and the locals pooled up in thin long stick baots to oggle at the gringoes and hit the odd tree on their way home full of petrol tasting vodka and canchasa. Great fun.

Third day was a quick trip to a local indian home where we had a chance to see some of the local farming crops and buy some of the local jewelery. Chief and I got on well with a 6 and 11 year old kid and spent most of our time being thought how to play football by them on a small beach. By the end of the day it was a full scale 5 on 5 international soccer match with a dip in the river, a refreshing fruit juice and a slow boat back to the camp to chill out. A great end rto a great trip.

Recommendations:-Bring anti-malaria tablets with you before you come they are surprisingly desperately hard to buy when you get here.-A pair of night vision glasses like the military have would be like a dream come through-high power head torch a must-Camcorder is a must as well as heaps of memory on your digital camera-Get anti-mosquito spray that has in its ingredients DEET 100%. The mossies hate this stuff.-Bring some of your own food with you into the jungle: any of the sugar based products will give you a daily boost in case the food is not agreeing with you.

Some more observations

[1] The north is far poorer and cheaper than the south. Having been here 4 months my opinion to date is that Brazil is not only a Continent due to its colossal size but it is a dichotomy between a first world economy in the South East ( Rio, Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Porto Alegre) and then the third world which is the rest of the country.
[2] Most internet cafes don’t have a 2.0 USB port. Especially, outside the 1st world and prices vary between 1.5 euro and 4 euros an hour and between a 56 and 512 speed. Fastest speed I experienced was a T1 in Sao Paulo airport.
[3] In Brazil the country is littered with public phones with the number 31 on it. Basically if you want to make a call within the country you have to type 031 + prefix (e.g. 11 SP) and then number.
[4] Reception frequencies can be very wobbly if not non-existent in parts of the north.
[5] Agua de Cocas can be bought for R$ 50c in the north i.e 12/13 cents back home.
[6] Internal flights in Brazil are exorbitant. Already mentioned in a previous blog but worth commenting on again. If possible, if travelling extensively in Brazil, more than likely best by and air bus ticket from home with one of the star alliance members before you come.
[7] There are little or no train services in the country. It’s primarily buses, then flights and next cars. Outside of the 1st world regions and outside the main cities around the country the roads are poor. Doing a highway 1 or a route 66 is not a real runner. However you could rent a buggy and take on the distance going from beach to beach if you had the time.
[8] There are a huge variety of fruits and vegetables. But I haven’t seen a turnip, cabbage or goose berries on my travels. Not yet.
[9] In the few youth hostels that I was in it is well worth having an international youth hostel one year membership card. You can nearly always get 10% off the price.
[10] Some bus rides for example Porto Alegre to Manuas can take up to 4 days. As such they have some of the most comfortable buses you can imagine. Fully reclining chairs, TVs, videos, chefs, shower facilities. Basically, close to 1st class service on a plane.
[11] Was enquiring about a 3 bedroom, 65m, 5th floor apartment, in a good area, 3km away from the beach resort of Ponta Negre in Natal. The cost was approximately 29k euros. Not a bad little investment considering the city is becoming recognised as Brazil’s surf city and is constantly beginning to swell in numbers.
[12] When getting a taxi you can take your standard car taxi or take a ride on the back of a motor bike for a little cheaper. Felt strange the first time seeing it and taking one but now its par for the course.

In Manuas, in the centre of Brazil It`s hot, real hot. And it's humid, real humid. Taxi man told us that it hit 40c at midday. I`d believe him. Hottest ,most humid weather i have experiemced in Brazil since i`ve been here. Actually,probably the hottest place i have ever been to, ever. Tomorrow will be field research. We need to hunt down the best 4 or 5 jungle tour we can get our hands on with hight quality conditoins, a good English speaking guide, high octane food and a reasonable price. So far we have been hounded by tour operators peddling their goods. Some are complete chancers that promise you a wrestle with an amacondo, a dance with a snake and a slap up meal with an indigenous tribe that haven`t seen gringoes ever before! Others offer you a trip to a five star jungle hotel that will bring you on multiple one day excursions down rivers, into national parks frought with a wide range of monkeys, snakes and spiders, piranha fishing and a jungle tour that will teach you about the municipal wonders of the magical Amazon vegetation. Others off you a bit of both which we are trying to get our hands on.

Will let you know how it pans out when I get back. Hopefully, i don`t make too many friends with the mosquitoes or creepy crawlies!

Carnival

I’m in the two million plus beach city Fortaleza to the north of Brazil. I’m basking in 29 degrees of sunshine, tapping away on my laptop, wearing my speedos, drinking a refreshing glass of iced Guarana and watching bronzed people dipping into and relaxing by the pool. It’s now day three of the winter carnival. The first two days have been unforgettable. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. And both my partners, hounds and masters in anarchy and hedonisms: Chief and Maddog, agree, the Brazilians know how to party in a way that none of us have ever dreamed of before in Ireland, and, in a way we all agree would be hard to match anywhere in the world. We’ve all done our fair share of travelling over the years, but none of us can remember having such a non-stop, rollercoaster, run of fun like we’ve had these last few days. And the beauty of it all is there is more to come! Nossa!

I’m sure you’ve heard how the old saying goes: sometimes words are simply not enough to explain the true meaning or feeling of a place or experience. Sometimes words allow you sketch or charcoal an image or concept. But that’s it. There often circumscribed. Sometimes you need more than letters and numbers to paint a true picture. You need other tools. You need more senses, more mediums; more methods. You need different brushes, inks and papers. This is such a time. This is the carnival. You have to see the colours, smell and taste the food, you have to let the music shoot into your ears and reverberate through and envelope your heart and soul, you have to shake your booty like you’re a big giant African Momma, you got to jump as high as you can clapping, shouting and roaring with the people to your front, back, left and right. You have to take on the persona of the Brazilians on their home turf doing their world famous home thing. You have to come to Brazil. No video, no DVD, no TV program, no book, no blog can come close to describing how much fun it is. You got to haul your ass down here and shake it if you want to know what the carnival is all about.

This is how the last two days have panned out. Oh yeah, before I go on let me explain one fundamental thing about the carnival. The carnival can be the one they have in Rio were you see flamboyant floats with dancing, smiling people on top dressed in bright, exotic over the top costumes. Or in some cases not dressed at all except for a few bits of string and the odd pin here and there. This is more of a pageant then a carnival. Bit like Paddy’s day. You don’t really take part, its more a spectator spectacle. Then you have the other type of carnival which is: get it there, get dirty, sweaty, take a major part in carnival. This type of carnival is the Salvador type carnival where the majority of the music played is by the famous musicians of Salvador. I prefer the interactive, hands on, ears in, hips gyrating approach.

Carnival takes place on the streets. In this case a 4km strip of road parallel to a beach front. Stands are erected on the side of the street and tall hotels and apartment blocks full of colourful people line the streets and fill the air. To get access to the main areas of the carnival we had to pay 50 euros per day. For that you get a sleeveless pink, yellow or orange t-shirt, depending on what day you want to attend. To start everybody meets on a street and stands just behind a large open double decker bus. Then hundreds of stewards get a rope and squadron off the immediate street area beside the bus. Leaving only the curb areas free for those who have not paid for their t-shirt. At about 9pm, or 9.30 the band kick off and the mayhem begins. In our case we went for the famous Chicolete com Banana band. The U2 of Samba. I already saw them once before and once again they didn’t let me down. Their instruments threw sparks into the smiles, hips and feet of the people and lit the place on fire. Everyone loves these guys. If you can get your hands on one of their CDs, do so. I plan on bringing home at least three or four of their albums before I leave Brazil. Anyway, so there you are, behind the bus. There are thousands of people wearing ridiculous t-shirts, everyone is wearing shorts, drinking beer, whiskey or vodka, and non stop, dancing, bouncing and kissing.

The kissing ethic is worth a note. Basically, anything goes in between the ropes. What you have is a load of people out for a good time. You simply have to dance beside a person, try make eye contact, grab a hip, cheekily pinch a bum, stroke a hand or throw a kiss, and that’s it. You know pretty quickly if you are going to get a red card or a green card. Chief on the first night chalked up 45 red cards and 5 green cards. Maddog 23 red cards and 3 green cards. The vagabond, well, let’s just say that the vagabond, like a gentleman, never gives away his antics. That said, Eusebius chalked up 4 reds and a green; Brutos got 68 reds and 3 greens. And that was only the first night. When we all got the swing of it the following night was even more chaotic.

The carnival is like the tour de France. You`ve had one tough day climbing the Pyrenees and need a well earned rest when the alarm clock goes off at 2pm in the evening and you have to get yourself ready again for the physical onslaught. Quick wash, few hours’ sun, a few coconuts and a speedy plate of grub and off again. It’s only day two and Chief is begging for a lip transplant, Jim has a dodgy ankle and my legs could do with a good massage. We have to keep reminding ourselves that we have trained for this type of thing long into the night in the pubs of Dublin, Waterford and abroad for over 15 years and we have to plough on no matter what the physical or emotion consequences. By the end of tomorrow I can see us sleeping a full day to catch up.

Last night we went to the carnival with some two foot tall Irish hats and my camcorder. We got a very warm reception. Chief kept saying that we were conducting a documentary for a local TV channel in Ireland and that he needed a kiss on the camera to show the people back home how Brazilian women kiss. Amazingly it worked. It’s amazing when you a put a camera in some peoples faces what they’ll do. Jim had a different approach, 50 press ups and 10 chins ups on the beach on the way to the carnival, to inflate his biceps, a few stretches of the legs and hips to get ready for the dancing, and loads of “Hey, hey….how are you, one kiss please”. Amazingly it worked. The dogs had a different approach. Eusebius just danced slowly and methodically and waited for the odd Brazilian dog to throw him a glance. He did alright out of it. And surprisingly was very confident with himself when the opportunities arose. Eusebius was like a gattlin gun, anything that moved in his range, he tried to shoot. Considering the amount of red cards and nasty looks he got, it was amazing his ego wasn’t deflated. Paradoxically, he seemed to thrive on it.

I hear some of you out there already ask about quality. To describe this I don`t have to write too much. The simple fact of the matter is that Brazilian women are beautiful as a rule of thumb. They really know how to look after themselves. No pint drinking or major food binges. More like buckets of dancing, exercising and sun bathing. The quality was high with the odd lapse here and there.

Unfortunately, I can’t produce any photos for you as I lost my camera in Rio and in the process of trying to retrieve it. However there is a few snaps up on the blog from some of my recent antics in Sao Paulo with the boys.

Gotta run. blessings to all.