Manaus and the Amazon

The whole reason for me heading to Manaus from Colombia was to do the seven day kayaking tour of the Urubu River which I had booked from home. I arrived in Manaus a day ahead of schedule (still not enough time to do Angel Falls in Venezuela) and spent the day wondering around the town to see the markets and Opera House.

I was picked up the following morning from the Hostel and was taken to the start point to begin my kayaking adventure. There were five in total in the group (myself, Anton, Marissa, Mike and Ignacio - Anton was from Russia and the other three the UK) , plus two guides and our cook. Our main guide was Ronaldo with Milton as his second, and the cook was Joseph. It was a great group and we all got along well which helps make the week a good one. We didn´t kayak as much as I thought we were going to but it was certainly enough. I´m sure I now have shoulders like a Chinese swimmer! We did roughly two to four hours of kayaking per day with the exception of the last two days. The kayaking was good. It was all down current (phew) and the water was nice and high and was was flowing fast. We had one day where we needed to navigate a small waterfall (read level 5 rapids given how high the water was) which was fun and exciting. We had to get out of the kayaks and into the water and ease them down using ropes and then follow on foot. Now THAT´s the excitement I signed up for!

Unfortunately though, because the water was so high and there were so few mosquitoes (thank goodness), there were also few animals as a result. The lack of mosquitoes is due to the black water of the river...it´s too acidic for the larvae to survive and so nothing for fish etc to feed off. We also did a couple of jungle walks and on the second last night, Anton (the Russian/Los Angelean) and I slept in the jungle overnight. That was an experience not because it was jungle but because it hadn´t rained so much during our trip as it did that night and we got soooo wet. We were sleeping in hammocks with tarps, but the tarps got oversaturated that it just soaked right through. Again, the adventure I signed up for. It´s just funny though cause every night we had that we didn´t have a "proper" roof over us (i.e. abandoned house with some sort of cover), were the nights it really really poured on us. The other nights were fine as.

As for the animals we saw, there weren´t as many as I expected but apparently that´s normal as the jungle is so big and the animals have so much area they can go in. We did see monkeys, snakes, loads of birds, giant otter, frogs and toads. Unfortunately the water was too high for caiman and piranhas but no matter. It was a great week and would recommend it to anyone interested in heading that way.

After the jungle expedition, I went the following day to see the Meeting of the Waters with Ronaldo and his family. This is about a 30min bus ride out of Manaus and is where the Rio Negro meets the other (white) river. It was pretty interesting to me but I won´t bore you with the details of how this happens or why. If you want to know, ask. It was a nice day overall but very hot and muggy. I was glad to be get out of Manaus that night and on to RIO!