Today we docked in Manaus, and tomorrow we will be disembarking. Manaus is about 1000 miles from the mouth of the Amazon. At this point the Amazon is still about 30 miles wide.
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Manaus is the capital of the Amazon province and has a population of 2 million.
We were booked on the meeting of the waters cruise which is where the Rio Negro merges with the Amazon River. I've got to admit that this was not at all what I was expecting. I really thought that the Amazon would be about the width of a normal river when we'd gotten this far up, and that the meeting of the waters cruise would be in some small canoe to take us upstream of some minor tributary river. However, the Rio Negro itself is 22 miles wide at this point - so clearly I had no idea of the scale of what was going on here.
As it happens we did set sail in a smaller boat that looked a bit like a miniature paddle steamer.
This took us to a conservation area that was submerged during the wet season and above ground during the "not quite so wet" season. The rainy season starts in December, so by now the land was mostly submerged but the reeds were all above water. Here we transferred into small canoes and visited a floating village.
I've been to a floating village in Cambodia on Ton Le Sap lake and it was a nerve wracking and not very pleasant experience. This was a thousand times better. For starters the water was clean and the life jackets in the canoes didn't look like they were 70 years old. Also the floating buildings we stopped at looked well maintained instead of looking like they were rotting and about to sink. In case you're wondering , I wouldn't recommend a Ton Le Sap lake cruise if you ever go to Cambodia. The Amazon floating village was actually quite pleasant. There wasn't a huge amount of wildlife, but we did see loads of egrets and some giant water lilies.
The next part of the excursion involved getting back on the mini paddle steamer boat and traveling downstream for 30 minutes to see the actual meeting of the waters. On the way I did manage to spot one of the elusive pink river dolphins, but there was no chance of a photo. It was gone in a flash and probably wouldn't have had to come up for air again for another 10 minutes.
The 2 rivers run alongside each other for about 10km without merging. The reasons for this include differences in temperature, speed and acidity of the 2 flows.
After the excursion it was back to the ship for a farewell dinner and packing. Tomorrow will be a traveling day, so no blog entry.
I am not sure that a river cruise where you can't see either bank would appeal to me.
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