Buckeye Herps - A Photographic Gallery of the Reptiles and Amphibians of the State of Ohio

The Brazilian Amazon

April, 2008

We awoke early the next morning eager with anticipation for the start of the real journey upriver. The trip had been exciting so far but the real adventure was about to begin. Everyone helped load a truck up with our bags and we all climbed into small vans for the trip to the docks. When we arrived there were some neat murals I eagerly took a few pictures of.

My personal favorite, the sloth enjoying a great day on the boat.

We had a few minutes to kill while certain details were being worked out. I quickly snapped a few pics of some flowers nearby when my lens finally defogged.

The boat, Discovery, had arrived and the people who would call it home started to load up and board.

Our boat evidently had problems with some kind of documentation so we had to work some shady dealings with our baggage. All of the baggage had to be locked in the cabins, or stowed below deck until we were out of port?? While we waited, the Discovery departed.

Looking around the docks was a little dissapointing. All trash ends up in the river and this marina was no exception. A quick look next to the dock revealed this.

There was a ferry nearby shuttling cars across the great river.

Finally, we boarded our boat, Castello Guedes IV. The big question was whether the boat was named after the man Castello Guedes IV, or if there were 3 Castello Guedes boats before it that may or may not still be putting away somewhere. I quickly explored the boat that would be our home. Here you can see our freezer and the cooler on the left that held our personal drinks. The large red table would serve as the serving line for meals, and it always had large jugs of drinking water. Under it was the engine, down in the bowels of the boat.

The 3 bathrooms and some storage. There was a mens, womens and a staff bathroom. Unforunately, I never photographed the bathrooms. Basically it was small room with a sink, a toilet and shower. There was no form of separation, so you basically shower where you shit and shit where you shower. I actually never used the shower, but was annoyed whenever I used the facilities and the floor was soaking wet.

The propulsion specialist. I think it only broke down once for a few hours.

And our kitchen. I was always shocked at the food that was created back here.

Many times, the two boats would tie up and plow along together. We did this for most meals in order to enjoy each others company.

Allegra has some pretty crazy hair and she thought it would be a good idea to get weaves so she didn't have to worry about the humidity. Well the weaves only lasted a couple days before she wanted them out. Ben, Kelly and Mai helped out in the long process.

We had a 16 hour boat ride up river to the area we would be spending the next 10 days. We actually traveled downriver to the meeting of the Negro and Solimoes, and then we headed up the Solimoes. Our journey was eventually taking us to a region called Anama, which is estimated to have 7,500 - 10,000 inhabitants in an area of about 1000 square miles. There is a small city right off the main Solimoes and then further up that tributary is the Lago Anama or Lake Anama. My boat, the Castelo Guedes, spent most of our time visiting villages along the banks of Lago Anama. The other boat, Discovery, spent their time visiting villages along the Rio Solimoes.

But I am getting about 16 hours ahead of myself right now... Traveling past Manaus provided some interesting photographic opportunites. First was an interesting view of some of the housing stacked along the banks of the river.

The marina with the theatre district, and the theatre in the background.

A look back at Manaus, and the Discovery.

These floating gas stations are all over the river near Manaus, but you don't see them very often after that. I initially reacted to how "cheap" the gas was, but after thinking about it for a moment, converting the liters to gallons and then the Reals to Dollars... it worked out to be about $4.76/gallon. Actually not horrible considering gas in Detroit is about $4.20-4.30 but that's a butt load of money for the coboclos upriver.

The big ocean tankers get pretty far up there...

Eventually we got to the meeting of the waters and we enjoyed a nice lunch with the boats tied together. The group was able to see 1 of the pink river dolphins near there, and there was a bunch of the gray dolphins feeding around where we ate. After, we hung our hammocks from the rafters of the top deck of the boats and tried to make the place home. I ended up sleeping on the deck for a couple hours as river was wide and there really wasn't much to see. Farther upriver we started seeing less signs of civilization as we know it and more of the culture of the coboclo, a mixture of traditional native culture and more recent european settlement and cultural influences.

We were visiting during the rainy season, so the river was very high and the forests were flooded. Our route was actually shorter because we were able to travel some channels not usually open to boats our size.

When we turned down one of the smaller channels we finally had some opportunities for viewing wildlife. We saw many, many birds and I tried to photograph the ones I could. We also saw our first primates of the trip, a small group of squirrel monkeys was spotted in the trees as the boats passed.

We made sure all the hammocks and mosquito nets were sprayed and ready for the trip. (Photo Manya Gupta)

As I start to put some identifications to animals, please, please feel free to correct me if they are wrong...

Greater Anis Crotophaga major were a common site

Striated Heron Butorides striatus

Ben riding the bow

Yellow-rumped Caciques Cacicas cela and their nests were some of the group's favorites

Savanna Hawk Heterospizias meridionalis?

All of the floating homes along the rivers had dogs.

I am very unsure about these two birds, the pictures are horrible and I have a feeling there are a few similar looking species... Flycatcher vs Kiskadee??