One thing about the Amazon… it turns out that some tributaries are
acidic, like the one we were on. 5% acidity means no mosquitoes — they
can’t breed in water that acidic. So we were walking around in shorts
and T-shirts, and didn’t need mosquito netting when we slept. OK, this
doesn’t suck.

Andrew, Julie, and the other camp-mates had gone on a 3-hour
bushwhacking hike earlier that day, and so we were taking it easy when I
arrived. Along the way, they had picked up some bamboo, so the guides
there taught us to make blowguns! Basically, you hollow out a section of
bamboo using a thinner piece of bamboo. You then shave off the bark with
a knife. You affix a mouthpiece to one end (the guides made ours, as you
have to ensure that there isn’t air coming out where the tube connects
to the mouthpiece), and you make a dart using a thin piece of bamboo and
this hair-like plant material that’s commonly available in the jungle.
The hair acts as initially the sail — you blow against it and it
launches the dart — as well as the feature in flight, keeping the
dart’s trajectory stable.

This was tons of fun, and now I have my own blowgun with two darts, all
made in Brazil!

About 3:30, we went piranha fishing. It’s pretty simple… you take a
single fishhook, put a big chunk o’ chicken on it, toss a line (no pole,
just line tied to a stick), and wait for the piranha to bite. Then you
pull the line in.

Well, Team Microsoft got completely skunked, although I did get some
nibbles. Jean-Francios pulled in the most, 4 I think, and the guides
also pulled in about 4 total. So, we were having piranha for dinner
tonight! The guides were showing us how tough the teeth were on the
piranha — they were snapping down hard on rope or anything else in
front of them, even though they were out of the water and gasping a bit.
Wow.

We went back to camp and the staff made us dinner, including piranha
with onions. Yumm….. there are few things better than fish that was
caught mere hours ago. It’s just good, and the piranha was tasty. A bit
tough to eat as they’re a small fish and not tons of meat on them, but
still yummy. The rainbow trout of the Amazon, or so it would be.

We then went gator spotting. This is like deer spotting on a boat. You
cruise around the river, shining a flashlight into the shallows by the
shore, and look for the reflection of the gator’s eyes. Then, if it
looks small enough, you cut the engine, paddle over, and catch it so the
tourists can touch a real live gator. Welp, we found a couple (including
a 1.5m - 2m one), and eventually found a baby (maybe a foot and a half)
that we passed around and posed with. I know I know, but it was still
pretty cool. And look, we treated the gator better than we did the piranha!

That night was the night after the full moon, and it rose as we were
going to bed. I got some great shots of the river in the moonlight; I’ll
post them as soon as I return to upload them to the server. Suffice to
say, this was simply amazing.

Andrew, Julie, and I decided to take a side trip up to see the Amazon
over the weekend. Now, saying, “Let’s go see the Amazon” when you’re in
Salvador is just like saying, “Let’s go see the Empire State Building”
when you’re in Seattle. It’s across the country, and the country is
*big!* Nevertheless, if your choice is visting the Amazon for 0 days or
2 days with long flights, well, go for 2. Totally worth it. But I get
ahead of myself.

Andrew and Julie had taken off Thursday to get things settled. I needed
to stay for the morning at a workshop, but left Friday afternoon. The
plan (and I know this will sound monumentally stupid) was for me to go
to Manaus (via a lovely stopover in Brasilia), and the next day in
Manaus, a guide would pick me up from the hotel. We’d then go to a bus
stop, where we’d go 3 hours by bus to somewhere, and then by boat for 30
minutes or so to the camp on the Amazon and meet Andrew and Julie who
were going up the day earlier. I found out later that they gave me a
50-50 chance of actually making it. Thanks guys!

As it turns out, aside from a 5 hour layover in Brasilia instead of a 3
hour one (where I met a great guy from Greece on his way home after
bumming around Brazil for 3 months, and a lovely lady who works for the
Brazil equivalent of the FBI on her way home as well), everything
actually worked out exactly as planned. I got to the hotel (the Hotel
Tropical, which is really nice, very old (like 20s construction, but
with lots of old Brazilian dark hardwood, even on the floors) and
crashed, and the next morning at 7:30 the guide showed up. It was Kris
Gomes, the son of the owner of the tour shop (Jungle Experience, owned
by Christopher Gomes. Apparently, he gets a lot of business from the
write-up in Lonely Planet, and seems to earn it well!). We then went to
the bus station where Antonio (our cab driver) dropped us off, and let
me know he’d be there to pick us up tomorrow afternoon. We hopped on the
bus and trucked up 3 hours to somewhere. The buses were these MarcoPolo
busses by Mercedes-Benz; air-conditioned tour buses, really.

By the way… using the toilet on these things is one of the more
challenging things you can do. I don’t recommend it unless you really,
really need to use it.

We made it up to some small town where Kris handed me off to a local
guide, and then we were on a boat (just a small dingy with an outboard
motor) cruising up the Amazon. Well, the Rio Urubu, which is a
good-sized tributary. 30 minutes later, I met up with Andrew, Julie, and
some other camp-mates (Rebecca from London, there with Federico, an
Italian, and Jean-Francios, a Frenchman who was spending 3 months
traveling randomly on holiday.

Wow, things can actually work!