November 7 - 1:30PM - On the barca, that means boat

Ah yes, life on the Amazon is good. Had a busy day today already and it’s only a few hours past noon. Just finished a great lunch, beef this time, rice, beans, potatoes, salad, etc. The food is better than I thought it was going to be and we eat three fat meals a day prepared by the chef.

I haven’t showered for a couple of days, my feet have a flip flop sunburn pattern on them, I’m tired from trying to figure out how to sleep comfortably in a hammock but I am happy.

Let me quickly describe what sleeping in a hammock is like in case you haven’t experienced it. It’s horrible. When you first look at the empty hammock you are going to sleep in you may think to yourself, “Damn, that looks like my body is going to be in the shape of a V. Can I sleep like that?” The answer is, “no” although I will share a tip on how to use a hammock at the end of this paragraph. Another thing that you will find once you have crawled into your hammock is that it is hard to shift positions, you will also notice that after having battled to shift to a new sleeping position you will find that only about 1 in 27 or so shifts in your position will actually be comfortable. Furthermore, it is a fact that once a comfortable 1/27 position is found it is only comfortable for a half hour max. Needless to say I was already up for our 5:00AM, presunrise wakeup call this morning. The tip that I alluded to earlier about “comfortable” hammock use is that you should orient yourself in the hammock in a slightly cockeyed position. Not straight between the hanging points or horizontal with the edges of the hammock but slightly crooked. With this method your body will be able to lay “flatter.”

So… woke up at five, caught the sunrise, went watching for birds, saw many, tried to spot the elusive tree sloth, had no success and then traveled back to the boat for a fruit, manioc crepes, cake and of course ham and cheese breakfast.

After eating we dashed out by motorized canoe again to go for a through the jungle hike. The area that makes up the terrain in this river basin contains what are called flooded forests. Right now is the dry season so there are no flooded forests but when it is wet the forest looks like exactly what the name sounds like, it is a forest that is partly submerged in water of the river as it overflows its banks. Fish eat fruit that fall from the trees, abundance prevails and everything is pretty good. On our hike through the dense brush and trees of the jungle we learned about the various flora and fauna that make up the flooded forest.

I won’t give a scientific lecture here but I will say that there are rubber trees that provide latex for industrial rubber production and that also build opera houses, vines that provide drinkable water, brazil nut trees that provide food, other nuts that make a home for grubs that can also be used as food (which Kevin ate, I prefer my grubs cooked and seasoned), spiders, a bunch of medicinal plants and a bunch of other stuff. It was a good little walk.

And now for the most dangerous and awe inspiring part of our trip so far… piranha fishing. I will warn you that I may embellish here for dramatic effect.

After our guide informed us that he was suffering from a stomach problem, one of which Kevin and I are not affected by due to the extremely high alcohol content of our blood which wards off any foreign invaders into our system, he said that we would be going out with the local assistant guide, or as Herman called him, “the boy,” through the dark, soupy and dangerous creature infested waters to try and obtain an elusive man eating piranha specimen.

When we arrived at the fishing spot, known only by locals and marked by a single tree branch stuck in the mud to indicate “dangerous waters” we baited our hooks with the piranhas favorite food, bloody flesh. The next step of this hunt or be hunted scenario was to use the tip of our bamboo fishing rod to mimic the splashing sounds on the water surface of the dreaded piranha feeding frenzy. We splashed around and dropped our hooks in. It was only moments before the dagger toothed creatures were circling our canoe in a death frenzy and the water was boiling with blood thirsty fish. Okay, I may have gone a little overboard there but the general details are all true.

Kevin caught the first piranha, about four inches head to tail, the local guide “boy” caught a few and I caught a generic fish that wasn’t a piranha at all but I enjoy fishing for the ambiance anyways, A.K.A. the beer. We moved to another spot on the channels of the river and our guide pulled in two huge piranhas one after another. Eight inches or so each. The largest was of the black piranha variety which is the biggest member of the piranha family. We caught a couple more piranha and kept them so that our cook could make piranha stew for us according to Herman.

So that’s it up until the point of me writing this right now. Cool day so far. Right now I am on the front of the top deck of the boat sitting on a plastic chair, two Brahma beers on standby, enjoying the sites and the river breeze as we travel to a new location on the other side of the Rio Negro.