Amazon – Travel with Goneguru

Monkeying around in the Amazon River Basin

You might expect to see some wildlife on a trip along the Amazon River and you will not be disappointed. The most prevalent mammals you will see are the monkeys and you will see them when you least expect it, therefore, the pictures of the monkeys you’ll see in this post are not high quality poses of monkeys panning for the camera, but rather, candid shots of the little guys doing what they do. Steal.

Watching the humans in the hammocks below

Of course, they are just like any other creature that lives near humans: if the human is going to leave something laying around, then obviously the human doesn’t need it or perhaps thinks the passing monkey needs it more. This is particularly true of food so precautions are made to keep them away from your food, but, they are industrious and clever and if you turn your head you make look back to learn you are sharing your plate.

If you were lounging in the hammocks, you’d best not fall asleep with anything in your hand, for when you wake up you can be assured that the little guy watching you will have investigated and taken what you had if it suits your fancy. They were incredibly quick at getting around the screen enclosures and grabbing a piece of fruit or other food then settling down on the other side of the screen to enjoy their treat. If you have read the other Amazon posts on this website you will know that we were at the Ariau Towers on the Rio Negro tributary of the Amazon River. This complex has a main building in which the dining hall is located adjacent the boat dock. This is the building to the far right in the picture below. As small store and hotel type rooms were adjacent also. If you look at the picture below you will notice the plank catwalks leading to the left in the picture. To get to our room, we walked about a half mile into the jungle on one of the these catwalks.

As you may notice, the catwalks were at different heights. Further, they branched out into different directions. One day we were taking an alternate route to our room when we came upon a stair where we had to go up to the upper catwalk. Asleep on the stair well was a little was a little monkey like the one shown below. As I started up the stair, I reached down with my hand as if to say “stay where you are” but before I could say don’t, he reached up, grabbed
my hand and was instantly perched on my shoulders. Now , perhaps I should have expected it, but I didn’t expect the utter lack of sympathy I received from my companions, who immediately started laughing at my predicament. There I stand, nearly half a mile from the main buildings with a wild Brazilian monkey perched on my neck. Not wanting to alarm or anger him, I reached gingerly up and touched him which only caused him to hold on tighter and begin chattering, which indicated to me I should leave him alone.

So, I continued up the stairs and walked along the catwalk toward our room. He was perfectly content. I was wondering whether I’d wind up with monkey poop down my collar, and my sisters were laughing hysterically. In a short while, that seemed incredibly long to me, I started to cross over a stream and my rider decided that was as far as he wanted to go. He hoped off, ran back down the catwalk, causing the two sisters to nearly fall off as the scurried to avoid him, and was seen no more.

We crossed the stream and were soon at the tower housing our room. Gratefully, I went inside, washed my neck, and prepared my self a beverage. Then I retreated into the safety of our screened in balcony and sat and laughed. Moral of the story is: Never offer your hand to a monkey that you don’t want on your back.

Although we laugh about the monkey, he was not the only encounter with the wild we had on the board walk. We managed to disturb a little green snake and wound up with him on the boardwalk with two of us going in one direction and the other behind him saying don’t leave me here. He quickly escaped and we were certain to watch our step from then on. Let me know what you see when you go.

The Amazon River: Getting wet

The Amazon River lodge where we stayed caters to an international clientele. In the open boat that we used to get around in, our group of travelers included a 20 year old British girl seeing the world on her own, a German couple, myself and two sisters, a young man from New Jersey, and three Italian young men. Guiding the boat with the handle of the outboard motor was our Brazilian guide, Jorge, and his young assistant. The common language was English so we had no trouble understanding at least the words. Jorge ferried us along tree lined passages, through grass meadows growing in the water until we reached the open water just below the tower room that the girls and I stayed in. Heading up stream he came to a small town: a mission, a store and some houses. Along the banks, cows and pigs stood ankle deep in the water. Jorge explained that occasionally, one would fall victim to the teeth of the river, but, they had to drink. The people who lived there dressed no differently than people you might see in any rural area. In fact when we got out of the boat and walked along the trails through the rain forest, it looked amazing like the Southern US, except the trees seemed taller.

We then took in a ceremonial dance at another village. The villagers pulled the front of the boat up out of the water and invited us through the thatch hut village to a lodge. Along the way, they pointed out a snake skin stretched out on a split log. The skin was easily 18 inches wide and 14 feet long. Apparently, the predator had been caught feasting on a domesticated pig. Inside the lodge the dim light revealed several young Brazilian men and women in what passed for tribal garb: loin cloth, bare breasts, and feathers in their ample hair. We tourists were seated around the periphery of the lodge while the ritual dance was performed. Then they invited some of us to join in. Of course, I did.

Piling back into the boat, Jorge asked if we wanted to go to the beach. Laughingly, we affirmed that we did. He turned the engine up and headed back downstream to a cove with a sandy bank that looked very much like the place where we had fished for piranhas. He said he could put us out on the beach or we could swim to shore. No one seemed enthused about going ashore. Then he said that we could swim from the boat, but not to get into the water if we had any cuts or scrapes that might bleed. About that time, his assistant dove overboard. I told the sisters that if it was ok for him, then I was going to go in as well. The Italian guys heard this and laughed saying “No guts, Mr. Brave American!” Since they had called my bluff, I had no choice, so stripping off my shirt and handing my glasses to the girls, I slipped over the side into the dark waters of the Amazon and swam away from the boat. It was a little disconcerting, but I looked back at

our Italian friends and said: “Your turn.” They stayed in the boat, but the German guy and the kid from New Jersey jumped in as well. I’d had my fill of the foolishness pretty soon and pulled myself over the side of the boat with more than just a little relief. The others followed close behind and the Italians just muttered: “Crazy.”

The Amazon-Swimming with Piranhas

One of my goals was to see at least one great river on each continent. I had seen the Mississippi several times, so the next closest was the Amazon. The Amazon basin is vast, with two rivers joining at Manaus, Brazil to form the combined Amazon River that empties one third of the earth’s fresh water into the Atlantic Ocean. Manaus is roughly one thousand miles from the coast. We flew into Mansus and took a river boat upstream along the Rio Negro to the Ariau Towers. You can find their site at http://www.ariauamazontowers.com/. If you visit the site you will see that we weren’t really roughing it, nevertheless, it was an amazing adventure. We had a room in a tower located about 3/4 mile away from the main complex, where the food, medical and small store was located. To reach the room we walked our luggage along an elevated wooden board walk, that had two levels: one for the dry season and one for the wet. We were on the upper level so part of the time there was water below us. The room was spacious with a queen bed and a twin bed and private toilet and shower. There was another room below us but we never saw the occupants. A screened porch gave a rocking chair view forty some odd feet above the jungle floor.

We met our guide Jorge back at the main building along the dock where he directed us and about 8 others into an open boat with a outboard on the back. We headed out onto a river so wide you could barely make out the other side. Half an hour later, Jorge eased the boat into an open area among some tree tops and we picked up our poles, literally ten foot long tree tops that had a t of monofilament attached, a steel leader at the end of the mono-filament and a hook at the end of the leader. Jorge had a supply of bloody beef cubes about the size of the end of your little finger with which we baited the hooks. Jorge watched with amusement as we dropped the hooks into the water and nothing happened. ” You have to make some noise. Splash the water with the ends of your poles.” Then he said to pull up the poles. All the bait was gone. He said that there were so many of the fish and their teeth so shaarp that you had to be very sensitive to feel them bite and then set the hook. We re-baited and Jorge pulled in a Piranha. I pulled in the next one.

The fish were not very big, but the teeth looked as big as the teeth on a carpenter’s saw. Jorge and I caught a couple more and it was time to go. Jorge said we could swim in the river downstream if we liked, but, not to get into the water if you had an open wound or scrape because the blood would attract the fish. We ate the fish for dinner and defered the swim until the next day.

Goneguru’s Travel and Recreation Blog

I’m the Traveler at Goneguru.com. My wife is the Seer. Together and separately we have had the great good fortune to have hiked, biked, run, traveled and enjoyed such places and things as: backpacking in the Grand Canyon, the White Mountains, Cumberland Island; hiking along the Appalachian Trail, along the Highline in Glacier National Park, to the top of Mount LeConte in Tennessee, and along the coast from Villa Jovis to Marina Piccolo on the Isle of Capri. One or both of us have traveled to Rome, Venice, Florence, Gibraltar, Madrid the Coast of Spain, Costa Rica, the Riviera Maya, San Diego to Maine, and Alaska to St. Thomas. We’ve swam with Pirranha’s, snorkeled on Caribbean reefs, and ridden our bicycles from border to border. We’ve done tri-athlons, du-athalons, half-marathons and the Peachtree Road Race. All of this requires a great appreciation and love of food and travel and most of all meeting people. We intend to recreate our travels for our readers, to share our experiences from the past and future, and hopefully meet up with you along the way.