Dolphins, alligators and tribes in Brazil’s Amazon
MANAUS, Brazil — The warning from our guide made clear that this “forest walk” would be anything but a leisurely stroll.
“Look before grabbing any branches because the ants bite. You will be in pain for 24 hours,” says Jackson Edirley da Silva. “And watch where you step. You don’t want to get bitten by a snake.”
Our group, about a dozen tourists, got quiet.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper to our sons, ages 6 and 7. “We will be careful where we step.”
My wife and I had flown with our kids from Rio de Janeiro to Manaus, a major jumping-off point for Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. From there, we took a boat for an hourlong ride up a tributary of the Rio Negro, or Black River, and then walked 15 minutes to an “eco lodge” in the middle of a forest.
Despite its worldwide fame, not to mention increasing importance as climate change becomes a global issue, the Amazon is not visited in great numbers.
For those who get here, it’s hard to imagine disappointment. Over the course of a week, we swam with freshwater dolphins, gawked at alligators wrestled from river banks by scrappy guides, fished for piranhas and stood in awe at “the meeting” of the Negro and Solimoes Rivers (called the Amazon River in Manaus and eastward), where a difference in density and temperature means black and yellow waters flow side by side for kilometers.
The food also has unique tastes. Massive tucunare fish get chopped into fillets that taste like chicken with an extra dose of zest, potato-like manioc roots are prepared with forest spices that most people have never heard of and acai berries are ubiquitous — the kids particularly enjoyed sucking on acai popsicles during the afternoon heat.
Te Batista, a boat operator we hired for two days to take us to several areas of the Rio Negro, tells me tourists always ask him about conservation.
“Foreigners are afraid about the future of the forest,” he says. He adds, flatly, that he isn’t.
At the heart of conservation discussions are indigenous tribes, who provide windows into life in the Amazon both before the arrival of Portuguese colonists in the 16th century and today. While there are still scores of “uncontacted” tribes in the Amazon, most are at least partially connected to Brazilian society and live in ways that combine their traditions with aspects of modernday life.
One day, we visited a small village of about 100 people belonging to the Dessana tribe.
As they have for centuries, the women wore hay skirts and were topless. The men wore small woven cloths on their hips, though noticeably with tight black briefs underneath. They all had red face paint, and many wore feathers on their heads and necklaces made with alligator and jaguar teeth. Recently caught fish cooked over a fire, and a pottery bowl of large baked black ants were available to snack on.
Speaking limited Portuguese, a young man named Bohoka told me the tribe lived as they always had — in little huts without electricity, running water or cellphones — but with a few modern twists that included allowing tourists to visit.
“Tourism allows us to maintain our way of life,” says Bohoka, 24, who showed us necklaces and other handcrafts for sale.
The village was only about a 90-minute boat trip from Manaus but worlds away. The gritty port city of over 2 million people is an eclectic mix of a colonial architecture, urban sprawl and hustle from hardscrabble touts trying to eke out a living. It reached its splendor in the 19th century when growing global demand for rubber brought throngs to the area to cut and gather sap from rubber trees. A beautiful opera house built during that time, which today hosts several shows each year, is the city’s main tourist attraction.
As I chatted with Bohoka, a small boat pulled up on the riverbank. About a dozen members of the tribe, dressed in slacks and T-shirts, got off carrying plastic bags. They disappeared into their huts and re-emerged a few minutes later wearing traditional clothes.
Bohoka explains they had gone to “the city”, or Manaus, to buy sewing materials.
“Why couldn’t they just wear traditional clothing there?” I ask, somewhat jokingly.
Bohoka laughs. “Impossible,” he says. “Indians’ home is the forest.”