Elad’s blog

Ilha Grande is one of the most touristic places that I’ve seen in Brazil. The island is, like implied from its name, quite big. However it has one rather small village, that seems to live exclusively out of tourism. And for a good reason.

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Manaus is a huge city. I didn’t realize how big it is, until the guys from the company with whom I went to the jungle (they are really good, and showed me around the following day, including a ride to the airport) told me it has 2 milion residents, and that it is a major industrial town. Indeed its port, on which huge ships reside, is suitable for a big industrial town, eventhough it is some 1700 k”m in the land - just in the heart of South America.

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The Leaf Frog, a small and beautiful creature, is one of the deadliest killers on the planet. Though it is born defenceless, soon after it begins eating it produces a poisonous layer above its skin. It has a rather spongy skin, so the trick is that any animal that bites it would die because of the poison before causing any harm to the frog. It works so well, that humans - for example - die in seconds if they just touch the frog. This marvelous creature is just one of the small things we saw in our last two days in the Amazonas, when we turned our attention to the jungle.

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The local residents of the Amazon river are usually reffered to as caboclos. This group is usually of mixed ethnicity, descendants of both indians and europeans: the few remaining pure indian communities now live far in the jungles, and are very hardly accessible in Brazil (it is probably easier in Venezuela or Bolivia); those who lived close to Manaus have long ago been enslaved to provide workers for the rubber plantations that made Manaus a big city, or perished otherwise due to the implications of the european invasion of the americas: the caboclos, whose way of life remains very close to nature, keep an echo to these pre-colombian cultures, and were the focus of our second day on the Amazon.

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Never in my life did I expect to find myself sailing in a lousy canoe, full of holes that drip water in (and every few minuts having to put them out), less then 5 centimeters above the water level, in total darkness, moving silently in the middle of the Amazon river with the pronounce intention of hunting Caimans. Literally looking for trouble.
However, I do many unexpected things in this travel: I didn’t expect to find myself, for example, swimming in the middle of a river that swirls with notorious animals and really enjoying it. Yet, both happened this week. This post describes the first day of my Amazonian excursion. Read it in conjunction with the next.

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The Amazonians, as most people with european education probably know, were female warriors from the greek mythology. Thus, when the early europeans that went to explore south america encountered the female indian warriors during the 1500s on the Amazon basin, they were sure the area came straight out of mythology, and named the place accordingly.

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On the hostel in Natal I met a few guys that went to Pipa. There was Angus, a scottish guy who met an argentinian girl and went with her (they stayed together a few nights); Francis, a dutch guy who c0mbines travelling with volunteering in Brazil (he’s a medical student); and Yan, a norvegian guy. They all went to Pipa one day before me (I had to stay and finish some arrangements regarding my flight ticket) . Thus, they missed an excellent barbeque evening we held in the hostel (very strong kaipirinias), while I knew exactly where to go to in Pipa. In the hostel in Pipa we met Avishai, another Israeli, and we all hang out together here.

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Getting to the Amazon proved much more tedious task then I first anticipated. That is, if you are not willing to pay 1000R$ over the lowest possible airflight fare. Eventually, I modified my plans. Now that it’s all settled, I can share it with you.

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Natal, besides beautiful beaches, is the gateway to a huge area of sand dunes. Actually, in the middle of town there is a 9 k”m stretch of protected dune park. But this is nothing compared to all the dunes north of town, as I discovered yesterday on the buggy tour I took to the dunes.

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The day begun with really bad news. My backpack gave up and broke. What is so wrong with my equiptment? I have been travelling for only 10 months now, and I have already had to fix/replace my shoes, camera, earphones, wallet, numerous cloths (especially “treking” pants) and now the big muchila. I left Israel with good equiptment, most of it new, and the only major thing that didn’t fail me yet is the sleeping bag (and even it had some problems, but minor). Am I actually demanding too much from the equiptment, or is it a conspirancy of the manufacturers to make things that last only for short undemanding voyages?

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