Journey Into The Amazon
Manaus to Tefé
We woke up at 4 AM to start our long journey from Manaus to Cumapi Rapids, where we would be camping for the next few days. We met our travel companions, John and Mike, and got the tickets for the first leg of the trip from Eduardo, the head of the tour company. Then we were off! The first leg of the journey was a 14-hour speedboat ride to Tefé. The boat was very comfortable, especially compared to the other boats we would be taking over the course of the week, and we were served breakfast and lunch. But however comfortable the boat was, it was still a long trip, and was entirely inside. It was a relief when we arrived in Tefé, where we met our main guide for the trip, Samir.
Tefé
We arrived in Tefé in the late afternoon, and Samir took us to get some barbecue. Brazilian meals are enormous, and full of carbs - after dinner, we were ready for bed. We went to the budget hotel that the tour company had booked for us, which overlooked the town square. The town was bustling. Tefé has a population of about 70,000 and is the last city with an airport before you hit Colombia. After this, we'd be going farther and farther from civilization.
Tefé to Marãa
The next morning, we spent another seven hours on a speedboat to Maraã. This was very similar to the first speedboat ride, except that it had a deck on back where you could get some fresh air, and hear the sounds of the Amazon. We took full advantage of this.
Marãa
We visited Marãa twice: once on the way to Cumapi Rapids and once on the way home. We spent several hours here, wandering around and visiting the local market and stores. Many of the houses here are floating on large tree trunks, and there are boats in every stage of construction scattered around the town. Marãa has a population of 20,000 and was one of the bigger towns we passed through on our way to the campsite. We met our field guides, Maqueis and Perí, here. Like many of the people from Marãa, they knew the area we would be venturing into well, as they had grown up fishing and exploring there. As we were leaving, a storm came in, postponing our next leg of the trip for a few hours. We waited on the dock, listening to the rain and watching the locals swim in the downpour.
Marãa to/from Cumapi Rapids
After the rain cleared, we took Maqueis's and Perí's small motorboat from Marãa to Cumapi Rapids. We were supposed to make it
all the way to the rapids in one go, but it started getting dark, so after six hours of boating, we found
Cumapi Lake's guard station and stayed there overnight. Our final travel day consisted of a 4.5-hour boat ride through
smaller channels. These were beautiful and calm - the reflections of the plant life on the surface of the water was absolutely perfect due
to the stillness of the environment. This is also where we saw a lot of animals: toucans, hawks, an eagle, a crocodile, cormorants,
pink dolphins, and
proboscis bats, which flew around during the day and blended in perfectly with the trees. We also heard the high-pitched call
of a sloth. Our guides were very patient with my unending questions of how to say different animal names in Portuguese. After
30 hours of boat travel, we arrived at the campsite at Cumapi Rapids.
Our return trip from Cumapi Rapids to Marãa was more of the same interesting sights and sounds. We intended to set up camp
on a small, arid island overnight, but the stormy weather made this dangerous, so instead, we returned to the guard
station at Cumapi Lake. The next day, we finished the first leg of our journey home when we arrived in Marãa.
Marãa to Manaus
After lunch in Marãa, we boarded the large slow boat to start our journey home and were given a key to our room. The room consisted only of a bunk bed and trash can, but it also had an air conditioner, so we were in heaven. We were lucky to have a room at all - there were only a handful on the boat, and the remaining hundreds of passengers slept in hammocks in extremely close quarters on the main or lower deck. We thought that we were taking the slow boat for 12 hours to Tefé where we would catch a plane back to Marãa. However, two hours into the boat ride, we were told that we were actually on the last leg of our journey; we would be on the boat for 42 hours before arriving in Manaus. The journey was broken up by short stop in Coari, where we walked around, but didn't venture far for fear of missing our departure time. We passed several other cities on the way, mostly shrouded in fog. Otherwise, we spent our time chatting with John, Mike, and Samir, drinking mini-cans of Itaipava beer, and watching The Voice in Portuguese. As long and boring as this portion of the trip was, the views more than made up for it. We got to watch sunrises and sunsets overlooking the rainforest surrounding the Amazon River.
