New Year's Day - Parintins Island

January 1, 2012

It is 5:40pm and we have just weighed anchor off of Parintins Island where we have been anchored since noon. This morning we sat on our balcony in the rain and mist and admired the view of the islands slipping past and fishes jumping in the muddy water. The water of the Amazon is the colour of café au lait. The Rio Amazonas sends so much sediment into the Atlantic ocean that it can be seen from space and extends out more than 300 miles from the coast. As rivers go, geologically this is a young one so it is wide and flat and still removing tons of earth as it flows. Originally in the movement of continents this area was an inland sea and the Amazon flowed to the Pacific. The Andes were pushed up and the direction of the river reversed.  This also had an effect on the fauna – Amazon river dolphins are of Pacific origin and were stranded when the Andes rose. They adapted over time to the fresh water environment and their body shape and colour altered to meet their needs in a muddy river. They are sonar experts and don’t have much use for eyesight because the river is so clouded with sediment.  We have only seen the dolphins once near the Meeting of the Waters. They do not leap or follow boats like their ocean cousins and are generally more elusive.

So – Parintins…this is a city on an island in the Amazon between Manaus to the west and Santarem to the East. In Brazil it is most famous for its Boi Bumba Festival which is second only to Festival in Rio de Janeiro in size. 10s of thousands of people descend on the island in June for the festival and the costumes are said to be even more elaborate than their more famous counterparts in Rio.  Of course, we are not here at Boi Bumba time so we don’t get to make that judgment call with any authority whatsoever.  As it turns out, the rest of the year Parintins is pretty much a fishing town and Amazonian outpost for goods moving up and down the river. Now imagine a strictly Catholic city on a Sunday that happens to be New Year’s Day. You get the picture – we have little to report other than the location is beautiful, the rainy season continues to rain and we caught up on a lot of reading and picture sorting. Dale is working his way through the culinary delights of the ship and complaining that on a small ship like this one the balance of eating to exercise is off. I have suggested he run stairs or eat less but he scoffs at these ideas. 

Here is an interesting thing about trying to take pictures of a rainforest in the rainy season to inform people back in North America … when you take your camera outside it fogs up completely for about 10 minutes – and then again when you come in. Think eyeglasses in cold weather only in reverse.  Some terrific shots were missed through this unforeseen issue so you will just have to accept our descriptions of some things!  The same thing happens when you pick up your binoculars to see if that is really a toucan you spy in the forest.  I have no idea – sorry!

Ok – this slow day gives me the opportunity to enlighten you on some interesting things about Brazilian politics that we learned in talking to our Indian guides.  In Brazil it is very important to the government that they have some idea of how many people actually live in the country. So they made a law that citizens must vote – no option. Well, big deal you say, what if you don’t show up? Well, according to the voting law, you lose your rights as a Brazilian citizen – you lose your ID, rights to access government services and other such wonderful things.  To me this seems like a great idea to get past the voter apathy in Canada and the US – I’m just saying…

I also asked about the relationship between the indigenous population and the rest of the country. Apparently Brazil is one of the most “mixed” countries in the world. The native population was devastated by disease courtesy of colonial Europeans and subsequently enslaved by rubber barons. They learned that fighting back did not result in better lives so they chose to adapt and cooperate and that spirit still seems alive and well today. The native population in the rainforest regions still has a much more primitive daily life than those Brazilians in the cities but much of that appears to be by choice. The Brazilian government is making concerted efforts to raise the standards of education, health and general wealth through policies that favour rights of the indigenous peoples. Large tracts of rainforest are set aside for native tribes (bigger and much more productive than Indian Reservations in Canada or the US) and non-natives are not allowed in these zones without a clearly stated reason for being there or an invitation.  The laws of the tribes are the first laws applied. Our guide, Ananias, said that for instance if a white man is murdered in a native territory by a native, the native will not be arrested or prosecuted for murder. The white man is deemed to have been in the wrong.  I am not so keen on seeing this enacted as the voting laws but it is interesting to see that there are more effective ways of dealing with the colonial mess than other parts of the world seem to have chosen.

Food for thought as you contemplate your New Year’s resolutions!

The sun has now set and we are once again moving down the Rio Amazonas. Tomorrow we explore Santarém…