This morning we woke on the Amazon River – huge, probably the most immense river there has ever been. The river is brown with sediment, a nice contrast to the tall green curtains of vegetation bordering the river and its tributaries. Smoke rises here and there as breakfast is prepared at small farms ashore. Ultimately we anchor at a small, diffuse town to undergo customs and immigration formalities for entering Brazil… this takes the rest of the morning, as we look with curiosity at all the activity around with boats of every size moving to and fro, like cars and trucks elsewhere.
In the afternoon we make a Zodiac outing into one of the small tributaries. While this a special moment for everyone, our first intimate cruise on the Amazonian waters, it is particularly special for our baker Oscar… it is his birthday!
We threw our cast net out a few times hoping for a piranha, but only Oscar had any luck; he caught a river shrimp. As always, plants are easier to “catch.” One of most distinctive and common plants along the water’s edge is a giant arum, Montrichardia arborescens. It has philodendron-like leaves and flowers. The plants have a single stem and stand about 15 feet tall with a white inflorescence (spadix) mostly wrapped in a spathe of almost one foot in length. At night, the inflorescence heats up and becomes somewhat malodorous, all helping to attach its nocturnal insect pollinators.
There are many other flowers, animal tracks on muddy banks and the elusive four-eyed fish… their eyes are partitioned so they can look through the water and the air at the same time! It is said that they can knock insects off of leaves above the water with a jet of water they spit with uncanny accuracy. We spent a bit of time trying to get decent pictures of this elusive fellow. Later we found out that all the boats had similar yet different experiences resulting in analogous postures and meditative looks of their occupants.
