Explore The Amazon
An arbitrary border, a line on paper through the forest, divides the state of Pará from the western Amazon. Encompassing the states of Amazonas, Rondônia, Acre and Roraima, the western Amazon is dominated by the big river and its tributaries even more than the east. This is a remote and poorly serviced region representing the heart of the world’s largest rainforest. The northern half of the forest is drained by two large rivers, the gigantic Rio Negro and its major affluent, the Rio Branco. Travelling north from Manaus the dense rainforest phases into the wooded savannas before the mysterious mountains of Roraima rise precipitously at the border with Venezuela and Guyana. To the south, the rarely visited Madeira, Purús and Juruá rivers, all huge and important in their own way, meander through the forests from the prime rubber region of Acre and the rampantly colonized state of Rondônia.
The hub of this area is undoubtedly Manaus, more or less at the junction of three great rivers – the Solimões/Amazonas, the Negro and the Madeira – which, between them, support the world’s greatest surviving forest. There are few other settlements of any real size. In the north, Boa Vista, capital of Roraima, lies on an overland route to Venezuela. South of the Rio Amazonas there’s Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia, and, further west, Rio Branco, the main town in the relatively unexplored rubber-growing state of Acre – where the now famous Chico Mendes lived and died, fighting for a sustainable future for the forest.
Travel is never easy or particularly comfortable in the western Amazon. From Manaus it’s possible to go by bus to Venezuela or Boa Vista, which is just twelve hours or so on the tarmacked BR-174 through the stunning tropical forest zone of the Waimiris tribe, with over fifty rickety wooden bridges en route. You can also head east to the Amazon river settlement of Itacoatiara; but the BR-317 road from the south bank close to Manaus down to Porto Velho requires four-wheel-drive vehicles, having been repossessed by the rains and vegetation for most of its length. From Porto Velho the Transamazônica continues into Acre and Rio Branco, from where a new route has been paved all the way to Puerto Maldonado in the Peruvian Amazon, with road links on to Cusco and the Pacific coast beyond. Access is easy from here into Bolivia, too; and, from Porto Velho, the paved BR-364 offers fast roads south to Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brasília and the rest of Brazil.
The rivers are the traditional and still very much dominant means of travel. Entering from the east, the first places beyond Óbidos are the small ports of Parintins and Itacoatiara. The former is home to the internationally known Bio Bumbá festival every June and the latter has bus connections with Manaus if you’re really fed up with the boat, though the roads are often very hard-going in the rainy season (Dec–April). From Itacoatiara it’s a matter of hours till Manaus appears near the confluence of the Negro and Solimões rivers. It takes another five to eight days by boat to reach the Peruvian frontier, and even here the river is several kilometres wide and still big enough for ocean-going ships.
Read More- Jungle trips from Manaus
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The Rio Solimões and the journey to Peru
The Rio Solimões and the journey to Peru
The stretch of river upstream from Manaus, as far as the pivotal frontier with Peru and Colombia at Tabatinga, is known to Brazilians as the Rio Solimões. Once into Peru it again becomes the Rio Amazonas. Although many Brazilian maps show it as the Rio Marañón on the Peru side, Peruvians don’t call it this until the river forks into the Marañón and Ucayali headwaters, quite some distance beyond Iquitos.
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Up the Rio Negro
Up the Rio Negro
The Rio Negro flows into Manaus from northwestern Amazonas, one of the least explored regions of South America. There’s virtually nothing in the way of tourist facilities in this direction, but it’s possible to make your way up the Rio Negro by boat from Manaus to Barcelos, from Barcelos to São Gabriel, and from there on to the virtually uncharted borders with Colombia and Venezuela. Alternatively, there are reasonably fast boats from Manaus every Friday, run by Asabranca, which call in at Barcelos (two days; R$100–200) on their way to São Gabriel (about five days up, three downriver; R$150–220). There are also daily flights to São Gabriel from Manaus, stopping off en route on alternate days at either Barcelos or Tefé on the Rio Solimões. To leave Brazil via these routes requires expedition-level planning and can take up to several weeks or longer, but it’s an exciting trip nonetheless.
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Roraima
Roraima
In the far north of Brazil, the state of Roraima, butting against Guiana and Venezuela, created in 1991, came to world notice in 1998 when devastating forest fires wreaked havoc on the area. It’s an active frontier zone and is notable mainly for the mountains and rock formations with high table-top plateaux to the north of the region. These mountains continue into Venezuela and Guyana where they were made famous by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book The Lost World. Most of Roraima state, however, is relatively flat grassland.
- Rondônia and Porto Velho
- Rio Branco
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Boi Bumbá in Parintins
Boi Bumbá in Parintins
Parintins, an otherwise unremarkable, small river-town with a population of around 100,000 lying roughly halfway between Santarém and Manaus, has become the unlikely centre of one of the largest mass events in Brazil – the Boi Bumbá celebrations, which take place in the last weekend of June every year.
The official name is the Festival Folclórico de Parintins, but it is often called Boi Bumbá after the name for a funny and dramatized dance concerning the death and rebirth of an ox traditionally performed at the festival. The festival’s roots go back at least a hundred years, when the Cid brothers from Maranhão arrived in the area bringing with them the Bumba-meu-boi musical influence from the culture-rich ex-slave plantations.
Tens of thousands of visitors arrive annually at the Bumbódromo stadium, built to look like a massive stylized bull, which hosts a wild, energetic parade by something resembling an Amazonian version of Rio samba schools – and the resemblance is not coincidental, the organizers having consciously modelled themselves on Rio’s Carnaval.
The event revolves around two schools, Caprichoso and Garantido which compete, parading through the Bumbódromo, where supporters of one school watch the opposing parade in complete silence. You thus have the strange spectacle of 20,000 people going wild while the other half of the stadium is as quiet as a funeral, with roles reversed a few hours later. Boi Bumbá has its high point with the enactment of the death of a bull, part of the legend of the slave Ma Catirina who, during her pregnancy, developed a craving for ox tongue. To satisfy her craving, her husband, Pa Francisco, slaughtered his master’s bull, but the master found out and decided to arrest Pa Francisco with the help of some Indians. Legend, however, says a priest and a witch doctor managed to resuscitate the animal, thus saving Pa Francisco; with the bull alive once more, the party begins again at fever pitch, with a frenetic rhythm that pounds away well into the hot and smoke-filled night.
The parade is undeniably spectacular, and the music infectious. But if you’re going to participate, remember joining in with the Caprichoso group means you mustn’t wear red clothing; if you’re dancing with the Garantido school, you need to avoid blue clothes. During the festival, forget about accommodation in any of the town’s few hotels: they are booked up months in advance. Your best chance is simply to stay on a boat; in all the towns and cities of the region – notably Manaus and Santarém – you will find boats and travel agencies offering all-inclusive packages for the event, with accommodation in hammocks on the boats. Most of the riverboat companies offer three- or four-day packages, costing between R$200 and R$700. The trips (26hr from Manaus, 20hr from Santarém) are often booked well in advance, and are advertised from March onwards on banners tied to the boats. There is a lot of petty thieving and pickpocketing, so take extra care of anything you bring with you.
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Buying a hammock
Buying a hammock
Cloth hammocks are the most comfortable, but they’re also heavier, bulkier and take longer to dry out if they get wet. Less comfortable in the heat, but more convenient, much lighter and more durable are nylon hammocks. Aesthetically, however, nylon hammocks are no match for cloth ones, which come in all colours and patterns. You should be able to get a perfectly adequate cloth hammock, which will stand up to a few weeks’ travelling, from around R$25 for a single and R$50 for a double; for a nylon hammock, add R$10 to the price. If you want a more elaborate one – and some handwoven hammocks are very fine – you will pay more. Easing the path to slinging hammocks once you get home are metal armadores, which many hammock and most hardware shops sell; these are hooks mounted on hinges and a plate with bolts for sinking into walls. When buying a hammock you are going to use, make sure it takes your body lying horizontally across it: sleeping along the curve is bad for your back. A good hammock shop in Manaus is Casa des Redes on Rua dos Andradas.
