Amazonas

Exactly a year ago,  myself,  my paddling mate Erik and another friend  Manny  did 

a canoe trip down the Rio Branco to the Rio Negro,  in the northern part of Brazil's
Amazon jungle. It was a great trip,  completely off the grid,  paddling in a local hardwood
canoe from the town of Boa Vista to the mouth of the Negro.  Along the way, we went
through rapids,  stayed with local villagers,  caught and ate many different fish,  slept on
sandbars (crocs lurking at the water's edge),  got pummelled by intense thunder storms,
saw monkeys,parrots, tapir, dolphins, hundreds of birds, got bite by a thousand mosquitos,
we ate turtle and wild boars hunted by locals,  drank cachaça (Brazilian rum) by the nightly
campfire...  In total it was over 500km of paddling,  4 weeks on the river,  one week getting
ready in Boa Vista and one week winding down in Manaus.  Our canoe was made by a local
boat builder.   While we waited,  I took out my watercolours and painted the local fish,
most of which we ended up catching and eating,  day after day after day down the river.

Carlos the boat builder.  It took about five days to build our 
canoe. All hardwood planks. 6.5 metres. Very solid but heavy.

We got to know several locals during our preparatory week, they 

gave us T-shirts and hats and I was interviewed by local tv and 

newspaper journalists the morning we paddled off. 

Marina. a riverside restaurant owner in Boa Vista,  took us 

under her wing while we waited for our canoe to be built.  We 

named our canoe after her.  

A family we stayed with a couple of days at the head of the rapids. We slung 

our hammocks under a tin roof and learned from them how to catch fish, 

Amazon style. 

 

  

It was the dry season so there were hundreds of island sand bars. 
Thats where we slept every night, either under the stars or in our tent 
during thunderstorm downpours.

Raimundo and Ronne;  two local fishermen that had one canoe, one paddle, 

one fish net, one large styrofoam ice cooler (full of ice and filling up with fish 

they caught) one bag of rice, one tin can (for cooking the rice) and one blue tarp, 

they either slept on, or under if it rained.  That's it.  In comparison,  we had so 
much stuff!  We met them as they were roasting turtles over a campfire (they gave 

us some, tasted good) and we paddled with them for a couple of days, 

until a crocodile destroyed their net at night.  That was the end of their 
week long fishing trip for family food.  

We did purchase a net in one of the towns along the way,  just to
make sure we never ran out of fish, our main diet.  Most of the time
however we fished with a hand line and bait. Occasionally we used
our rods that we brought with us from Canada.  Here, an aruana.

A tasty "tucunaré" (or peacock bass), that Erik caught
using a Canadian buzz bomb lure.

Lots of blue tarps.  One was essential as a canopy to protect from the sun. 
We were also able to untie and roll down the sides when it rained. We rigged up
 a sail as well,  which worked great.  Unfortunately,  only used it once as there 
was barely any wind.

Piranha.  We caught a lot of these suckers but usually threw them back 
or cut up them up for bait as we preferred the various catfish.  They 
were tough to scale and to cut their belly open to get the guts out.  Plus 
you had to be careful so they wouldn't sever your toes off with 
their razor sharp teeth whilst flopping in the bottom 
of the boat!

Although we were paddling with the current,  it was not very fast  
and our canoe weighed a ton.  So lots of paddling,  an average of about 
7 hours a day...  along what we called "the green hell,"  the jungle just above 
the ridge of the waterline.   Every time we set up camp before sunset though 
the variety and beauty of the forest,  the sky and the river were stunning. 
 There was a stretch of about 8 days where there were no villages,  no canoes 
or people...  just pure jungle. 

When we did come across villages or other fishermen, like this man 
named Manuel, they were so friendly and genuinely interested in our trip. 
Manuel let us sling our hammocks on his old house boat and gave us fresh
 fish the next morning, that he cleaned and salted so it would  
last a few days. 

After almost a month on the Rio Branco,  we arrived at the fork where 

it joins the  mighty Rio Negro.  It's called the Negro because of the tea 

colour of the water.  What a relief! After weeks of getting bit by mosquitos

along the Branco,  there were none whatsoever on the banks of the Rio 

Negro.  Mosquitos do not like the tannin in the water. 

We only spent a couple of days on the Negro. We had run out of 
time and had just enough money to get back to Manaus on a large river boat.  
We were told about a floating petrol store and marina close to the junction 
of the two rivers and paddled there on our last  morning.  The boat to Manaus 
was leaving that night at 2 am.  I struck a deal with the owner by saying   
'give us food and beer and let us stay here until the boat comes and you can 
have this canoe,  propane burner and all the gear we weren't bringing with us'. 
 I also swapped one of our Canadian paddles for the typical tear drop 
shaped hard wood paddles they use.   He left shortly after with his three 
sons and came back after a few hours in the jungle with about 5 wild boars, 
 that they proceeded to butcher and clean.  That was our meal for diner.