As we bring our Brazil trip to a close, maybe a map would be helpful. John was actually quite surprised to learn that we were nowhere near the coast when we were paddling up the Rio Negro. Brazil is one B-I-G country.
Today we left the Ariaú Hotel and began our journey home. But we decided that on our way we wanted to see a bit more of the city of Manaus than its airport. So we made arrangements to spend a day there and see its sights. And, as our flight is not leaving until Wednesday at 3:40 in the morning, we figured we would get a hotel room and sleep in comfortable beds until it was time to get on the plane.
It did not go according to plan at first. After a long boat ride, we had a long van ride to the Tropical Hotel. We were supposed to me up with a guide there and have a city tour. Unfortunately, he did not show up and we did not have a contact number. So we took a cab into Manaus and checked into our hotel. We asked at the desk there if they could arrange a city tour, and sure enough they did. Our guide was a chain-smoking, obscenity-spouting guy named James. Only 50, though he looked at least a decade older, he had been born in Guyana to a Brazilian mother and an English father. He apparently had lived in Manaus for most of his life.
He took us first of all to Manaus’s greatest treasure, its opera house.
You may wonder why there is an magnificent Beaux-Arts opera house 2000 miles into the Amazon jungle. The answer to that is easy. About a century ago this was one of the richest places on earth. And that was because of Manaus was the rubber capital of the world.
A little history here. Rubber is native to the Amazon. The Portuguese discovered the Indians playing with balls made from the sap on of the local trees. They were intrigued, but did not see much use for it. Neither did the rest of the world, though the British discovered that it could erase pencil markings. Natural rubber is a somewhat problematic substance. It cracks when the weather is too cold. And when the temperature rises, it begins to melt.
A number of chemists experimented with adding substances to rubber to make it more useful. Almost by accident, Charles Goodyear discovered that mixing sulphur with rubber and heating it made rubber waterproof and durable. Unfortunately for him, a British chemist made the same discovery about the same time and managed to patent the process first.
Almost overnight, rubber became one of the most valuable substances in the world and the “rubber barons” of Manaus were the among the richest men in the hemisphere. The Brazilians tried to keep a monopoly on rubber. But British smuggled a rubber tree out of the jungle and set up enormous rubber plantations in Malaysia. The fortunes of Manaus collapsed almost as fast as it arose.
But fortunately, the opera house and some other grand old buildings remained as a memorial to that era. James told us to go inside of the opera house and sign up for a tour in English. We did so, and had a wonderful young lady guide us through the edifice. She pointed out that the ceiling shows the base of the Eiffel Tower.
Note the "governor’s box." Brazil had abolished the monarchy about a decade before the opera house was built, but old architectural habits are hard to break.
Like many nineteenth-century opera houses, the boxes have limited sight lines, and today the seats on the floor are those most in demand.
The square outside of the opera house is quite charming. There is a monument to the various rivers of the world in the center. The architecturally-uninteresting parish church of São Sebastian is in the rear.
Our guide assured us that the light and dark on the paving stones represented the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, but we saw the same kinds of designs in Rio. I believe this kind of stonework is called “Portuguese pavement” though I have no idea whether they actually have this in Portugal or not.
Away from the plaza and the opera house, the rest of Manaus is just pretty ugly. We looked at some of the ships moored in the river.
There is a Victorian market place that was in fact build by the British. James, our guide, is on the left. He was taking a short break between cigarettes.
We walked through the market. John was fascinated by the guys pitching watermelons from the truck to a stall.
Some of the fish looked a little different from the stuff we get at Ralph’s.
We returned to the plaza to go to a juice bar. The Brazilians are very fond of “sugo” and there are places to get fruit juices on every corner. Sitting there, we watched the plaza start to come to life for the evening.
In the late afternoon, once our tour was over, we returned to the hotel. We found a nearby churrascaria for dinner. We’ll be on the plane soon and back home to Los Angeles!
We’ll just be bringing home wonderful memories and a couple odd souvenirs.
