We woke up in our cute little house up in the canopy of the rain forest. I think it is the only room here with satellite TV. Almost all of it is in Portuguese, however, but John loves to channel surf even when he does not understand a word of what is being said.
He also loves all the windows.
One of the great things about the Rio Negro is that there are few mosquitos here. The river gets its name from the amount of decaying organic matter it accumulates through the rainy season and spring flooding. This material is sufficiently acidic to make the river a poor breeding grounds for the nasty little pests.
Today we had a hike through the rain forest. This is still the very beginning of the rainy season, and you can still walk on the forest floor. In a few months, this will be completely flooded with six to ten feet of water. I am sure I would find that interesting, but somehow being able to see all the layers of the forest was great.
I have to admit that I wanted the Amazon forest to look a little more exotic than it does. I wanted it to be filled with the giant prehistoric looking palms and ferns. Instead, it looks much more like the forests I grew up with in the northeast or the midwest. The tree are different, of course, but not as different as I expected. Francisco, as usual, explained everything to us.
The most important trees are the hardwoods. Because of the pattern of flooding, nutrients are found on at the topmost layer of the soil. The trees therefore have extensive root systems on the surface. And for the tall ones, this increases the risk of falling. And so some create unique methods of buttressing the trunk in order to stay upright.
With kids, we talk about the decomposers in the forest as the FBI: fungus, bacteria, and insects. We certainly saw a lot of fungus.
Some of it quite beautiful.
And we came across this substantial termite nest.
Even though we think of the middle and upper layers of the rainforest as supporting the most life, there is plenty of life
and beauty on the forest floor.
On our way back, we saw more bird life.
Francisco amused us on the boat by making little objects out of fronds. He decided that John must be a great hunter.
Not exactly.
In the afternoon, however, John did prove to be a pretty good fisherman. Our afternoon excision was going fishing. But not just fishing for anything. We were fishing for piranhas!
Once again, Francisco took us out in the canoe. We went a few hundred meters from the dock and then he pulled over to a bank that look just like any other one on the rivulet. We were all given bamboo rods with strings and a hook attached, and everybody was given a handful of what looked like stew beef. We all tossed our rods in the water. And pretty soon we felt something pulling on them. Most of us lost a bunch of beef before we learned when to pull in the rod. John was one of the first to catch one.
And not long after he caught another one.
Even I managed to catch a couple, though I think I was better at unhooking them and tossing them back for other people.
In fact, all the little ones we did toss in, but kept the big ones for supper.
In the evening, we walked down to the banks of the Negro. Josh, our companion from Birmingham, England, had found half a dozen alligators sunning themselves there earlier. We were not so lucky, though we did catch glimpses of eyes watching us from the small pond nearby. We marveled at the loveliness of the Amazon sunset
and wondered how much longer the Ariaú Towers would be left.
