Up at 7am and on a boat by 8am for our one hour boat ride up the Rio Negro to visit an Indigenous village. So last night we go from Opera house opulence to this morning a small village on the banks of the river, talk about contrasts. This village is the real deal, this is where these people live and make a life. If a village is displaying a white flag it means they are open and welcoming passer-buyers, no flag, do not visit. There is the Village Chief and his family and clan. I will not get into some of the details of their way of life as it may be disturbing to some but that said as it was presented to us we were asked to keep an open mind and not to judge. On one hand I do support the argument of what makes our way of life so great and I do try to keep as open mind but morally I do have some problems with some of the rituals and how they do some things. I will leave it at that, they do appear to be a happy and healthy people and they did open up their village to us. Yes, they do earn a stipend from our visit but I don’t think the money means much to them, I believe they really want to just present themselves to the world, well our world the ones who visit here. HAL did a great job with this excursion, great clean boat with comfortable seating and a head for the just in case moment. We also had a very good experienced guide. From the village we went to a Rubber Plantation for a visit of life during the rubber boom. Well, in short, the only person making the money was the Rubber Baron as living conditions were disgusting and treatment of the workers was worse. The Plantation visit was interesting because they had everything set up as it would have been during the boom times. The Baron’s house, with all the furniture and decorations all in place as well as the general store for workers to purchase things they may need as well as the areas where the work was carried out. One good story was about the Grandfather Clock that was brought over. It had all the regular roman numerals on it until the Baron was constantly getting woke up at 4 in the morning. He kept telling the workers, no 6 o’clock, VI was the time to wake him up but the uneducated workers, that could not read and write kept getting the VI and IV backwards and kept waking him at 4am. Once the Baron realized this he took the clock to a clock maker and had the 4 changed to IIII rather that IV and this is why when you see the picture of the clock it has the 4 displayed this way - the only one in the world.
Half way through our visit the wind picked up and it began to pour with rain, well, we are in a rain forest after all. The rain only effected our visit a bit and made the ride back a little cozy with the tarps around the whole boat. For me, Michel hooked me up with his hotspot wifi so I was able to do some emails, FB and Instagram, so all good there. Back for lunch and then out for some retail therapy before our 5pm departure. A great couple days here in Manaus, we are in Parintins tomorrow, looking forward to another great day ashore. Here are a few pics of our day, hope you enjoy…
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