Travel Blog #21: The Last Morning

We return to the boat after our caiman hunt. It's well after midnight and we are tired. Time for something quick to eat and then one last sleep in our stateroom.

Our bags have vanished and we will see them tomorrow at the airport. We have kept only the basics: an extra pair of underwear, the iPod, the Palm Pilot and our cameras. Just the same life necessities the settlers had.

We have several hours before we have to go to the airport, so we are off the ship and headed for the Mercado Market. This was reputed to be one of the largest outdoor markets in the world, built when Manaus was a fabulously wealthy city.

It is only a few blocks away from where the cruise ship is docked. We get off the ship and walk through the terminal. A tour guide taps me on the arm. I know what's coming. This guy is going to ask me if I want a tour. Usually the answer is at least a marginally excited "maybe."

"Would you like a tour?" he asks, oozing charm and credibility in equal parts. These are the hallmarks of a really great guide.

I do a quick internal calculation. I sigh. We have only a few hours and there is no way we can make this work. I shake my head. "I'd like one...but we are going home in a few hours."

I had expected to be blown off instantly. Instead he smiles and asks if we need directions. I ask where the Mercado Market is and he gives excellent and detailed instructions. At the end he stops and puts his hand on my shoulder.

"Keep one hand on your wallet all the time," he says softly. "Manaus can be...what is the word? Hungry."

It sounds more sinister than it was. But it still gives me a little thrill.

We venture into hungry Manaus, happily taking pictures.

We learn the Mercado Marketplace had a fire and most of it is being rebuilt. This explains the clustered huts against the fence. There are hundreds of these selling cheap sunglasses from China, knock off purses, t-shirts, fruits of apparently infinite variety.

There's meat and ripped off movies. There are clothes and shoes and nuts.

One lady specializes in selling combs. That's it. Just combs. This image makes me smile because there is something so interesting about the textures and colors...the expression on her face. This image, despite the clutter, pleases me each time I look at it. It makes me think of Brazil, like she knows a secret she's keeping to herself but she doesn't mind smiling at a stranger. That's Brazil to me.

Inside a building is a meat market. I don't think I would buy here. It's like a buffet line for flies. But the merchants watch us arrive with a distant interest and when we start taking pictures, some of them are entertained enough to pose.

Others, like the man working on the grinder wheel, look up for just a second and then, after learning we are not customers, go right back to what they were doing in the first place.

It is an affable indifference, but indifference all the same.

I see a man with the most unusual eyes.

He is regarding me from the side of a stall. I am not sure whether he is a merchant or a customer. But I know I want his picture.

I have found a smile and slight nod to be a great universal language. I wave my arms around the surroundings and shrug in a "Holy Crap this is cool" gesture.

He smiles back and shrugs. I assume this means "Sure, fella. Whatever..."

I hold up my camera. He shrugs again ("Sure. Take the picture. Knock yourself out, Guy.") and I take his picture.

I don't like doing it this way. The poses you get are too stiff. It's much better to talk with a person, get to know them a little and then take some candid pictures that show a little more of the heart.

This man is a fishmonger. He was utterly charmed by Sheree. He looked her straight in the eye and made dozens of little slices into the fish without once looking down or losing a finger.

Yes. He was showing off.

Yes. It was impressive.

When he was done, Sheree smiled at him (this can be a devastating event for the average unprepared male) and he laughed. Here he is.

I am checking my watch. I don't particulary want to, because whatever news it is going to give me will be bad. Every minute drags us closer to the airport and the seven hour flight from Manaus to Miami. It's a cruise boat charter so you KNOW it's going to be cramped and functional.

I allow myself to get distracted for a minute. I stop and photograph a stand selling exotic fruits. The colors are amazing, but the owner walks up and asks me in broken english not to take the pictures. I smile, wondering if he is in the witness protection program or something. But I delete the images.

When I look up, Sheree is gone.

Not good.

About thirty seconds later I become aware of a hostile presence. She is standing by a phone booth glaring at me. We have agreed on at least seventy six previous occasions to keep one another in sight. So she stands there, glaring. So I take her picture. It's entitled "You Idiot." This is her serious face. Could you tell?

It is time to get back to the boat and wait for the bus to whisk us away from Brazil. We arrive in Miami at about midnight and plan to pick up the vehicle we have reserved. The plan is to drive through the night and wind up somewhere near Key West by morning.

I choose to think about Florida. I am not looking forward to the flight and I viscerally resist the notion that our trip is almost over.

But sitting here now with it all behind me, the trip has gotten only better in retrospect. I remember wonderful sunrises and sunsets. I remember people who became good friends as travelers often do, for that precise space in time. I remember the people of Brazil with whom we crossed paths for just a few minutes, from Vincent to the "comb lady." I remember the Amazon and bugs that moved through the jungle. I remember Eni and the hefty guy with stick legs who walked through the jungle with us. I will always remember ziplining...

I hope you have enjoyed taking this trip. I really wanted to share it with you...even though I have no idea who you are or where you live or what you're about. Thank you for reading and thank you for your comments and your emails.

I am now looking forward to April when Sheree and I will make a Transatlantic crossing for the first time. We're going to Paris and Ireland and a number of ports in between. We'll finish that trip in Southampton visiting with a photographer friend and his wife we know from flickr who has offered to show us his corner of the world.

We are relocating our office and wrestling with all the decisions that have to be made. I am painstakingly learning my new BlackBerry Curve and setting the groudwork for a much more efficient company.

Why?

So we can travel more.

Travel Blog #18: Into the Jungle...Starring YOU!

There’s something different about this sun, you realize, as the riverboat chugs toward the makeshift looking pier. It’s starker on your skin. Stronger. The heat resonates with a silky caressing power as it coats you.

Ahead, the tourists make their way down the narrow walkway between pier and shore. There are no handrails – just a walkway. To your right a mother and her three children sit by the water. They wave in a happily abstracted way and you wonder at how perfectly they are all four, a part of the jungle, an extension of the water.

“We are going to walk up the path ahead,” says your guide. He’s a little man called Eni, but he seems more at home here than anyone. You’ve had a lot of time to talk to him over the lazy two hour boat ride. He speaks seven languages, he lectures in the university of Manaus – and he is currently in his favorite part of the world: the Amazon jungle.

“The hotel we are going to isn’t like your hotels at home,” he says. His eyes twinkle as they speak. Honest. They twinkle. There’s no electricity. No phones. No television. Cooking is done over an open fire and only fire and candles give light at night. We’re coming back here later for supper. But first we go into the jungle.”

He has told you what to expect. Okay: he has given you an idea what to expect. You need to cover yourself with serious insect repellant. You need to put your pant legs inside your socks to prevent soldier ants from getting in, this requirement illustrated vividly by the telling of a story about another tourist who ignored the clearly stated requirement of LONG pants and WALKING shoes and got badly bitten.

All eyes turn to a balding fat man. His legs stick out of the legs of his shorts and they look like sticks to you. The legs seem impossibly thin – too thin to support the massive body above it. He is wearing sandals. He looks back at the group.

“No one told me,” he says, exchanging a worried glance with his son, who is similarly attired.
Poor bastards, you think. They are meat.

Eni offers them the choice of staying at the lodge and waiting for the jungle walk to return. He tells them that, should they choose to take the walk, they will need to stay close to him.
The man looks uncertain for a moment. Then he shakes his head and declares that he and his boy are going on the damn walk. He begs copious insect repellant from the other travelers and coats his skin and his son’s skin before they leave.

The walk through the jungle begins with no ceremony and as you step into the lush greenness, you realize that civilization has vanished. You can’t see even the rudimentary shelter of the huts. A few steps away from the compound – and you are in the jungle.

You can’t help but feel like an interloper. Strange sounds, sounds you cannot identify are all around you. The air is heavy with the scent of life and decay. You look down at the jungle floor and see why: it’s a slippery coating of fallen leaves and vines and rocks that look so very out of place.

Eni stops beneath a massive cone. It’s twice as large as he is. He strips off his shirt and tells you he is about to demonstrate how to call the ants.

Is he nuts? you wonder. He plans to CALL ants?

Rita, a trauma nurse from Melbourne Australia, gets in close with her camera. You’ve noticed that Rita, who laughs frequently and does not appear to have a shy bone in her body, likes to be at the center of all activity. She’s close – and you wonder uneasily if she has heard that Eni is going to call ants.

He stands directly under the large cone, an ant nest, and claps his hands. He spreads his arms wide and instantly, a trail of black flows from the nest, covering him. The guy is covered in ants. Holy crap!

Rita leaps to one side with a squeal. You notice the man and the boy in shorts take several steps backward.

Eni isn’t concerned. He brushes the insects off of himself and holds out his hands.

“This is the best insect repellant in the world. Smell.”

Dutifully the assembled jungle safari types sniff Eni’s hands. It’s a raw organic scent. Bitter – but not unpleasant.

This is seriously cool you think.

Tramping through the Amazon jungle requires all your attention. It’s so very humid that the sweat pours off your face, burning your eyes if you forget to wipe it away. The ground is slick. You notice that the sounds of the jungle don’t stop. If anything, they intensify. When you look up it is like you are in a building made of green growing things. You cannot see the sun, although you can feel its heat around you and as it rises from the wet earth the heat is intensified somehow.

You come eventually to a clearing.

Eni and another Amazon guide confer briefly in Portuguese and Eni tells you they are about to demonstrate how to start a fire in the wild. First the guide demonstrates how to create friction with a bow and stake. You’ve seen this before. Lots of times – and you suspect that if it ever comes down to you needing to start a fire this way, you are gonna die a lonely cold death for sure.

Next Eni tells you how to build a fire out of two batteries and steel wool – which is highly flammable. The Amazon guide holds the batteries end to end, just as you would load them into a flashlight. He touches the steel wool to both ends of the batteries and there is a tiny whoosh sound and fire erupts. Damn. That’s cool, you think. If you ever happen to be stranded in the jungle and you happen to have a flashlight and steel wool, you will be able to make fire.

You are about to move off when the Amazon guide says something the Eni (who you have started to think of as “Survivor Man”) – and he stops and turns back to the stump they have just used for the firemaking demonstrations. He lifts a block of wood and underneath is a centipede. It is curled, but it must be at least seven or eight inches long.

You look around and see horrified looks on the faces. You smile. This is probably a joke you decide. No way that thing is alive. No way they would have done all that stuff right on top of a venomous centipede. You take a picture anyway.

The guy in the shorts stands behind his kid.

Eni pokes the insect with a stick – and it moves. It moves fast. It scuttles down the stump and up another tree so quickly that it is almost a blur. You have to marvel, even as you hyperventilate just a little, at how those dozens of tiny legs propel the creature so quickly.
Rita is looking a little faint – but she’s laughing louder than anyone. Nerves you think.

You leave the clearing and go deeper into the jungle. Along the way Eni points out other insects, massive termite nests. He shows you cocoa and impossibly red flowers. Wind rustles through the trees and it’s cool touch is welcome on your face.

You decide you could walk in the jungle forever, as long as Survivor Man is with you.

He shows you how the natives rig traps for meat. He shows you an ordinary looking vine, pressing a thorn into it until a pasty white liquid comes out.

“Curare,” he says. “A few drops paralyze the animal for six hours.”

He lets you try a blowgun – which is a five-foot long tube with a dart in it. It seems a highly impractical weapon, unwieldy because of its length. You try to fire a dart at the target and miss entirely. Eni takes the blowgun and the dart is sticking directly into the mock bird – which serves as the bull’s eye.

You move through the jungle and eventually, too soon, you come out again back at the Amazon Village.

The man and his son are scratching habitually at their legs and arms. But they are smiling.
As you wait for the next phase of the trip – a canoe ride to an Amazon village – you notice two glorious parrots watching you and your wife. Parrots mate for life – and their unblinking twin gaze draws your attention.

Your wife crosses toward them. When she walks to the left, the parrots follow, with a strangely graceful waddle. When she walks to the right, they follow and you find yourself thinking of ducks. She laughs and you smile at her with your heart. This woman finds joy in everything.
She takes their picture. You take a picture of her taking a picture of the parrots.

Life is good. You’ve already taken a river ride, been for a “walkabout” in the Amazon jungle. Now you are bound for a real Amazon village – and then you get to eat a meal prepared by Amazonians over a fire.

Does it get any better than this?

Travel Blog #13: The Great Shirt War

Jill R. from Salem wrote in to ask if I was EVER going to get back to Photoshop stuff. Yup. Shouldn’t be too long now – because the trip journal is over half empty. Vacations are odd that way – particularly vacations that start off on the longish side.

We are at sea for two days now. Then we put into port at Santarem – which is the beginning of the actual Brazilian Amazon.

At sea days are lazy days. Sheree and I spend hours on the balcony cutting pictures, talking, playing endless games of Yahtzee on my iPod and watching the Amazon whisper by. We watch the shore with binoculars and through telephoto lenses and get excited every time we see a human on land.


It’s quiet out here on the balcony. You hear the soft whoosh of water as the ship moves. People on shore stop and watch. Many of them are in canoes and they wave their paddles in the air and wait for those on the ship to do what people on ships do best: waving back. I wonder what we look like to them in this relatively enormous boat, floating down the brown water of their Amazon.

Nights here are interesting. Adrian, the deck attendant, told us that at night he goes out with a huge broom to sweep a carpet of beetles off the deck. They are apparently drawn by the light. Sheree and I have been out several times at night in the hopes of seeing a living carpet of writhing black, but have only found a few beetles, usually on their backs kicking their stick legs in the air.

They run the ship with a minimum of light at night for that reason. They’ve also closed off the back portion of the Panorama deck – the outdoor seating behind the buffet – because too many bugs come into the ship when the doors open.

“I hate bugs,” one pudgy woman in way too-red lipstick tells me in the buffet line. She looks to me like I am a kindred spirit in bug-hating. “I just hate them. Don’t you?”

“Well. It’s the Amazon,” I explain. Sheree has made frequent observations about my inability to be social with most people. I agree with her, so I have decided to be social. “Bugs live here.”


“Well I hate ‘em,” Pudgy sniffs and pokes at the corn salad with the tip of the serving spoon. “Don’t much like corn either.”

What happens to otherwise mature people on cruise ships? I wonder. Do they forget what a blessing it is to be on the freaking Amazon River, experiencing things and people they would never have the opportunity to see otherwise? Can a trip like this actually revolve only around corn and bugs?

I smile at her and ladle a spoonful of corn onto my plate. Carbs or no carbs. I am making a point that appears to be lost on her. She sniffs and then waddles away.

The water of the Amazon is a tan brown. Not green. Not blue. Brown. And there’s a never-ending parade of foliage floating on it: tree branches, logs, leaves. The air has become more dense. Humid. Heavier.

We ramble around the ship. We are prepared to gamble about ten dollars a day on the penny slots in the casino – which takes about twelve seconds. I go to the Library room – a place with great leather wingback chairs, listen to my iPod, cut pictures and write. We’ve been to a wine tasting (wine is a great passion for both of us) and we’ve soaked in the hot tub.



Currently we are sitting in deck chairs in the hot sun. I am reading a photography magazine, pretending I don’t know Sheree is looking at me with That Look in her eye.

“You should take your shirt off,” she says finally.

I make the non-committal-but-never-effective sound, like I am simply too engrossed in my magazine to possibly pay attention to anything else.

“David?” she says. There’s a sharp tone now.

“Ummm?” I say.

“Your skin is white. You need to take your shirt off. Get a tan.”

The whole matter of whether I tan or not is of much greater interest to Sheree than it is to me. Besides, I am a big guy and I’d rather not take my shirt off. Really.

“Mmmmm,” I say.

There is a profound difference between ‘Ummmm?’ which finishes on an upward inflection and ‘Mmmm’ which has a downward inflection. The upward inflection says “Pray – please continue.” The downward one signals that I am done talking now. Sheree has chosen not to grasp this yet.

She sighs.

“No one cares, you know.”

“Mmmmm.”

“Take your damn shirt off. Tan,” she says.

I look up at her.

“I don’t want to take my shirt off.”

“Why not? Give me one reason. Just one good reason,” she says. Whenever she says this, I know that no reason will be good. All are destined to be blown out of the sky, poked full of holes and shot down in flames.

“One reason?” I ask, playing for time.

“One.”

“Because if I take my shirt off, Greenpeace could come along and try to put me back into the water, thinking my navigational sense has become confused and I have beached myself. Then the media will come out to cover the story. They’ll run headlines: “Pasty White Mystery Creature Found on Cruise Ship.” Nah. Better to keep my shirt on.”

“That’s not a reason,” says Sheree.

“Nope. But it’s funny.”

“Only to you,” she says.

“Well…that’s all that matters,” I respond, snapping the magazine open again to signal that I am now returning to my reading and she should leave me alone.

Time passes. Precious little time.

“So you’re not going to take your shirt off?”

“Nope.” I don’t look up.

“I think that’s just stupid,” she says. “You look so much better with a tan.”

“Mmmmm,” I respond.

Time passes. She sighs again.

“It’s part of a growing experience,” she says. “You’re the only one who cares.”

I sigh – look around me, and surrender wordlessly. After all: she’s right. I ease out of my shirt, burrowing back into my chair as quickly as possible, holding the magazine so it covers most of me. Okay…as much as possible.

“Was that so bad?” she asks.

“Mmmmm,” I respond.

Time passes.

“Look at that,” says Sheree.

Since I have already lost the shirt war, I have nothing more to lose and I look. She is pointing to an inlaid design on the deck.

“It looks like that thing da Vinci used,” I say. “You know? The one where the perfectly proportioned man stands there with his arms spread wide. You know?”

We saw a da Vinci exhibit in San Antonio last year. I am not only being conversational, I am telling my wife that I did, indeed, pay attention. While no woman has run screaming to her death in the vast ocean at the sight of me without a shirt, I am pretty sure it’s just a matter of time.

“You’re right,” says Sheree. “You should stand there.”

Blood turns to ice. “What?”

“Stand there. Spread your arms. I’ll take a picture of your shadow.”

“WHAT?” I ask. The worst ones are the ones you never see coming. I have this instant image of myself making a spectacle of myself in the middle of the crowded deck. It’s a hot day. Everyone’s out here. People will wonder what I am doing and they will look.

“You’re kidding, right?” I say.

“What’s the problem?” asks Sheree.

I am tongue-tied at the prospect of having to explain something so obvious. Finally I shrug and start to put my shirt on.

“No shirt,” says Sheree. “I don’t want lines of clothes in the picture.”

“What?”

“No clothes lines.”

“Want me to take my pants off too?” I ask. “Cause there is as good a chance of that happening as there is of me standing up in the middle of a crowded deck with no shirt doing an airplane impression.”

She stares at me. I stare back. I think there are sparks flying off in all directions just behind the blue of her eyes.

“Not gonna happen,” I say.

She continues to stare. I return to my magazine. She continues to stare. I have read the same line seventeen times. She stares. What exactly am I so hung up about? I ask myself. So what? She's doing a good thing for me. I am sitting directly in the middle of great steaming piles of personal growth here. I sigh. I think: so I stand on a deck with my arms spread for a minute. What’s the big deal?

Wordlessly I get up and promote my own personal growth. I stand with my arms spread.

“They have to be on the corners of the compass,” says Sheree. “Put them precisely on the corners. And your head in the middle. No! Over to the left.”

She’s talking loudly, which is what she does when she is excited. People are looking. People are studying. I’ve already told you that people will watch anything on cruise ships. Right now they are watching us with great interest. In fact it feels like every pair of eyes is fixed on me right now, a big guy steadfastly telling himself it’s no big deal.

“Take the picture,” I hiss – reaching the end of my personal growth tether for the day.

“Just a second,” she says. “I need to change my settings. Don’t put your arms down.”

Crap. I resist the urge to make sputtering airplane noises and I stand there. If I make stupid noises and actually draw attention to myself, people will think it’s my idea. My profound hope: if that happens, I will be laughing with them.

Seven years later, she has her picture.

And I still haven’t seen it.

We’ll be in Santarem tomorrow.

One other bit of information: We start our Malarone tonight, by the way. Malarone is a “holy crap” expensive pill designed to reduce our chances of getting malaria. It has a long list of side-effects that don’t sound pleasant. But apparently most people never feel a thing. This means, of course, that we are probably doomed.


Sheree and I don’t even take aspirin…that should be interesting. We've been drinking pitchers of lemon water to ensure we don't get dehydrated in this humidity...but not drugs yet.

Hope you remembered your Mararone. You don’t want to go home with a case of virtual malaria, do you? We start tonight, okay? You are supposed to take them on a full stomach. This, fortunately, is never a problem on a cruise ship.

But at least I get to put my shirt back on. For now.