Swimming with botos in Novo Airão

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:18:45 +0100

In 2005 I was doing an internship at the German Development Cooperation within the Rainforest Conservation Project ProManejo of PPG7. Being in the Amazon Basin for an extended period allowed me to explore different places.

One weekend I decided to go to Novo Airão a small village northeast of Manaus, Amazonia, Brazil. I went on Saturday very early in the morning by bus from Manaus. The whole journey was about 5 hours. A major part involved crossing the Amazon river by ferry. Arriving at around midday allowed me to spend the whole afternoon on a boat trip with a local guide exploring parts of the Rio Negro river arms. As you can see from the photos I took, since the Rio Negro - the Black River - is as dark as Coca Cola it shows astonishing reflections on the water surface.

I was lucky that one of the employees of the ProManejo project was originally from Novo Airão. Not only that, but her parents also had a pousada - a small hostel - there. Hence, I already had a place to stay and a local contact who recommended me my local guide. It was a very enjoyable boat trip with several land excursions.

The next morning I decided to explore the village and go swimming at the local beach. According to my colleague it was totally save: She lived there her whole childhood and only once in more than 15 years it happened that a small Piranha bit her in her ankle.

Well, believing in the local safety standards, I went for a swim in this dark water where one can only see to a depth of 30 cm. Suddenly something very strong touched me on my legs. The fact that it was too strong for a Piranha wasn’t really calming me down and I move quickly towards the beach until I was only standing up my legs in the water. At this point suddenly two pink mouth came out of the water and I identified the thing which was touching me as two botos - sweet water dolphins which can only be found in the Amazon. They were circling around me for some bit and I was touching both of them until they went of in the darkness of the water. What I later found out, was that local people used to give fish to the botos and therefore they often frequent the local beach hoping to get some more fishes.

After this interesting experience, I spend the rest of the day in Novo Airão leaving by ship at midnight traveling the whole night long. This is also a very nice experience: You go up to the second floor of a nicely coloured boat connecting your hammock from one side to the other of the boat and enjoy the fresh breeze while falling asleep. Waking up at six the next morning I was already back in Manaus. One more Açaí for breakfast and I was back in the office right on time.

Now, almost six years later, I was walking through the shopping street in Oxford and bought BBC’s Blue Planet. Watching through the episodes at home I came across one part about the Amazon and funnily enough they were filming the botos in exactly the same village. Searching through google I then also found a short article of National Geographic Brazil from which I took the above picture.

Now that I am a proud owner of an underwater camera equipment I am looking forward to go back one day and shoot my proper pictures of the lovely botos.

From the Brazilian Amazon to Machu Picchu

Fri, 13 May 2011 17:21:11 +0100

When you open a Lonely Planet you will most likely find several possibilities of getting to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. The one I want to describe here is a less common one and at least when I did this trip back in 2005 I couldn’t find any reference on how to do it.

My journey started from Rio Branco in the Brazilian Amazon where I happened to do a part of an internship at the German Development Cooperation within the Rainforest Conservation Project ProManejo of PPG7 back in 2005.

There was a bank holiday weekend and I quickly decided to take the opportunity to get to know the Inca ruins of Cuzco and Machu Picchu.

From Rio Branco one has to take a group taxi (taxí de locação) to Brasiléia and then another one from there to Assis Brasil. The total journey should be around 5 hours including changing the car and finding new passengers and should cost around R$ 40. Then in Assis Brasil you can change the border to Peru by foot crossing a small river. On the other side you can then take another group taxi to Puerto Maldonado which was, if I remember correctly, 35 Soles and took around another 5 hours.

I then stayed the night in Puerto Maldonado, departing early on the next morning on a short flight from Puerto Maldonado to Cuzco which was around US$ 80. The next three days I enjoyed Cuzco and Machu Pichu where I went by train (there was a cheap train where most passengers were native Spanish speaking tourists and a more expensive one).
On my way back I left Cuzco on a flight to Puerto Maldonado at around 10 am and managed to get back to Rio Branco at 10 pm in the evening.

Exploring the world

Swimming with botos in Novo Airão

From the Brazilian Amazon to Machu Picchu