The following is a column from BarrieToday community advisory board member Peter Bursztyn about his trip south of the equator. This is Part 8 in a series. To read the others, click on the following: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.
Suddenly (over roughly five metres), the clear, blue water on which we were sailing turned ‘café au lait.’ We had reached the outflow of the Amazon River. However, we would sail 10 hours before we would be in the river itself.
The first hint of the Amazon’s existence (to Europeans) came from Amerigo Vespucci, who found himself sailing in cloudy, beige water. A bucket dipped into the sea revealed it was fresh water. Vespucci knew there would be a large river somewhere, but he was too far from land to see it.
The Amazon River is by far the world’s largest by water flow. This exceeds the flows of the Congo, Ganges, Orinoco, Yangtse, Mississippi, and St. Lawrence rivers combined. Fresh water is lighter than sea water, so it floats on top of it. Amazon water forms a watery wedge, eventually vanishing as it mixes with the ocean water — more than 150 kilometres out into the Atlantic.
The Amazon River’s length is about 6,800 km. In the dry season, the Amazon ranges from three to 10 km wide; in the rainy season, its greatest width grows to 50 km. The river depth varies from 20 to 100 metres — deep enough to accommodate ocean-going ships to Manaus (1,500 km upriver) and smaller vessels of 5.5 metres draft (Quest’s draft is seven metres) to Iquitos, Peru, 3,600 km inland.
The Amazon’s current varies with the season and the river’s width and depth. The rainy season has just started, so the river is relatively low and slow. When I asked, it was flowing at four knots — 7.5 km/h. Within two to three months, the river will become wider and deeper and will flow faster.
Our ship stopped at Macapá, precisely on the equator, where we picked up two river pilots, who stayed with us to Manaus. (We had another pair of pilots for our return trip.) The Amazon River carries a great deal of silt. Deposited randomly, this silt creates shallows and sandbars. Its current also excavates new channels. The local pilots track these changes and guide ships safely, ensuring they do not run aground.
Our first stop was Santarem, roughly halfway to Manaus. We took a rickety shuttle bus to the town centre and walked about for an hour. This was about as much as we northerners could tolerate of 32-degree-Celsius heat and high humidity. In fact, the temperature was around 4 C warmer than Rio de Janeiro. Santarem was more of what I had expected to see in Brazil — small shops lining the main streets mixed with two- to three-storey housing. There were mango trees everywhere. The mango tree creates good shade as well as delicious fruit.
Santarem has twice the population of Barrie. It is an eco-tourism centre through the surrounding rainforest, but it was far too hot for us to even think about this. Our wildlife spotting was limited to two large iguanas and many colourful moths.
We were treated to a rare spectacle as we left. Just before sunset, the western sky cleared, creating a brilliant double rainbow extending 180 degrees, with both ends touching the river.
Another day upriver got us to Manaus. This is a surprisingly large city of 2.2 million. Founded in 1669, Manaus became a city in 1848. The rubber boom made Manaus wealthy, spurring the construction of an opera house, a splendid customs house (now a museum) and mansions for the ‘rubber barons.’
Sadly, this sumptuousness was built by workers who were virtually slaves. An enterprising Englishman smuggled thousands of Hevea brasiliensis (rubber tree) seeds out of the country. Nurtured at Kew, a huge botanical garden in London, seedlings were planted in British colonies like Malaysia and India, breaking Brazil’s latex monopoly. Within a few years, the rubber (robber?) barons were bankrupt.
The opulent Teatro Amazonas was completed in 1896. It has stairs of Italian marble, enamelled dome tiles from Alsace (Brazilian flag pattern), steel from Glasgow, chandeliers of French brass and Italian glass. The beautiful patterned parquet floors are made of costly local hardwoods. Interior design was in Louis XV style. Just a decade after electric lighting became available, Teatro Amazonas had it.
There is even a LEGO model of the opera house on display, consisting of 30,000 LEGO bricks. Built in 1973 at the LEGO factory in Denmark, it was eventually donated to the Teatro Amazonas.
In the evening, we were treated to a well-executed jazz concert in this beautiful, 128-year-old hall.
Today, Manaus is a mixture of modern buildings, many bearing huge, colourful murals, plus older, two-storey dwellings and shops interspersed by elegantly tiled public squares. The rubber barons’ palatial homes have been repurposed as museums and government offices.
A highlight of our visit to Manaus was ‘swimming’ with the dolphins. Actually, we were in chest-deep water and dolphins swam around us, allowing us to touch them if we wished. Even more surreal, these dolphins are pink. Travelling to the dolphins, our boat passed under the impressive Rio Negro bridge. This 3.6 km bridge (and 400-metre suspension span) is the sole crossing of a major Amazon basin river. It leads to a road just 60 to 70 km long, serving a tiny population — hardly worth its reported cost of US$600 million. But the bridge is undoubtedly elegant.
Manaus’ electricity comes from the nearby Balbina Dam. The dam flooded 2,360 (or 2,900) square km of rainforest — twice the size of Lake Simcoe. The planners expected a lake full of fish, but that didn’t happen. Impossible to harvest, the forest ‘drowned,’ and rotting vegetation removed oxygen from the water, leaving the lake devoid of life and likely to remain so until decomposition is complete.
The oxygen-poor water also kills river fish many kilometres downstream of the dam. The decomposition of organics creates methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as well as carbon dioxide.
Balbina’s hydroelectricity contributes 10 times more to global warming than would a coal-fired power plant of similar output. Balbina is inefficient, generating just 47 kilowatts of electricity for each square kilometre of flooded land.
There are few roads in the Amazon basin. People travel by riverboat. There are multi-storey boats that are like buses. There are single-storey boats, some whose walls have sturdy hooks, allowing passengers to hang hammocks in which they can sleep on longer trips.
There are also speedboats, which get you there faster but cost more. Surprisingly, there are few outboard motors — or not as we know them.
Private boats use small, air-cooled motors (like lawn-mower engines) with a propeller at the end of a long shaft. These motors are mounted on the transom via a swivel, allowing the driver to execute turns and to lift the propeller out of the water. With no gears or cooling water pump (often also lacking a muffler), these are inexpensive, and only slightly clumsier than a conventional outboard.
Many tributary rivers feed the Amazon, greatly enhancing the utility of water transport. Surprisingly, some of these have dark, silt-free water. The largest, the Rio Negro, meets the Amazon at Manaus. Its water is brownish with tannins but clear.
My overall impression of the Amazon was one of wonder. Looking at both banks, the river appeared to be the width of Kempenfelt Bay, but it was more than twice as broad. I had used riverbank trees as my size standard.
However, on seeing a house or riverboat near shore, it was obvious rainforest trees are two to three times as tall as Barrie trees, dramatically changing the measurement scale. The Amazon is huge.
