12 - November 9, 2016

Today we sailed up the incredibly wide Amazon against a swift current, arriving in Santarém at noon, our first glance at merging rivers of two colors: the warmer, light brown Amazon with the colder, blue-green of the Tapajos--where they flow side-by-side without merging for some distance. Santarém is a sprawling city whose main transportation method is ferries--residents would rather spend three days on the water to Manaus, sleeping in hammocks on open decks, than take an hour-long flight. The tourism folks kindly provided a portable dock so the small boats we cruised to Lake Maico could pull right up to the ship for boarding.

Ferries and skyline of Santarém

Note the hammocks hanging on both decks.

Our guide (a Santarém native) aboard our small boat was applying for a PhD program in Biological Science and was teaching English while waiting to qualify for one of five openings. The boat cruise took us down a tributary where we could see wildlife, fish for piraña, and observe how the native families live.

Family fishing for dinner

Cap's new home along the river

 The houses are built on stilts because the water level varies by six meters between the 'dry' and rainy seasons--it will complete cover these branches in a few months.

We fished for piraña: baiting the hooks, fishing, the catch. (For some of us, it was feeding, not fishing; all fish were released unharmed back into the water.