- The amount of water that flows out of the Amazon into the Atlantic Ocean in one day is enough to supply New York City for 10 years!
- At its mouth, the Amazon River is 200 miles wide!
- The flow of the Amazon pushes fresh water more than 30 miles into the Atlantic.
- The Atlantic Ocean starts looking muddy more than 90 miles from the coastline due to the sediment forced out by the Amazon.
We entered the Amazon yesterday and were amazed at just how thick the rain forest is, and how brown the river is.
As we expected, it is very humid. The rainy season has just started and temperatures are in the high 80's. As our tour guide said today, "We have 2 seasons, hot and hotter." Luckily for us, it's merely hot while we're here. Now Bill will tell you all about our interesting day today . . .
We arrived in Santarem today (12/16) our first day on dry land in over 6 days. We woke up this morning to pouring rain. Go figure, we are in the largest rain forest in the world! I bet if Disney was running this the rain would stop when we went out to the tour busses. The tour we signed up for took us to a manioc farm. The manioc is the plant that is used to make tapioca. The photo below shows the manioc tree on the left with the root attached and the guy on the right is peeling the root. The root is used to make tapioca.
The family at the farm had all kinds of fruit and nuts out for us to sample. These fruits and nuts are all grown on the farm. I am sampling a star fruit in the next photo.
We also sampled pineapples, bananas, watermelon, and other fruits that we have never heard of or tasted before. One thing we learned was that the brazil nut grows in a large pod that is about the size of a softball. That is cut open and inside the pod are 18-20 brazil nuts. A brazil nut tree can produce 500 kilograms of nuts a year. (Sometimes you feel like a nut . . .)
The next photo looks like a plate of red and yellow peppers. They are actually cashew fruit and nuts. Now catch this, the Brazilians eat the cashew fruit and dispose of the nut. I found out how they dispose of the nuts. They sell them to suckers like us from the cruise ships for a dollar a bag! We did sample the cashew fruit and the cashew nuts. The fruit was good but the nuts were better.
Oh I forgot to mention that they also had rubber trees on the farm and they showed us how they cut the bark on the rubber trees to collect the latex into a bucket. They had samples of some of the toys and balls that they make out of the latex. They also make prophylactics from the latex (didn't have any samples of them.)
While we were at the farm all the little kids would come up to you showing various animals they had. One little guy had a turtle, another had a small monkey about the size of a chipmunk, all kinds of colorful birds and the best of all was this sloth in the next photo. It was really interesting watching the sloth. They move really slow, sort of like me on the tennis court.
Our last photo was taken on the way back to our ship. This boat is a commuter boat that runs up and down the Amazon River and its tributaries. This one was going from Santarem to Manaus, which is over 500 miles on the river. When you get on you hang up your hammock for the journey which can take days to weeks. The hammock is your seat and your bed for the entire trip. Since space is first come first serve, passengers board the boat up to five hours early to get a good spot to hang their hammock for the trip. Sounds a lot like flying in the U.S.! You get there five hours before the flight so you can make it through security and still have to redress before your flight leaves. By the way, the rain did stop in the afternoon and the humidity went up 500%!
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