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The Amazon
Manaus, founded in 1669, is characterized by cobblestone streets
lined with fruit trees and the famous Amazon Theatre opera
house. It’s poised near the equator along the “Meeting of the
Waters,” where the dark Rio Negro and the sandy Rio Solimões
(a name often given to this stretch of the Amazon) come
together. The two rivers run side by side for four miles before
finally mixing together to form one of Brazil’s most majestic
sights, nearly 1,000 miles upstream of the Atlantic Ocean.
Once acclaimed as the rubber capital of the world and with
wealth rivaling that of Paris, Manaus is a city with a dark past.
Indigenous tribes were subject to enslavement and all manner
of European brutality in a continuing effort to keep the latex
flowing. Eventually, malaria and yellow fever crippled the
population, making little distinction between rich and poor.
Manaus’ rubber boom died in 1913, and 140 of the town’s finest
mansions were sold at auction amid a mass exodus. Today, the
opera house, with its frescoes and domed, mosaic roof, stands
in testament to the suffering and the naiveté of the colonialists’
attempts to marshal the 19th-century Amazon — where a
mosquito or a glass of water could kill you — into an expression
of Europe.
Today Manaus is a foreign trade zone for electronics, oil
refining, lumber and fishing. As the Amazon River snakes
4,000 miles from its source in Peru to the Atlantic Ocean, it
provides between 30,000 and 50,000 tons of freshwater fish
for market, many of which arrive without names, with tiger-
striped tails or eyes that glitter like gold. These once-abundant
fish have become more difficult to find as fleets continue to
expand and the resource is strained even further. Recent laws
such as the banning of purse seining on the lower Amazon
are beginning to make a difference in areas where fishing
regulations are few. Many of the large fish with the choicest
meat — silvery pirarucu, tambaqui and ruby-eyed tucunare
— are now too expensive for the average consumer and have
been replaced on menus with various species of catfish. Some
of the region’s catfish are so large they could swallow a person
whole. Others are plated in black armor, sport long whiskers
like Chinese emperors or carry poison-tipped spines.
n the last two years taxonomists in Brazil
named more species of fish than in any
other country, claims Luiz Rocha, curator
of ichthyology at the California Academy of
Sciences in San Francisco. “If you want to
name a new fish in the Amazon,” he said, “it
seems all you need is a net.” Scientists estimate
that more than 2,500 species of fish can be found in
the Amazon and its tributaries — more than in any other river
in the world.
We arrived at our hotel-on-stilts along Rio Ariau two hours
from Manaus. The hotel was a random array of buildings
perched 90 feet above the river, which were connected by a
spider network of walkways that was now underwater, making
our bungalow accessible by boat alone. In 2012 flooding in the
Amazon was higher than ever recorded. It was supposed to be
the dry season, and we were floating in the treetops.
Pink River Dolphins
Our guide made arrangements at a location where pink river
dolphins, known locally as boto, had recently been sighted.
Pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) can be found throughout
the rivers of the Amazon basin, which in addition to Brazil
includes parts of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana
and Venezuela. The tea-stained waters of the flooded forests
provide them a near-boundless range for foraging during the
wet season. They feed on more than 50 species of fish as well
as turtles and crabs. Their small, beady and underdeveloped
eyes offer little visibility in the dark water, so these animals
evolved highly refined sonar capabilities for navigation and
hunting, becoming masters of their murky environs.
With their bulbous, melonlike foreheads and long,
tubular mouths, pink river dolphins are distinctly unlike
other dolphins. They have no prominent dorsal fin but large
winglike flippers. Oddly, botos can appear almost humanlike.
Local inhabitants continue to believe the dolphins are
consummate shape-shifters capable of morphing into
handsome men wearing white clothing and hats who have
the seductive power to entice young women to fall in love
with them. Unexpected pregnancies in young women are
often blamed on the botos. Their bodies are commonly
raked with scars inflicted by the sharp teeth of other botos.
They can weigh more than 200 pounds and be up to eight
feet long.
Not all pink dolphins are pink. The young start out gray
and become pinker as they mature, and botos often flush
pink when they become excited. Scientists admit that little
more is understood today about their behavior than was
a hundred years ago. They do not migrate, but little is
known about where they go during the dry season, when
the breeding season occurs or whether there is one. Their
anatomy is understood through autopsies, but most of their
life cycle remains a mystery.
Loaded down with fish, we crisscrossed canals through
treetops and across what looked like an ocean disguised as a
river to spend the next four days above the watery world of
Encante seeking favor with the boto. With a robust bom dia
(Portuguese for “good morning”) we arrived at a makeshift
dock owned by a local fisherman whose wife made fried fish
that would have been the envy of celebrity chefs. It was clear
from the start that this visit would be a special one.
Each day the infectious familiarity of friendship spread
to all of us in the water. On day three, in a symphony of
clicks, bubble bursts and affectionate nudges, I was deemed
a special guest by four botos who chased and fought with
I