Meeting of the Rivers

"Hi, I'm Rio Negro". "Hello Negro, I'm Rio Solimoes" Nice to meet you!


After breakfast next morning, adequately caffeinated for the day, we headed out to the region of Amazonas. The journey took us over 4 hours one way (which we were quite unhappy about)!

Some of us caught up on our sleep as we were still a bit jet-lagged, while some of us captured photographs. Our rather annoyingly slow boat took us via Manaus, over the river Negro. On the way, we saw beautiful colored blocks of house, neatly stacked on top of each other. Also, a spectacular view was the dense dark clouds approaching (pretty scary at first), and within minutes the horizon is dark. Something I had never seen before...

We finally reach mid-way where the two rivers meet. The darker river is Rio Negro, and the lighter one is Rio Solimoes (Amazon River). Notice the two rivers meeting, but never really mixing? This is apparently due to the differences in pH, temperature, density and velocity). Amazing, isn't it?


After taking quick snapshots of each other with the meeting of rivers in the backdrop, we reached our destination. 


We reached a small village where we had lunch provided by the lodge. Lunch was good, we met some local kids that had sloths with them. You could touch them for a small price. We cuddled a bit with these funny little animals and got on our way.


To our disappointment, we were told that yet another 4 hour return journey to the lodge awaits us. Our first question was: can't we get into a faster boat? Answer: No. So we head back on the same slow boat, this time all of us slept. 


Tip: If you buy a pre-planned package for Amazon, make sure you know before-hand how your time is going to be spent. If I had to do this all over again, I would not allocate more than 2 days to visit Amazon. You can cover the jungle hike (half day) cayman spotting (night), fishing(evening) and meeting of the rivers(another half a day) without rushing. On the other hand, if you are looking for a lazy, relaxing tour, this is just for you!


Tired, more of the journey, than from the journey, we retired to our hammocks, with our drinks, got eaten up alive by mosquitoes, the remaining parts of us returned to have our dinners and played some Uno in our rooms, until 2 am.