Gym's Ramblings: Winter 2022 - The Amazon Expedition: Manaus and the Pink Dolphins

Manaus from the anchored Insignia on the evening of
November 27, 2022

Manaus and the Pink Dolphins

On the morning of the November 27th, the Insignia was just a couple of miles from the furthest western point it would reach. The ship had turned into the Rio Negro river and was moving upstream from where it flowed into the Amazon. These two rivers couldn’t be any more different. Where the rivers meet, the dark coca-cola waters of the Rio Negro collide against the brownish, silt laden Amazon. Their relative water temperatures, the pH levels and the relative densities are completely dissimilar. There is a clear line in the water where they come together and they have trouble mixing for many miles downstream. The ship anchored in the Rio Negro and would stay there off Manaus for 36 hours.

Manaus and its metro area, have 2.5 million inhabitants today and is the largest city in the Amazon basin. It is an economic free zone and an important industrial centre which produces chemical products, soaps, electronics, ships, motorcycles, liquor, jute, rosewood oil and rubber. Rubber, is what made Manaus famous. In the late 1800s many Europeans and rich American industrialists were drawn to the city during the Rubber Boom. The great wealth brought with the rubber industry was responsible for making Manaus the first electrified city in South America and a sophisticated cultural hub.

Gym and his lovely boss were on a tender later that morning to begin to explore the city. They jumped into a tour bus and started by driving up the hill from the docks, to the Teatro Amazonas, also known as the Manaus Opera House. This building is quite stunning both inside and out, built of materials brought from half a dozen European countries in ships that would return home laden with rubber. Today, it is home to a the Manaus Philharmonic. It sits on St. Sabastian Square that was being decorated for Christmas, when Gym was there.

Next, our travellers visited a natural history museum that was surrounded by one square block of jungle habitat, right in the middle of the city. MUSA is kind of an indoor-outdoor museum of the Amazon. Smaller museum buildings are surrounded by rain forest that is somewhat thick. Up in the canopy there are monkeys and birds which roam freely. Sidewalks connect the museum buildings and ponds containing various aquatic fish, reptiles and mammals are spread throughout the park. They need to upgrade the enclosures for the Amazonian River Otters and the Manatees, and fix a few sidewalks, but other than those complaints, it was a pretty cool place.

The tour continued with a visit to the CIGS Zoo. It is a small zoo run by the Jungle Warfare School of the Brazilian Army. The special operations jungle troops bring injured animals to rehabilitate them there. The monkey exhibits are great and so is the Jaguar/Panther enclosure. The animals are well cared for and the habitats are well designed.

Manaus itself is a little dilapidated. Some of the older districts looked like war zones. To be fair, Gym did not check out the high rent districts on Rio Negro's sand beaches. These high-end suburbs boast expensive condos, wide streets and nice restaurants. All-in-all, it is a vibrant city with an abundance of pretty interesting highlights. Let’s face it, it is kind of isolated, being in the middle of the Amazon Basin. That evening our travellers returned to the ship which would remain anchored in the Rio Negro overnight.

In the morning, Gym and Mrs. Gym went looking for pink dolphins! They boarded a long and narrow speed boat for a 60-kilometre trip up the Rio Negro. It was an odd sort of craft that was kind of like a floating tour bus with a large and powerful engine strapped to the aft. It made the 60 kilometre trip in 90 minutes.

The guys who set up the Pink Dolphin experience worked hard to get to where they are today. They built a safe floating platform at the end of a bay, off the main river channel. Then they ‘recruited’ some dolphins to come and be a part of their experience. This probably took some time getting friendly with a clan of these amazing animals and training them to come in close to a bunch of strangers every day to get paid in free lunch. The visitors, descended down into the black river on a platform that left them in water up to the chest. Even before the feeding started, the dolphins were there, checking out the 'new people', sometimes even probing with their long snouts. Then the treats came out and the attendants worked with each guest to bring a dolphin up out of the water, so that the guest could administer a belly rub or two. The guide and all those involved made it a fantastic experience.

That afternoon after the ‘rocket boat’ transferred us back to the ship, the guests enjoyed a late lunch as the captain prepared the ship to pull up anchor. This was the turnaround point. They were going to head back to the Atlantic. The ship was going to retrace the 1600 kilometre journey down the Amazon.