Bubba's Amazon Adventure part III

Now I am to the part of the trip that I will never forget. We got on a boat in Santarem and took an 8 hour boat ride up the Amazon River to a town called Itatuba. As you can see, the boat was a little suspect. It did have lifejackets for everyone which gave me comfort until I thought about the possibility of having to use the lifejackets! We got on the boat at about 4 in the afternoon and pulled into our destination at a little after midnight. During the day it was kind of cool but really you could only see the water and occasionally we got close to one shore and got a look at the jungle but after the sun went down I took out my flashlight and just scanned the shoreline. Eyes were reflecting back at me from the trees, ground, and water and I tried to guess which animals were looking at me. Of course I thought they were all monkeys, jaguars, and crocodiles, but in reality they were probably just normal animals like a bird of paradise, bush baby, or anaconda.

The next morning we went on a single prop Cessna 200 miles into the heart of the jungle to look at a gold mine. Being the heaviest, I was put in the front seat with the pilot, this gave me the opportunity to see hundreds of miles in every direction. First the propaganda you have heard about the rain forest disapearing is as true as the one about the moon being an alien spaceship. I could see for hundreds of miles in every direction and there was nothing but jungle. The whole trip I was thinking of survivor man, I brought my trusty multitool pocketknife and I was devising my plan for which direction I would head when the plane went down. We landed on a dirt runway that I guessed could not have been more than 100 yards and was full of potholes. It was however uphill which I am sure helped us slow down before going into the jungle.


The camp at the mine was incredible, here we were hundreds of miles from civilization, if my wife was there she would say thousands of miles from a Costco, and they had these 500 sq foot tents with wood framing that had computers, the internet, and a kitchen that was more functional than the one in my house. The construction of these would impress the best general contractors America has to offer. They grabbed a chainsaw and if they needed a 6x6 board 10 feet long they cut it and it looked like it was produced in a factory and delivered.


As we walked around looking at the mine site, we had to watch our step as the local Brazilian miners have been working this spot for years. What they would do is dig a hole about 3 foot by 3 foot that would go down sometimes 300 feet. There was a log with a rope coiled around it to lower the miners down and pull up the ore. Once the ore was brought up, they would pan it and once again showed us the gold they found, amazing!


After watching fish in a pond try to eat birds flying close to the water I was upset I didn’t bring a fishing rod but we had to go as the pilot was not certified to fly at night. I thought about it and was glad I was not told this until after I was already there so I couldn’t chicken out. We were asked to lean forward on takeoff as the runway was downhill with a pond and steep hill on the other side of the pond that we cleared by about 4 inches. I want to go back and spend a couple days camping, fishing and exploring but the one day I did have was unforgettable.