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.

Bubba's Amazon Adventure 2

So the second day in Brazil we went to a city named Maraba, it was about 30 miles from a mine called Serra Palata which translated means naked mountain. Actually, when I said this to a guy who spoke Portuguese he had no idea what the words Serra Palata meant so maybe this is made up. Anyway, I was told it was named this because the mountains have no trees on them, after being there I came to the conclusion that no trees means something different in the Amazon than it does in Utah.

We ate at a restaurant on a boat on the river. We ordered at about 7 pm and the food was delivered at about 9:30. In my 10 days in Brazil I came to realize that this was the norm, you sit down and talk for hours at a time every night, so food delivered 2 ½ hours after you order is no big deal. I will say that every night was perfect temperature and beautiful so maybe that is why.
As soon as the sun went down the bats came out. Not a bat here or a bat there but thousands and tens of thousands of bats. They were all following the same path, over the roof of a house towards the river. I was standing on the river’s edge but on a boardwalk about 20 feet above the water. The bats were coming straight at me and then turning at the last second to miss me on both sides. As soon as the bats made it over the railing above the river they dropped straight down and skimmed the water. It truly was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

The next day we go to Serra Palata, the road there was amazing. This was a highway but every half mile or so you had to stop and dodge the potholes big enough to swallow the truck. At one bridge we crossed they put a stop sign in a hole that if you ran over would let your truck fall in the river I am not exaggerating there was no asphalt or anything, just a huge hole that went down to a big river. So we get on the dirt road and instead of being jammed into the backseat of the truck with three other guys I decided to ride in the back. As we pulled into the village I noticed that there were no buildings that would meet code or be considered livable in the US. Interestingly enough, almost all the “houses” have satellite dishes and they all point almost straight up because of the proximity to the equator sorry, just an interesting little detail that really has nothing to do with the story.

As we drove into this extremely poor village, the men started running out and yelling something. I found out they were saying, “It begins”. They were thinking now that the Americans were here we would start the mine back up and give them a job and life would be fine. So we ate lunch at the only house with a cement floor and the nice women fed us more food than they probably eat in a week. I again having more guts than brains told Newton (our Brazilian guide) that I would eat anything a Brazilian would eat. So my plate got loaded up with quail eggs, armadillo, deer (look like big dogs) but nothing all that crazy. I was worried that it may turn out like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with monkey brains and spiders and eyeballs but I did give them enough time to prepare those things so I got off easy.
The woman cooking and serving us lunch kept just piling on the food. It was hot and humid and we had been hiking and checking out the mine and property and I wasn’t in the mood for a huge lunch. I started saying I’m full, no more, but it was in English so it wasn’t working. My next thought was to use the international sign language of the ok symbol. I didn’t just do it with one hand, I did it with both while smiling and looking her in the eyes. I later learned that the ok symbol is not “international”, in Brazil it is similar to flipping the bird, only worse. The circle your fingers form represents the place food exits your body. So here I was giving this nice old lady that cooked and served me an amazing lunch a double flip off while smiling at her. The funny part was I can remember her taking a double take at my double flip off but being nice and acting like she did not notice it.

(Upper left) exploring the property (Upper right) an old miner working the land (lower Left) the gold we watched him pan

Bubba's Amazon Adventure

The following will be my stories of the Amazon adventure. What was I doing in the Amazon you ask, the quick and easy answer is looking for gold, but I looked at it like Reepicheep in the Chronicles of Narnia, it was an adventure that needed to be taken. If you don’t get my reference, read the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis it is an excellent book for kids and I could even understand it.
My adventure starts with the plane trip to Brazil, we flew into Belem, which is a city on the Amazon River in the state of Para in Northern Brazil. Now if you don’t count Mexico, Canada or a quick cruise in the Caribbean I have never traveled outside the country. Newton, our Brazilian contact and translator convinced me to take an additional bag and bring him a cell phone, modem, and computer monitor. He called me a mule but I have no idea what he meant by that. So the plane lands in Belem at 4 AM and I have to go through customs. Everyone else in my group filled out the form and walked right through, but they grabbed my bag and took EVERYTHING out. I think the guy spoke English but was not about to let me off the hook by talking to me IN English. An hour and two latex gloves later I was through customs and in Brazil! I promised myself I would get Newton back before the trip was over and you will have to read a future blog to see how I did it, let me just say it is good.
Stay tuned the next couple of days to hear about my international relations blunders, 8 hour boat ride down the Amazon, 200 mile trip into the depths of the jungle, and things I didn’t know about creatures that live in the jungle and Amazon River.