Oi! You Caught a Piranha!
en route to Lake Maica... note the hammock on the porch
December 29, 2019, Santarém, Brazil — ‘Oi!’ is not pronounced like ‘oi veh.’ It’s a shorter, brighter diphthong that means ‘Hey!’ or Hi!’ or a number of other pleasant interjections.
We were docked at Santarém, a city of 300,000. ‘Discovered’ — and sacked — by Portuguese explorer Francisco Orellana in 1542, it was settled by
Portuguese colonists in 1661. Its growth was based on the rubber boom. The view from my veranda —
— though we were all encouraged to stay off our verandas and keep our sliding doors closed at all times because of the resident insect population. So far, I’ve seen one moth (they sprayed the whole ship exterior with repellent) and have had one bird repeatedly fly against my closed glass door — a scissor-tailed flycatcher that looked like an Amazonian version of this....
Other than the view from the ship, I didn’t see much of the city. I went fishing instead... for piranha... on a boat like this one. See why I said earlier you’d be reminded of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi?
I know: the photo below totally ignores the photographic ‘rule of thirds,’ but I wanted to convey the scope of the river in relation to the shore. We were headed up that tributary, where the other boat is, towards Lake Maica.
Along the shore.. There are no roads. All travel is on the water.
Other vessels included this ‘cow boat’...
A group of boys doing whatever it is boys do when they’re ‘messing around in boats’ on the river...
Four men in a boat...
But I’d come on this expedition in search of the elusive piranha. At least, it eluded me. This is my tackle... fishing line wrapped around a gizmo and baited with what we were told was Kobe beef. Honestly, would you feed Kobe beef to a fish? Because that’s all I did. I fed the fishes. Each time I felt a tiny tug, I yanked and pulled up the line — and saw that there was less bait than there had been. Happened three times and I gave up. My father was a life-long fly fisherman; he did not pass down that gene. Of course he’d never fished for piranha with a hand line.
But piranha were caught. This is a baby... with razor-sharp baby teeth.
Then catfish started to take the bait...
Having turned in my tackle, I turned to studying Life on the Amazon. And it is a hard life.
Most people are fishermen who motor down to Santarém to sell their fish, or to sell medicinal plants and herbal concoctions. The woman in the door (below) waved at us... the other did not.
I wish the photo below was larger: This is a relatively prosperous looking farm, with several buildings and at least two very large pigs. While we were tied up alongside it, fishing, I saw two horsemen ride in from the right, herding a large number of cows — which might eventually end up on the aforementioned cow boat. Now you see why I told you this reminded me of The Yearling: it looks like Jody’s father’s backwoods farm in the Florida swamp.
As we motored back down the tributary, the captain slowed the boat and turned us towards the bank. One of the guides or crew had yelled, ‘Oi! Sloths!’ I’d be lying if I told you that this is what I saw...
... what I saw was this....
We also spotted many Amazonian Kingfishers... ours had completely orange chests, not like this specimen from the web...
After fishing and wildlife spotting, we motored back down the tributary until we reached the wide spot in the road where the famous ‘wedding of the waters’ occurs — where the brown Amazon and the ‘crystalline’ blue Rio Tapajós meet but don’t mix, due to their differing mineral content.
Our two guides demonstrated how hammocks are used on these boats. We had plastic chairs to sit on, but regular passengers who use these boats to get long distances up and down the river bring their own hammocks. Imagine this entire deck filled with hammocks tied to the ceiling joists (I’m sure there’s a more nautical term) side by side by side. The girls said, you would spend three days traveling from Santarém to Manaus (257 nautical miles) in a hammock next to someone you had never seen before in your life. ‘But you would end up best friends.’
An aside about these two young women. Our History of Brazil lecturer told us that in 1872, the illiteracy rate in Brazil was 80%. Illiteracy. At the time, the U.S. already had a high literacy rate. Brazil had been settled in 1500 but did not establish its first university until 1850. Alicia, in the hammock, though she looks 12, is studying civil engineering at the local university. The other guide is studying economics at what Alicia says is ‘a better school.’ Their English, by the way, was excellent — they began studying it at age 5.
The view as we came back into port... I’m glad I’d spent the morning on the river and not in town.
Next stop: Parintins. You will learn the proper pronunciation. #
