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Capital: Brasilia
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Brazil! That great land, as big as all the rest of South America would certainly be better known and more visited if Portuguese were not so hard to learn. In fact, it's not the language that is difficult, it's the pronunciation! The Portuguese grammar and vocabulary is very much like Spanish. Portuguese would be just as easy to learn if it were pronounced as it is written like Spanish. But it's not! Portuguese is a latin idiom but the sounds represented by the roman alphabet are different than those recognized by any other latin tongue. To mention only a couple of examples, "R" is pronounced like "H" and "S" can be pronounced like an "S", like a "Z", like "SH" or like "J" depending of where it is. I personally find this very frustrating for I can read Portuguese with ease but I can't understand the spoken language, let alone speak it. |
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This is where I got off the turbo launch from Iquitos and set foot in Brazil.
The last time I entered Brazil, it was from Paraguay by crossing the Amizade bridge over the Paraná river in the far south of the country. There, I stayed in the nearby modern town of Foz do Iguaçu and visited the great Iguaçu waterfalls and the huge Itaipu hydro dam, said to be the world's largest (12 000 megawatts).
Primitive Tabatinga and empty, wild Amazonia are so different from the densely populated and developed south that one could think of being in another country were it not for the Portuguese language. I stayed a few days in the Cristina Hotel (8.5 $US) and visited nearby Leticia in Colombia while waiting for the Manaus riverboat.
Vendors in the local market speak Portuguese but understand Spanish.
It is of historical interest to note that Brazil would have been Spanish speaking had not Pope Alexander VI decreed in 1493 that all lands discovered east of an arbitrary "line of demarcation" should belong to Portugal. Indeed, Brazil was discovered in January 1500 by the Spanish explorer Vincente Yáñez Pinzón who touched land near Recife and explored the coast all the way up to the mouth of the Orinoco (now in Venezuela). Respectfully obeying the Pope's will, Spain did not claim this huge territory but left that privilege to Portugal who did so a few months later when the Portuguese mariner Pedro Alvares Cabral, who had been blown off his course for Cape Horn and the Indies, made an accidental landfall 500 kms south of today's Salvador.
I arrived in Tabatinga at a rather primitive landing but left it from this modern dock on the riverboat "Don Manoel" which was about the same size but not as nice as the "Voyager III" shown here.
This gravel laden barge was worth a shot for there is not much traffic on the upper Amazon. Riverboats like the "Don Manoel" carry passengers but also cargo and mail on the milk run between Tabatinga and Manaus.
Our first stop was only a few hours away at Benjamin Constant where we took on passengers and cargo.
Deck crew loading a large number of empty (?) propane gas cylinders and stuffing them down the hold, a most dangerous cargo that would never be allowed in the hold of a passenger boat in the USA and Canada.
Life of the Caboclos is the same in Brazil as in Peru, they fish, hunt and grow some fruit and vegetables. Plantain bananas seen behind the house are a staple.
The agricultural potential of the Amazon basin is very limited in spite of impression given by the exuberant growth of the forest and the extreme variety of plant life found here. In fact, the jungle top soil is thin, acidic and deficient in minerals. The lush Amazon forest survives only through a delicate balance between a unique mix of plant and animal life that recycles what little minerals that have not been leached out by the water cycle (half of the rain that falls in the Amazon basin comes from evaporation and plant transpiration). Large scale attempts to convert the jungle into agricultural land in the Pará province have led to reduced rainfall and desertification.
These small settlements hug the shores of the Amazon. Beyond here, there is only wild Amazon forest for 800 kilometers until the Manaus - Porto Velho road is reached.
The great Amazon forest has been called "the lung of the world" because it absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen in vast quantities. It has been estimated that one fifth of the earth's oxygen comes from here. There are only few such forests left to alleviate the global warming problem caused by burning fossil fuels. It has been suggested that countries that produce more carbon dioxide than their own forests can absorb should pay an environmental tax to those countries whose forests absorb more CO2 than their industry produces!
The Amazon takes on the name of Rio Solimoes between the Peruvian border and Manaus where it meets the Rio Negro.
The locals take shelter from the fierce midday sun as they wait for the boat to tie up. Here we unloaded sheets of corrugated steel roofing and took on a load of bananas and plantain.
Another isolated homestead with the inevitable throng of children and of course, a dugout canoe to move about and fish.
In this place we loaded lumber and plantain after delivering the boxes seen being loaded on a canoe for distribution to other places.
The catholic church is very powerful in Amazonia as evidenced by churches in every village. They are generally large and very well maintained, even in the poorest communities.
