 Going down the Amazon River
in 1998
It was already September when I got back to Montreal
from a tour of China and the ex-soviet countries in 1997. I had a lot
of new photos to scan for my site so I stayed home and was here to experience
the terrible ice storm that hit southern Quebec and eastern Ontario in
January.
Some say that the "once in a century" climatic
freak was caused by the "El Niño" phenomena. Freezing
rain that turned to ice on contact fell almost without interruption for
twelve consecutive days. Everything became heavily coated with ice. Trees
suffered as overloaded branches fell on cars, houses and power lines, blocking
streets and highways. Up to ten centimeters of ice accumulated on the 735
kilovolt transmission lines feeding cities and towns. Hundreds of steel
towers crumpled under the weight and 1300 000 households (more than 3 million
people), were deprived of the life-blood of modern times, electricity.
It was a national catastrophe. Hundreds of schools were turned into emergency
shelters and the army was called out to help with survival gear. Linesmen
from the neighbouring provinces and states came to help rebuild the network
and finally things came back to normal after a hectic month. I was lucky
to have been cut off for only a few hours and only three times.
When the excitement was over, I still had time to fulfill
the old dream going down the Amazon River to see the exuberant vegetation
of our planet's largest rain forest. As I had spoken very little Spanish
since my six month tour of South America 4 years ago, I did three weeks
of Spanish immersion in Quito before exposing myself to Brazilian Portuguese
as a precaution against mixing those two similar idioms.
The map traces my journey through
Ecuador,
Peru,
Colombia and
Brazil.
I had initially planned to make my way from Quito to Iquitos by bus to
enjoy a few stops along the way but "El Niño" had been
on the rampage here as well. Towns had been flooded, roads were damaged
and bridges were out all along the coast of Ecuador and Peru. I had no
alternative but to fly from Quito to Lima and on to Iquitos. I took a fast
launch down the Marañon-Amazonas from Iquitos to Tabatinga and Leticia
on the Peru - Brazil - Colombia border, a slow boat down the Solimoes-Amazonas
to Manaus and flew back to Quito after doing 1 800 km on the river. A few words
and 117 photos tell the story...
|
Welcome
