One more weekend and we are still without our instruments, but we were told we had a very high probability of having our instruments on Monday or Tuesday, so we decided to enjoy the weekend and be full blown tourists. It turned out that the power generator at the research site broke, so practically all of the other scientist could not do any work and we decided to take a boat trip: 12 scientists taking a tour together!
Now, Southeast of Manus the Rio Negro River and the Rio Solimões come together and form the Amazonian river. The Rio Negro flows over a soil that makes the water black and acidic (has a Ph of about 4). Because of this, there are not a lot of fish nor mosquitoes. On the other hand, Rio Solimões flows over another type of soil and has a brownish color, a higher Ph, more fish and lots of mosquitoes. Due to these differences in physical properties it takes several kilometers for them to mix together, they flow next to each other sharply separated and very slowly they finally dissolve into each other. Our boat took us to see this “meeting of the waters”, very interesting to say the least.
Next stop: giant water lilies. There an alligator came out to say hi to all of us. After this stop it was about 12:30 and we all thought we were going to have lunch, but our guide decided to take us up stream the Rio Negro for more that 3 hours. In the boat there was only a little bit of fruit and no beer, by the time we arrived at the restaurant you can imagine everyone’s mood, thankfully the food came out fast and after 20 minutes our good mood came back and we were all ready to go piranha fishing! The 12 of us jumped in a canoe, went through small canals, and after 20/30 min we stopped next to the trees to begin…did we catch anything? Only Marco and Hartmut, but we all think it was the same piranha over and over, well only three times.
The bigger boat that brought us to there came to pick us up from our fishing canoe, and thankfully they allow us to jump off the boat and take a dip in the Rio Negro! Worried about the piranhas? Well, after an hour and a half of “fishing” and having caught the same piranha 3 times, we were like little kids jumping off and getting back on the boat to jump again, it was grrrrreat!
Finally, the trip back to Manaus: stomachs full, beer, and the sun setting over the river and the jungle, we could have not had been any better.
We had the perfect trip to relax and prepare our selves for the work that is about to begin.
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