Image courtesy and © Lucy Mueller 2015

Sometimes this required machete work (right), but I often wondered how much of this was either because Souza loved the work, or because it was orchestrated to help the guests feel like we were truly in the heart of the jungle. Either way, it was on one such excursion that I lifted a particularly low-hanging branch to help us skim underneath and within seconds was rewarded with an armful of ants that gave me a couple of dozen bites before I could shed them. There were a few moments of squeeking and stamping behind me as some of my guests survived the brush off and set about exploring the rest of the canoe.

Rathole: Why are birds so conspicuous?

Why are birds so much more conspicuous than other vertebrates--in general, but in the jungle in particular? The reason is simple: they can fly. The ability to fly is one of nature's premier anti-predator escape mechanisms, and animals that can fly well are released from the danger of being stalked by a large portion of the predators in the area. Most mortality from predators in tropical birds comes while they are eggs or helpless young in the nest. Once they reach adulthood, their mortality rate by predation falls to very low levels. By being able to escape most predation, they are released from much of the tyranny of natural selection that places a premium on camouflage, unobtrusiveness and shyness. Thus they can be both reasonably conspicuous in their behavior and also reasonably certain of daily survival. Most flightless land vertebrates, tied by gravity to moving in or over the ground or on plants, are easy prey unless they are quiet, concealed, and careful, or alternatively, very large and fierce; many smaller ones, in fact have evolved special defense mechanisms such as poisons or nocturnal behavior. Therefore birds are relatively easy to watch, and can be very beautiful. We saw many, despite none of us really claiming to be bird-watchers.

The hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin), also known as the stinkbird (and in our canoe also known as the "bush turkey") is notable for having chicks that possess claws on two of their wing digits. The chicks are good swimmers and if the nest is disturbed they drop into the water and swim under the surface to escape, then later use their clawed wings to climb back to the safety of the nest.

The alternative name of stinkbird is derived from the bird's "manure-like odour," caused by its unusual digestive system. It has an enlarged crop, used for fermentation of vegetable matter, in a manner broadly analogous to a cow's digestive system. As a result it is only hunted by humans for food in times of dire need.

The hoatzin's crop is so large it displaces the flight muscles and keel of the sternum, much to the detriment of their flight capacity. Adults can fly clumsily for short distances, but they spend most of their time perched, digesting their leafy food (again, cow-like). A large rubbery callus on the bird’s breastbone acts as a tripod to keep it from falling over when its stomach is distended. You can't make this stuff up.

This is a noisy species, with a variety of hoarse calls, groans, croaks, hisses and grunts. Calls are used to maintain contact between individuals in groups, warn of threats and intruders and by chicks begging for food.

Image courtesy and © Adam Thomson 2015

Image courtesy and © Domenica Puleo 2015

Image courtesy and © Adam Thomson 2015

Jungle-walking required a full suiting-up: hats, long sleeves, long pants, boots, gaiters. This was not just protection from the animals, flying or otherwise. One day Edi was poking around looking for nuts in the debris from a fallen tree with spines like a sea urchin and he gently backed into one of the fallen limbs. A spine slipped straight through his rubber boots and stabbed his foot.

To get to terra firme, the canoes often had to travel some distance from the boat, and as we got out into open water, the pilot opened up the throttle, or “turned on the AC” as Souza liked to call it. If the bumpers were out this could cause some splashing, and Lucy heard the pilot call out to Edi at the front (in Portuguese of course) “the Americans are getting wet!” Edi immediately turned and called for the bumpers to be pulled inboard, but the damage was done. Whenever we were getting splashed we would call out from the back “the Americans are getting wet!” and the bumpers would be adjusted.

As we approached the far edge of one of these full-speed open water stretches, Pakito headed straight for a tree top poking out of the water, playing chicken with Edi by not turning to avoid it until Edi starting frantic arm-waving signals.

It was really hard to find things. This came as a bit of a surprise. With all that life and diversity, one imagines that one would be fighting things off with a stick (figuratively if not literally) but of course nothing wants to be seen, either because it doesn’t want to be someone else's lunch, or because it doesn’t want any potential lunch to know it is there. The monkeys were different: smart enough to be curious, they were always in the farthest trees, maximizing the distance between us, but allowing them to keep an eye on us. This made it possible for us to see them too, but generally with great difficulty. I was always glad to have Pakito, the backup guide and canoe pilot, along with us because he seemed to be an expert at finding monkeys. After apparently overstaying our welcome, one group started throwing sticks and dung. We got the message.

So the only rule we had was “step over logs, not on them: you never know what is hiding in or on the log. Also, it may not be a log.” But other than that, we never felt in any sort of danger, and would step off the trail to get a close up photo of something, or to let someone by. On the other hand we never touched anything, and once Edi was only one stride from stepping face-first into a golden silk spider that had built a web right across the path.

Image courtesy and © Domenica Puleo 2015

Far left: Jungle! A relatively thin section, allowing the sun to shine through the canopy.

Left: 5ft lily pads. Research suggests that they can get much bigger, and that tourists have been known to sit on them. Some sort of kitchy pixie photo op I suppose.

Right: We came across a tree that looked like it had been used as a scratching post. It had. Someone asked about the likelihood of our meeting the owner of the claws. Souza: “It’s probably better we do not meet Jaguar and other creatures that can make you weak.” Amen to that.

“Bird-eating tarantula.” The tarantula (the biggest, by mass, in the world) waved its pedipalps and front legs as menacingly as it could, which was pretty effective in my view, and after a brief circuit to check out the immediate surroundings (everyone took another step back) scuttled back into its hole. Best of show. Hands down. I got it on video: see for yourself.

Right: Even with a spot-light on it, and knowing that it is there, it is crazy how hard it is to make out the spider. Note Edi's shovel.

In a perfect demonstration of how desperate for food the local tribes can get in this apparent abundance, the spider is part of the local cuisine in northeastern South America, prepared by singeing off the urticating hairs and roasting it in banana leaves. The flavor has been described as "shrimplike", and I bet it has the texture of a soft-shell crab. I haven't tried it because I absolutely do not like it.

Image courtesy and © Lucy Mueller 2015

Rathole: Ayahuasca

Souza showed us some leaves natives use to make ayahuasca tea (aka yagé aka the vision vine, aka the vine of the soul). This hallucinogenic brew was first described academically in the early 1950s by Harvard ethnobotanist Dr. Richard Evans Schultes, a larger than life character about whom there was a book in the Tucano’s library. He seems to have been Harvard’s Hunter S. Thompson, an expert in, and seeker out of hallucinogenic plants. (See also Dr Schultes's own rathole on the ecology page.)

People who have consumed ayahuasca report having spiritual revelations regarding their purpose on earth, the true nature of the universe as well as deep insight into how to be the best person they possibly can. This is viewed by many as a spiritual awakening and what is often described as a rebirth.

Sounds like good stuff, but wait, there’s more: vomiting can follow ayahuasca ingestion as well as significant, but temporary, emotional and psychological distress (the "bad trip" experience). This purging is considered by many shamans and experienced users of ayahuasca to be an essential part of the experience, as it represents the release of negative energy and emotions built up over the course of one's life.

"Ayahuasca and chacruna cocinando" by Awkipuma - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out. While the majority did the sensible thing and took a well-earned nap, a few hardy souls were to be seen lounging on the observation deck, binoculars in hand. The guides had predicted this: on the first day most people were hanging around, but they said this soon wore off and after a day or two the crowds thinned out considerably. But who knows what the snoozers might miss? So we watched the world drift slowly by. There was something very calming about it.

And sometimes FOMO was a legitimate concern: there were things to miss. Oropendola (genus Psarocolius), are known (along with the caciques) for their hanging nest colonies, some of which can contain 100 nests hanging from the branches or fronds of a single tree, and these condos were a common sight along the river bank. The colony members select a large tree that is isolated, presumably to reduce the chance that a monkey or other arboreal predator can climb into the colony and raid the nests for eggs and young. Only the female builds the long, windsocklike nest. Inside this woven structure she incubates two white eggs and then feeds the hatchlings.

Both sexes are largely black or greenish, but the bill is usually a strikingly contrasting feature, either pale yellow, or red-tipped with a green or black base. In several species there is also a blue or pink bare cheek patch. They are very vocal, producing a wide range of songs and calls, sometimes including mimicry. In short, a bunch of characters and those of us on watch were treated to their flashes of color several times.

The river was so full of islands that we were almost always hugging a bank on one side of the boat or the other. We got used to switching sides or positioning one's chair in the middle and just turning all the way around when this happened.

Image courtesy and © Lucy Mueller 2015

Left: In the white band at the top of this cliff you can just make out Ringed Kingfisher nest holes. Some claim they also saw the kingfishers flashing around, but I didn't see one until much later.

Right: five minutes before the worst storm. We were about to cross some fairly open water so instead we anchored close to these trees until it passed over. The Tucano had once been caught out in this open stretch of river, and battling six foot waves they'd been forced to cut the canoes free. That wasn't going to happen again.

 Image courtesy and © Lucy Mueller 2015

So this was proof that we were for a brief moment floating on white water, and a glance over the side confirmed this: the water had taken on a decidely soupier appearance. Now that he'd mentioned it, there were also more bugs. Not a big problem, but definitely more than the "none" that we were used to. Ever imaginative with names, Branco is Portuguese for "White" making a nice pairing to the Black River on which we were spending most of our time.

While we were sitting there, Souza spotted a best of show flower. We are still trying to track down what it actually was, but it's pollination mechanism had to be seen to be believed. He had to wobble his way around both canoes showing a couple of folks at a time, and I still had to bring it back tp the Tucano so I could make sure I had captured it properly on video. A bee lands on the petal I'm holding, and its weight causes the stamen to be levered out of its tube so that it can deposit pollen on the back of the bee's neck. Really, you can't make this stuff up: you have to see for yourself.

Another botanical specimen and story that captured my imagination was this one, concerning two different trees in the Brazil nut family. Sapucaia (lecythis pisonis) aka monkey pot grows to a height of about 30 metres (100 ft). The fruit is shaped like a cooking pot and contains edible seeds. The nuts are eaten by animals and the name "monkey pot" comes from the old proverb "a wise old monkey doesn't stick its hand into a pot" referring to the fact that a young monkey may plunge its hand into the container and not be able to withdraw the fistful of nuts whereas an experienced individual will remove the nuts singly. The (empty) monkey pots were a common feature on the forest floor.

The Brazil nut tree itself is a much larger tree, reaching 50 m (160 ft) tall, making it among the largest of trees in the Amazon rainforests. It may live for 500 years or more, and according to some authorities often reaches an age of 1,000 years. In Brazil, it is illegal to cut down a Brazil nut tree. As a result, they can be found outside production areas, in the backyards of homes and near roads and streets. The 2kg (5lb) fruit capsule poses a serious threat to vehicles and people passing under the tree. At least one person has died after being hit on the head by a falling fruit. As the Brazil nut is a botanical seed, and unlike botanical nuts, the density of the fruit makes them sink in fresh water, which can cause clogging of waterways.

A seed is defined as the part of a flowering plant that contains the embryo and will develop into a new plant if sown. Since this applies to both nuts and seeds, it stands to reason that all nuts are seeds but not all seeds are nuts. In common parlance, a seed comes from a (generally fleshy) fruit and can be separated: apples, tomatoes, raspberries. With nuts, by contrast, seed and fruit cannot be separated, they are dry, generally one-seed-at-a-time, consisting of a kernel, often edible, in a hard and woody or tough and leathery shell: chestnuts, acorns, hazel, are nuts and this is why things like peanuts are assumed to be nuts (they are legumes, along with regular peas and beans). The Brazil nut has a very tough fruit (called a capsule), but once inside, indeed the multiple seeds are easy to separate out. These seeds are what we buy as Brazil nuts.

Where things get really interesting, and confusing, is with the introduction of drupes. A drupe is a fruit that is pulpy on the outside, and has a hard shell on the inside that contains one seed (so drupes have fleshy fruit like seeds, but a singular seed like nuts). In most cases the outer fleshy part of the fruit is eaten and the “stone” is discarded. Examples of this are plum, peach, cherry, olive, where you would never imagine eating anything but the flesh. However, in some cases the seed within the fruit, is actually the part usually eaten whereupon we call them “nuts." It turns out that many of the things we assume to be nuts are actually drupes. Famous examples of drupes where we eat the seed not the fruit: almonds, walnuts, coffee, coconut, pistachio. And just when I was ready to say, okay if a seed or drupe stone is edible, then we call the seed a nut, I remembered mustard, poppy, and sesame.

If you are still confused, I don’t blame you. I wrote this sidebar from scratch twice in an effort to straighten it out. I see where they are going with it, but if I were given a random “seed” and asked to determine from the rules if the sample belonged to any of these special categories, I would be totally incapable of doing so. A simple rule of “most nuts are not” would seem a good one. The Wikipedia page on nuts has a far most extensive list of things that are not nuts than it does of examples of “true” nuts.

Lastly, this led me to one last question: what’s the evolutionary advantage of making the seed/nut, (the actual “embryo" remember) edible—isn’t that counter-productive? It seems that the animals (mostly rodents and birds) that eat these nuts do a much better job of dispersing (and even sowing!) the nuts than older mechanisms such as wind could ever do. It’s okay for the dispersers to eat most of the nuts, provided they don’t eat all of them.

 Image courtesy and © Lucy Mueller 2015

Iguanas do an excellent job of blending with the trees that they live in. The only reason we were ever able to spot them was when a branch seemed to bulge in the middle like a snake that has swallowed a rat.

It was amusing to listen. Some folks found it really hard to find them, but once one had, it was ridiculous how easy they were to see.

 Image courtesy and © Adam Thomson 2015

Holding the hook and bait firmly in one hand to put tension on the pole, we whipped and thrashed the surface of the water for about 5 seconds, and then dropped the line into the center of the disturbance. Apparently in the other canoe when Edi demonstrated this he had no sooner dropped the line when he pulled it back out again with a piranha dangling on the end. The thrashing water mimics something in distress, and the piranha come over to put it out of its misery. They were clinical about it. Time after time I pulled the line out of the water to find the hook picked clean without me feeling a thing.

When we did catch something, of course the first thing to do was get your picture taken, then gingerly swing the catch over to the end of the canoe for a guide or pilot to unhook it. Everyone in between had a brief moment of panic as it came by, dreading the possibility that it might drop off into their lap. Not only do they have teeth, they also have nasty spines, and so getting hold of one is a very careful process. Once securely gripped and dehooked, Souza says “this is why we don’t want you to touch them” and shoved a twig between its teeth. There was an audible snap, like pliers cutting wire, as the piranha dutifully bit clean through the twig. “Same with your finger” says Souza to the stunned crowd. “Do it again! Do it again!” we all cried like a bunch of first-graders. What a show.

Image courtesy and © Domenica Puleo 2015

Lucy watches Edi throw a teaspoonful of manioc in after his piranha without touching the spoon, which he is then able to put back into the bowl. "It's not a meal if there isn't manioc." RT: "But this isn't a meal, it's just an appetizer." Edi: "Still needs manioc."

Image courtesy and © Mary Clements 2015

RT, BG guilty as charged. Image courtesy and © Domenica Puleo 2015

On the last evening we fetched in a guitarist (above left, all the way to the back, and below, in the bow) who plucked Brazilian favorites while we made caipirinhas from the cachaça and limes that miraculously appeared where the appetizers were normally parked (yours truly front right, followed by Lucy, Virginia and Domenica on the left already enjoying theirs, and Edi adjusting the party lights in the middle distance).

This was a splendid prelude to a fabulous celebratory feast being laid out in the salon, and also a brilliant move on our host's part, as it for once distracted us from staring at the view, which for the most part was comprised of the less attractive side of Manaus as we made our way back for our final night-stop anchored just off-shore from Hotel Tropical.

Rathole: cachaça

Although both rum and cachaça are made from sugarcane-derived products, in cachaça the alcohol results from the fermentation of fresh sugarcane juice that is afterwards distilled, while rum is usually made from by-products from refineries, such as molasses. They have distinctly different flavors, with the cachaça reminding me very much of the hooch (akpeteshie) that we drank in Ghana.

A caipirinha is prepared by mashing a quartered half lime and sugar together, and adding the liquor. A recipe I looked up went on "This can be made into a single glass, usually large, that can be shared amongst people, or into a larger jar, from where it is served in individual glasses." We made them in large glasses, and then did not share them. It seemed a reasonable compromise. More recent experiments and research suggest that key limes might be a better choice than our regular ones, which in my opinion give the caipirinha a bitterness that I did not notice in the originals.

Port of Manaus

The fetching of the guitarist is a story in itself, Adam and I mentioning it independently as one of our favorite moments. I'd been talking to Souza about sourcing some cachaça like the bottle he had served the previous evening. Firstly we'd drained our supply, secondly we wanted to take some home, and thirdly, we figured he was not spending $50 a bottle. He invited me to join him when he went to collect the guitarist, and we'd go find some. Ab-so-lutely! When Adam announced he could use some cash, Souza was happy to take us both.

As soon as we returned from the afternoon canoe trip, Adam and I hung back in the canoe, Pakito jumped in, and the four of us set off. First win: the trip took us right across the Amazon river, and so took a good 15 minutes even with the "AC turned on full-blast" and for the first time the canoe crashed up and down a little on the waves of the open water. Second win: we plowed our way right into the heart of the Port of Manaus, and finally pulled up at a dingy quay so narrow only small vessels like ours could have squeezed in. The guitarist was waiting for us and helped pull us up onto the dock itself, which was chest-height from the canoe.

The usual rotting smell of garbage and fuel didn't stop the inevitable street vendor plying a trickle of customers for his snacks and drinks. Old pallets formed a dry path across the standing pools of black water, and then we were on a street full of small shops leading up and away from the river.

Rathole: Curare

Curare is a collective name for various plant extract poisons that cause weakness of the skeletal muscles and, when administered in a sufficient dose, eventual death by asphyxiation due to paralysis of the diaphragm. An effective curare can be made simply by boiling down several kilos of any combination of 20 different species of jungle leaves. Once it becomes a thick syrupy tar it will most likely be able to bring down anything from a monkey to a man.

In addition, it is said, the final preparation is often made more potent by adding irritating herbs, stinging insects, poisonous worms, and various parts of amphibians and reptiles to the preparation. Some of these accelerate the onset of action or increase the toxicity; others prevent the wound from healing or blood from coagulating.

So what, then, was Edi offering us when he invited us to try eating “curare” berries (“delicious, but don’t bite into the seed”)? One possible answer is Strychnos toxifera, a known ingredient which at least has a fruit, and which is also in the family that produces strychnine, which some folks claim they also heard mentioned. Some of us took up the challenge to try it. It really was quite good—kumquat-like, but more delicate.

About 75 yards up the street Souza disappeared into a convenience store, and showed us the ATM by using it first. There was the usual heart-stopping moment when Adam's credit card disappeared into the bowels of the machine but it didn't want to hand out any cash in return. After a couple of false starts, it finally played fair and proffered up both cash and card. I noticed that the store had the exact same cachaça bottle as Souza had provided. $8. I kid you not. Souza shook his head "no."

Heading back towards the port we popped into a second store, even smaller than the first. Same bottle. $7. Souza bought one, we bought all the rest. We also splashed out on a deluxe bottle ($9) and a six-pack of beer for the journey home. Feeling very chuffed with ourselves, but smarting more than a little over the $50+ prices we'd paid at the cachaçaria for our first batch, we headed back to the canoe. The musician refused a beer (just coming on duty), Pakito refused a beer (getting over a cold) and Souza refused a beer (not before dinner thank you). No such compunctions for us, Adam and I pulled the rings on ours, and before we could get the cans to our lips, the Tucano came into view. Since we were going to be following the northern bank of the river back to the Hotel Tropical, the captain had used the time to also cross the river. Everyone seemed to have turned out to watch us return, and were able to witness the sight of Adam and I frantically guzzling beer trying to finish before we caught up with the boat.

"There are three ways to get tambaqui: by line, by spear, and by supermarket.”
After dining on the tambaqui, a big-boned white fish (related to piranha) with a delicious bass-like hint of river flavor, Edi wrestled the jaw off and passed it around. “What do these teeth look like?” Chorus: “molars?” Edi: “Molars, exactly. So what does that tell you about the tambaqui?” Chorus: “That it is a chewer—a fruit or vegetable eater!” Edi: “Excellent. Yes, it is a fruit eater.” Wired magazine article: “When rivers in the Amazon Basin flood into surrounding forests and savannas, […] tambaqui proves itself a champion at excreting seeds in distant new homes, says Jill T. Anderson of Duke University.”

Exotic dishes like the tambaqui would usually appear at dinner time (quite right). Tucunare (peacock bass) was another exotic and delicious fish, but for some reason it was always served "fish finger" style so there was nothing photogenic about it.

Even the boozers amongst us tended to restrict consumption to dinner, or even beyond, especially if there was a night trip. So after the tambaqui, the most exciting part of dinner was “what flavor is the ice-cream tonight?” It was always different, and even better always something no-one had ever heard of:

• Camucamu
• Maracuja (passion fruit)
• Tucumã (woody flavor)
• Cupuaçu vanilla, Baileys, pear, pineapple, banana. De-licious.
• Taperebá sharper than the others, more citrusy. Interesting note: although the fruit is (obviously) available for sale, there is no English common name for this plant. Wikipedia redirects the word Taperebá to its binomial name: Spondias mombin.

Table laid for the last night's feast. Normally meals were served
canteen style. Image courtesy and © Mary Clements 2015.

 Image(s) courtesy and © Lucy Mueller 2015

I lurved the night trips. If we were going to see something, it was bound to be something dangerous—who else is out at night? Safety in numbers, safety in the canoe, and most of all safety in the hands of experts. Bring it on. It was a little creepy at times I have to admit, but we were not disappointed.

Here I've tried to recreate the experience. At left is a typical scene. Having spotted that something unusual is up the branches, (many of us would have seen nothing at this point—there is some zooming here already—the guide turned off his spot lamp while we drifted under the low-hanging canopy in the pitch dark. Eventually he turned it back on. Roll your mouse over the image to see what was then revealed.

A six-to-eight foot long tree boa. Check out the knot at the end of the tail securing him/her to the branch.

We spent a considerable amount of time chasing red reflectors. We would see an eyeball further up the channel and then home in on it. For reasons I never figured out, the eyeball rarely disappeared until we were right on it, and even the birds could not be disturbed. One small spectacled caiman even allowed itself to be caught. Apparently we were very unlikely to see anything much bigger than that. Firstly because statistically the little guys vastly outnumber the big adults, and secondly because the adults are typically deeper into the undergrowth.