Amazon voyage - part three

Lest it be thought Manaus nowadays is just old buildings and bejewelled ghosts, here's one of the shopping streets.

And this is the fish market about six in the morning.

But what I enjoyed most was the hubbub around the docks.

There's something quite endearing about riverboats. They are cheerful - almost cocky - little vessels butting into the water as they chug along. Mind you, that's easy to say as, from the comfort of a liner, you observe their crowded, hammock-filled decks.

No picture - or at least no picture of mine in an e-mail - can adequately convey the size of the Amazon. But I'll try. First is a close up of a small boat and, using an old television technique, next is a wide shot.

Santarém, a city halfway between Manaus and the sea, is where the Brazilian rubber industry's downfall began. From here, the British smuggled rubber seeds to be planted in what was then Malaya. Nowadays, according to the Guardian Weekly, “Brazil could be the world’s biggest rubber producer, yet it imports 70% of its rubber … Brazil now has only 2% of world production. Asia has 95%, while Africa accounts for the rest.” (5.9.08)

At Santarém, I'm big news. Well, perhaps not me, but the ship. I was considering offering the young reporter some highly personalized professional advice.

Flooding sometimes cuts off Santarém from the rest of the country. Much of the one road is dirt and, even when open, there are said to be bandits. Below is a road sign on the town's outskirts. It's a long way to other parts of Brazil. One day, I'll make it to Rio or Sao Paulo, but maybe not Porto Alegre.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford, otherwise a reasonably astute businessman, sank millions into a rubber plantation near Santarém. It failed. Nowadays, occasional visitors arrive to inspect the remains.

The Americans built homes for managers and workers, offices, clubs, hospitals, schools and churches. The fire hydrants - imported from Michigan in 1930s - apparently still work.

The locals were welcoming.

Even this egret was prepared to pose.

I also spotted a wonderful scarlet macaw, but, unfortunately, didn't react quickly enough to get a picture.

I liked this Brazilian-made Beetle. The originals were made in Brazil until the 1990s. They remind me of those jaunty little Amazon riverboats.

There were other islands still to come - Trinidad, Dominica, St. Kitt's, St. Croix and the Dominican Republic. But perhaps we'll leave those for another time, as my main goal was Manaus and the Amazon.

Without Michael and Kathy, the voyage would have been far less enjoyable, so here they are one evening. Our 'sundowners' are nearby and it has been a most pleasant day on this greatest of rivers.

In 1859, after spending eleven years in the Amazon rain forest, the zoologist Henry Walter Bates began his voyage home to England. He wrote: " ... about 400 miles from the mouth of the main Amazons, we passed numerous patches of floating grass ... this was the last I saw of the Great River." A hundred and fifty years later, I, too, spotted drifting evidence of the rain forest far out to sea.

You didn't expect me to end without a concluding Amazon sunset shot, did you?