Saturday, January 15, 2011

CHILDREN OF THE AMAZON


So far we have sailed 3000 miles from Fort Lauderdale and 103 miles from Santarem through the Amazon Rainforest, also known as Amazonia. It covers 1.2 billion acres and is located within nine nations: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Equador, French Guiana, Guiana, Peru, Surname and Venezuela.


We arrived at a very small Amazon village called “Boca da Valeria". It has about 75 permanent residents. Their homes are built on stilts along the river so that when the rainy season comes each year and the mighty Amazon overflows its banks, the stilts help keep their homes dry.


We were met by an eager group of small children when we disembarked from the tender. Some of them were dressed in colorful costumes with lots of feathers, and some were holding parrots, iguanas, sloths and even a snake. They were not shy about asking for “dollar! dollar!” when we started to photograph them. We were befriended by a young mother, Margarethe, holding her 3 year old daughter Eva. We managed to communicate in Spanish and she acted as our tour guide. She led us through her village where we were invited into the one room schoolhouse. She then led us through a jungle path to her home. It was on stilts, made up of two rooms. She proudly switched on the lights to show us she had electricity! Margarethe then accompanied us back to the tender. Her other 4 children ran to her to give her their day’s earnings (dollar bills, chocolates, pencils, stickers, fish hooks). We waved goodbye to our new friends and returned to the Prinsendam and continued our voyage along the Amazon. Several hours later we heard and felt a big thud and discovered that our propellers had hit a huge log Some parts of the Amazon are very shallow. Fortunately there was no damage and we were able to continue on.


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