04-APR-C-7

“ÚARA” RAINFOREST “”SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST” HIKE

IN A STEADY RAIN IN THE JUNGLE UNDERSTORY,

TO SEE THE BRAZILNUT TREE AND GIANT FOREST COCKROACH AND HOTLIPS FLOWERS:

A MUDDY RETURN FROM WHICH I AM NAVIGATOR,

TO SPECIAL BELO HORIZONTE RESERVE TOUR

April 21, 2004

Where am I? UARA = 2* 39.43 S, 65* 34.04 W, so that it is impressive not so much non how far we have traveled already, but how much more of the Amazon we have to go—it is a very big and long river. It has been a steady all night rain and continues all morning. We had had to “spring forward” with an hour difference in timing at midnight. So, getting up after dawn to such cruises yesterday is a matter of rolling out today to set out for the rainy ride to the wet rain forest for what was billed as the “Survival of the Fittest” Hike, with no long stops for interpretation, just a three to four mile slog through wet and middy rainforest behind a Brazilnut collector, to see what the inner forest was like.

I liked it. It reminded me of hunting in the Congo, and I could identify many good things from that era with a few new world differences that I could appreciate from my multiple trips with Luis Ayala in the Orinoco Basin of Venezuela. I saw the “hot lips” flowers with their blue berries and the red pigment emerging from the green leaves. I saw many nests and heard lots of birds which were for all practical purposes impossible to see in the dense canopy of the climax forest. We saw a few area where there was a secondary forest slashed and burned for bananas or [pineapples or cassava, then went back into an “extractive reserve” which was home to the massive mahogany trees—to far from the river to cut and drag out, and also some big Brazilnut trees. The heavy round husks of these trees looks like cannonballs, and there are a dozen of more nuts shaped like orange segments inside them. Only the agouti, other than man with a machete, can open the husk and scurry around burying the nuts and eating a few. I also saw a giant forest cockroach on the base of the large Brazilnut tree.

Most of the tourists had heavy duty mosquito jackets and head nets, but the only time I was bugged by mosquitoes is when we had to stop to let the stragglers in our single file group catch up. I got back by Zodiac and had a Brazilian beef lunch, and got from the passenger named Putney a good DVD which was about the rainforest and the Amazon, which is the reason she is here, called Fitzcerraldo—a crazed German who wants to bring an opera house to the interior of the jungle in Iquitos during the era of the rubber barons opulent wealth. I got a good deal of it seen, and might see it again with any other opera buff who would like to see what this adventure is like.

BELO HORIZONTE:

AN EXTRACTIVE RESERVE FOR WATCHING BIRDS, BOTANY, AND A THREE TOED SLOTH

The afternoon anchorage is further downstream near a small inlet named Belo Horizonte for which special permission must be obtained and we could enter with our zodiacs because of the interest of the Miguel lecturer from Columbia University. BELO= 2* 44.33 S, 65* 13.06 W. There we saw a spectacular violaceous trogon and a three-toed sloth, as well as getting a good introduction to many of the tree speices with John Howard resident naturalist botanist. I saw hanging fruits of a Ganetia which is the only conifer in the jungle the only gymnosperm, so the only non-flowering tree. We saw cactus growing as an epiphyte above the flooded forest with the high water mark visible on the trees. We saw a flowering orchid in bloom. We saw creepers with two toes fore and aft, so it could go up and down the tree head first or the reverse. We saw many kinds of laurel with their acorn like capped nuts.

We return to the ship to re-ca[p all that in the evening after what is billed as cocktail hour (when I am typing this) and then yet another full course dinner with the wines and five courses that will slow me down when and if I can ever return to being a runner..

APRIL 21 IS A SIGNIFICANT DATE FOR BRAZILIANS

April 21, 1500—Brazil is officially “discovered’ by a Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral

April 21, 1822—the rebel Tiradentes, (the name means “tooth puller”) is hanged for fomenting a revolt for independence.

April 21 1960—Brasilia is officially opened as the new “designed” capital of Brazil

April 21, 1984—Tancredo Neves—the first elected Presidnet after twenty years of military government—dies immediately after being elected to office of intra-abdominal sepsis

April 21, 2004—the good ship Orion, on its maiden voyage into the Amazon, does NOT sink in mid-river, thereby avoiding the loss of 84 passengers, sixty crew and $18 million US value of a new vessel

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