Amazon to Manaus–Meeting of the Waters
At 4:30, Jean and I were up, dressed, had our enormous bags packed and filling the foyer to our room. As we headed up the gravel path for the last time, we saw Robo and Pettus talking earnestly with Elmo. Robo didn’t look so good. I mean REALLY didn’t look so good.
We hustled up to them to find out what was up. Pettus explained that they were investigating Med Jet for Robo to fly to the hospital. The owners weren’t there, and Elmo was trying to help them.
“WHAT?” we hollered (quietly).
“Yeah,” he drawled sleepily, “I woke up about 2:00 this morning with violent diarrhea and vomiting. When I tried to get back in bed, I couldn’t stop the chills. Pettus put all the blankets on me, but that still wasn’t enough. She had to lie on top of me.”
“Well, that was actually to stop him from shaking so I could get some sleep,” Pettus casually confessed.
“It is the absolute worst I’ve ever felt in my life,” Robo continued. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to die here in the Amazon. I’m gonna have to call Med-Jet. How will they land? Where will they land?'”
“It had to be some kind of food poisoning,” I offered. “I don’t think it’s life-threatening.” I don’t know what Robo thought. Probably more than that.
“Well how do you feel now?” Jean asked. “Our van should be ready to go back. You don’t still wanna call Med-Jet do you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he replied weakly. “I think I may can make it back to Manaus.” The light rain at 4:30 had turned to a healthy shower by 4:35.
The van was indeed there, and soon our luggage was aboard. Robo limped out with the aid of his stalwart half-breed wife. He gingerly entered the van.
Jean and I were right behind, wondering what this was gonna do to our Meeting of the Waters trip. It seemed that we had plenty of time, provided the driver would haul a little bit of ass and the rain would slack up. I told him in my fantastic Portuguese that Robo was sick and we may need to pull over at any minute. He understood.
We took off for the three-hour journey to the ferry. The driver was not only NOT hauling ass, he was driving like an old lady. About 25 miles an hour, I swear. The rain continued beating at the windshield, and Robo curled up in one of the back seats. Pettus sat next to him. In the dark of the van, with the intermittent flashes of ambient light, he reminded me of when a roly-poly has died a long time ago and you find it lying in semi-fetal position on the sidewalk, all white and powdery.
I was afraid to touch him, lest he be like a mousetrap and spring at me with a Linda Blair-style stream of vomit. But still I was fascinated by his pitifulness. He looked as if he needed poking with a stick.
I sat back in my seat. Jean was already snoring next to me. As a matter of fact, only the driver and I were awake. I began to stew about the impending potential clusterfuck of getting to Cassio at the appointed time, the meeting of the waters, and the airport. I was also painfully aware of the driving rain, and snail’s pace we were keeping, and the fact that Robo could erupt at any second. Where would we take him? What would we do? I guessed we were doing the best thing we could be doing under any circumstances and tried to settle down.
I also ruminated on the irony of the situation. Here I was thinking that Iemanjá was after ME, when all along, she was just using me to get to Robo. His original derisive comments regarding her big holiday were obviously well felt by the jealous, angry goddess. He never actually got IN her sweet waters like I did. And he called Maria the cook in Rio “No Neck.” It all made perfect sense. I chuckled as I thought about the fact that we were headed for “the meeting of the waters.”
I tried to doze off, and was almost successful, when my thin eyelids were pierced with the flickering of a TV screen. The driver had put on a tourism tape of Brazil in general and Manaus in particular. There was no volume, but the images were so bright and stroby in the dark van that I thought I might have a seizure. I certainly couldn’t sleep, so I began to watch the tape, which was really very pretty and interesting. I tried to ignore the driver’s speed and clear my mind of everything that shouldn’t be there.
Everybody started waking up just as we pulled into the line for the ferry. If the driver had gone 1 mile an hour faster for 3 minutes every fifteen minutes, we would have made the one that we sadly watched pulling away. I had no idea how long before the next one came, but I was about to jump out of my skin.
Our time had been eaten up and then some. But what were our current alternatives? When the ferry finally came and began to load, I got these pictures of the little harbor and the beautiful floating houses.
The ferry trip to Manaus was not near as much fun as it was coming over, due to the rain, our lateness and the uncertainty of Robo. Meanwhile, Pettus was carrying on as if the world were spinning perfectly on its axis, checking everything out like an interested meerkat, while every now and then giving her old man a little pat.
The driver knew we were gonna meet Cassio at the Opera House in Manaus, and had we been ANY faster at all (especially those critical pre-ferry minutes lost) we would have had time to see it a little bit. As it was, I got the Cliff’s Notes version from Cassio, who had been standing there for about 45 minutes: “Opera House is old and pretty, and we are proud of it. The ships around the base of this statue represent the nations that have come into Brazil, and affected it.”
The plaza was tiled with the incredible Brazilian sidewalk style, this design different from the one we had seen in Rio at Copacabana.
Pretty cool, eh? I’d love to have it at my house. This shot of Robo talking to Cassio about God-knows-what should accurately reflect how he felt. The look he’s giving me (?) or not (?), it’s hard to tell, is one of Alec Baldwin being hounded by paparazzi.
This church on the other side of the street was nice. See Pettus running for the van with Robo standing in front. No telling where MawMaw was. Probably inside, ready to go to the waters.
We had to really book it to make the waters. As for the intermitttent rain, Cassio informed us that the guy wouldn’t take us out there in it. Getting there fast was even more important. So of course our driver crept to the boat landing, while I thought I was gonna vibrate my left leg off. Robo said he was gonna stay in the car at first, but after we had all left and it was just him and the driver, he suddenly popped out of the van and indicated that he had changed his mind.
The landing was lined with little sheds containing food and drinks. We went inside one place that Cassio knew, and I didn’t pass up the bathroom. Jean got some water and didn’t pass up hers, either. The rain was still holding off.
Cassio led us down the ramp to our boat. These beautiful shots lay in between.
The boat was there when we got to the bottom of the ramp. Cassio gave us all life jackets and hustled us into the boat. The captain pulled out and sped to the left. The meeting was not far away at all.
The Captain was probably a member of that fundamentalist sect that Carol had told me about, judging by the phrase on the back of his chair. It reminded me of the old “God is my co-pilot” days. I believe it translates to “God is with me.”
The meeting was upon us! It was the craziest thing ever. The Captain sailed around and around letting us feel both waters, one being even more chilly than ususal: about 15 degrees cooler than the Negro. The visual difference was incredible. I could see how it would be very neat to see it from a small plane, and follow the two waters down until they merged.
Pettus’ reaction was pretty much standard for the rest of us. Even Robo perked up for this natural oddity of a lifetime.
Okay, we had seen it, it was fantastic, and it was time to go. That’s the problem with things like the meeting of the waters: how long do you stay after you’ve seen it and touched it and know what it does? I guess we could have followed it for a while, but it would have been useless unless we followed it to the real merge in the Amazon River. It was unforgettable nevertheless.
On the way back to the landing, these boats sailing at the juncture presented themselves for capture. Notice the Solimões in the background. So very cool.
The lifering was really nice and offered an interesting picture. The primary colors are unbelievably irresistible to me. I think they hit people on a subconscious level, being as all the colors come from these three. Everything in threes. One of the fantastic mysteries of life.
We pulled into the dock, which was jammed with boats, none in slips of any kind, and upon debarking, encountered this charming little girl and her father. I asked if she would mind me taking a picture, and Dad said no.
I like his gaucho-style hat, and look a those incredibly straight, white teeth. Where did they come from? Heredity?
We said goodbye to the captain, obrigadoe’d the shit out of everybody and headed up the landing to the bus. The little cafés were an interesting picture–the last one I took on the trip. After this, the camera went into the bag and stayed there until it woke up in Birmingham.
We had to hit the road fast in order to get to the airport in time to check in for our TAM flight. The amazing thing is, the minute we were all loaded in the van, the bottom fell out, and it rained like it hadn’t all week. Great for us to have been able to see the meeting, but bad because it was a proven fact that our driver hated going fast in the rain.
The clock ticked on. My leg started jiggling again, and I tried to divert my attention with anything. This skeevy resort on the left with the gigantic sign of cutout letters spelling PLAYBOY in their logotype was fun. Looked like a hot pillow joint that aspired to be more. I pointed it out to Robo, knowing how he loved the Brazilian take on intellectual property. He snorted.
In a couple of minutes we actually pulled up to the airport that wasn’t crowded, with a parking place for us right on the curb. It was time to pay the pipers for the outing. Uh oh.