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Going down the Amazon River
in 1998
BRAZIL
Bec2004-09-19 14:59:57
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Tabatinga
This is where I got off the turbo launch from Iquitos and set foot in Brazil.
The last time I entered Brazil, it was from Paraguay by crossing the Amizade bridge over the Paraná river in the far south of the country. There, I stayed in the nearby modern town of Foz do Iguaçu and visited the great Iguaçu waterfalls and the huge Itaipu hydro dam, said to be the world's largest (12 000 megawatts).
Primitive Tabatinga and empty, wild Amazonia are so different from the densely populated and developed south that one could think of being in another country were it not for the Portuguese language. I stayed a few days in the Cristina Hotel (8.5 $US) and visited nearby Leticia in Colombia while waiting for the Manaus riverboat.
Vendors in the local market speak Portuguese but understand Spanish.
It is of historical interest to note that Brazil would have been Spanish speaking had not Pope Alexander VI decreed in 1493 that all lands discovered east of an arbitrary "line of demarcation" should belong to Portugal. Indeed, Brazil was discovered in January 1500 by the Spanish explorer Vincente Yáńez Pinzón who touched land near Recife and explored the coast all the way up to the mouth of the Orinoco (now in Venezuela). Respectfully obeying the Pope's will, Spain did not claim this huge territory but left that privilege to Portugal who did so a few months later when the Portuguese mariner Pedro Alvares Cabral, who had been blown off his course for Cape Horn and the Indies, made an accidental landfall 500 kms south of today's Salvador.
I arrived in Tabatinga at a rather primitive landing but left it from this modern dock on the riverboat "Don Manoel" which was about the same size but not as nice as the "Voyager III" shown here.
Rio Amazonas
This gravel laden barge was worth a shot for there is not much traffic on the upper Amazon.
...
See photographs from:
Brazil Gallery
