Tuesday, April 8, 2014, we docked at Manaus, the largest city (2 million) in the Amazon. There are no roads to Manaus; everything has to come in by ship or by plane. Manaus is on a tributary of the Amazon called the Rio Negro (Black River). As you would guess, the water in the Rio Negro is dark, just like our lakes back home. The water in the Amazon, by contrast, is cafe au lait, otherwise called muddy. Where the Rio Negro meets the Amazon the contrast is striking. This phenomenon is called "the meeting of the waters" (see pictures below).
Strangely, this sharp line of demarcation between the two colours goes for miles without mixing. This phenomenon has something to do with the two different temperatures and flow rates of the two rivers.
Manaus was very prosperous back in the late 1800's because of rubber that the harvested from the rubber trees in the Amazon. There was so much money that one do the rubber barons built a beautiful, large OperaHouse equivalent to any of the best in Europe at that time. It was finished, at great expense, just as synthetic rubber was discovered and the local rubber boom went bust. So, the beautiful opera house was never used until the 1970's when it was restored and put back in service. Here are some pictures.
Walking back to the ship from the Opera House we stopped in at a supermarket and bought 6 beers, a bottle of water and some toothpaste for a grand total of 11.44 reals, which is about $6.00 Canadian. I love this place.
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