Gringos no more

Sitting on a couch in an internet cafe, reading my Portugese phrasebook, I was surprised when the tall young Brazilian extended his hand to me and, quoting that great modern philosopher, Axel Rose, said with a smile on his face, "Welcome to the Jungle". Welcome to the jungle indeed.....

We are here, deep in the heart of the Amazonian jungle, in the Brazilian town of Tefé, on the banks of the Amazon (known as the Rio Solimonés locally) after taking a flight from the border at Leticia, Colombia, last night. As much as we were loath to do it, there was unfortunately no choice in the matter - the jungle trip that we have booked leaves tomorrow morning, and obviously it wasn´t really going to wait for us. After making many, many enquires in the twin border towns of Leticia, Colombia, and Tabatinga, Brazil, we came to the conclusion that there was simply no other way - the fast boat down the river only runs once a week, and pretty much all the other boats were too slow, taking two days or more that we didn´t have. And so yesterday afternoon we made our way out to the airport and got a standby seat on the only flight out of town...

...which brought us deep into the heart of the Brazilian jungle. Unfortunately, that also means that we have left spanish-speaking latin-america far behind us, and are now in the territory of the portugeuse - yes, it is official, we are no longer "gringos". Its a pity really, we were just starting to come to terms with gringodom - our spanish had reached a level where we could have quite a decent conversation with people, which was very nice indeed. The more spanish we spoke, the easier and more enjoyable the travelling became - in particular, we found that we could do a lot more than just having to rely on the guidebook. In Colombia it was especially good and our two days in Leticia were particularly pleasant: we found the Colombians to be very friendly, honest people, who just like to sit down and have a chat for a while - we spent an hour or more talking to a local tour operator we befriended while we were waiting at the airport for our flight. For all its problems, Colombia certaintly seems like a place that would be fantastic to visit.

But all that is behind us now, and we have to start again from zero with Portugese. Well, not completely from zero - the two languages are related quite closely. We have found that people here generally understand us when we talk to them in Spanish, and on paper Portugese looks pretty similar to Spanish. But wait until someone speaks back to you, and the description in the guidebook comes to mind "portugese sounds like a drunk frenchman trying to speak spanish". Its all just a blur of rhythmic noise to us, the dominant sound of which is the drunken "shhh". Still, we are able to get somewhere, after much speaking slowly on our part, and much repetition on their part......

And so we are now deep in Brazil. The switch of languages aside, things are still quite different from the Peruvian lowlands. First of all, the people look quite different - they seem to be darker and taller (or maybe its just that more women wear heels!) than the peruvians, and definitely dress much more european. There is also a lot more diversity here, with people of european, indigenous and african descent all mixed together in one big continuum of colours, faces, and styles. And culturally it is very different too - we got our first genuine taste of Capoeira, the brazilian martial art/dance form (its sort of a cross between a fight and a dance - you really have to see it to sort of comprehend how it works), last night in the main plaza: at the centre of a circle of people, two sweet drenched coco-skinned locals were wheeling around each other to the accompaning rhythmical african beat. As one person would tire, another would take their place, challenging the victor, and so on for an hour or more in a continuous flow of incredible, acrobatic dance. And of course, then there´s the food - lots of strange fruits from the jungle that you´ve never heard of before. Can anyone tell me what a cupu looks like? All I know is that the juice is quite good.... (Dorthe wishes to point out that she disagrees with that statement!)

Tomorrow we head into the jungle proper - five days in Mamiraua Sustainable Development Ecoreserve, just north of Tefé. We then return to the big river, and head downstream through Manaus on a fast track for the ocean. Where, and when, the next posting will come from, we don´t know. But rest assured, it will talk of lots of strange animals, insects, and plants from the depths of the jungle.