Who put a city here?

This river is getting big - the container port of Manaus

We arrived to a beautiful dawn this morning in Manaus, to discover a city of 1.4 million sweaty Brasilians (yup, its hot here - 35°C or so), parked in the middle of the jungle. What it is doing here, we´re not exactly sure, but there can be no doubt of its impact - 200km of deforestation upstream and downstream, and no virgin jungle for at least 100km in any direction. 1.4 million is a lot of people. And similarly, there is no doubt that this river is getting big either - there was a container ship parked in the port unloading this morning when we arrived, more than 1500km from the ocean! Gives you an idea of what we´re dealing with.

Manaus is where the Brasilian Amazon officially starts. Here, the dark coloured Rio Negro and the milky white coloured Rio Solimonés join to form the mighty river - the slow mixing of the two rivers over many kilometres downstream is quite a sight. And for us, downstream is where we are going as well - there´s a boat with our name on it due to sale at 3pm today. And thus, without further ado, I think I´ll rush off and get some more stuff done before returning to the hammock once again!