A Whole Year of River Level Statistics!

Yes! It's true! I have now amassed 365 (366?) days worth of river level data, and to prove it, here's the graph. The level peaked at 28.62 metres on 19th June (2007: 28.18m) and has now started receding, not unlike my hair. We have already lost a whole millimetre.

We now have two good months to get out on the river and mess about in our boats. By September, we'll have lost around 4 metres, and then in September we'll lose another 4 or more, making the igapo unnavegable, but revealing the Rio Negro's lovely beaches.

There, now wasn't that worth waiting for..?

Adoption

A lot of people have asked us about how we’re doing with this. Well, it’s taken us a year to get to the point where we have some sort of verifiable income, so now we feel we can proceed. We are at the stage of putting the paperwork together, and then we will be approaching the children and young persons agency here to register our interest. This will hopefully happen before the end of July. After that we need to go through the hoops of interviews, assessments etc., and when we emerge at the other end we will hopefully then be eligible to adopt and be placed on the register. The whole process is a bit long-winded but there are other things going on at the same time which may shorten the process somewhat. I’ll provide a further update when some progress has been made. Thanks to all for asking.

Wildlife update

We found this earthworm trying to get into the house the other day. There’s a pound coin there for perspective, and I guess the thing was about a metre in length. That’s some worm. He was rescued after his photo shoot and deposited gently at the bottom of the garden.

The other shot is of an impressive chap we found lurking on a wall when we visited the town of Rio Preta da Eva (80km East of Manaus). Nothing available for perspective, but I would estimate his body length at about 4 inches head to tail.

Kelly, our Heinz 57, had a bit of a fight the other night when she unearthed a Common Opossum near the chapeu de palha. Poor thing (I mean the Opossum) was pretty beaten up by the time we got there, but lived to tell the tale after we pulled Kelly - who is not much bigger - off it. Kelly will eat anything (hence having to rescue the worm, too), although she’s not stupid enough (yet) to have a go at snakes. She found one of those in the chapeu a few weeks ago, but apart from barking and growling at it until I got there, she didn’t attack it. Fortunately for all 3 of us, the snake did a runner as I approached.

Finally, our gardener, Claudionor, was bitten by a black scorpion last week while tidying the garden. Fortunately it was a relatively small one and he got away with losing the feeling in his right side for a few hours. Next time he has promised to wear his boots while working, rather than go barefoot. Good idea, methinks.

Trip to Casa da SIlva

Here are a few pics of our recent visit to Naice's parents house on the other side of the river. This was the first time we had tyaken our own boat, and although the total distance was 71km, it took us 3.5 hours to get there after a short-cut we took turned out to be blocked by floating grass (capim), and we had to paddle the boat through the igapo (flooded forest): it's all very well in a dug-out canoe with a wee motor you can haul inboard, but with a 6m aluminium boat with a 50hp 4-stroke stuck on the end of it it's a not-to-be-repeated ordeal involving cuts, bruises, extremely painful red ant bites (they don't call them fire ants for nothing) and profuse and profound cursing and sweating. On the way back...we got stuck again, this time in the middle of another floating grass blockage we couldn't avoid, but fortunately a young guy came past in a dugout and pulled us free. We avoided the same route we'd used on the outward leg and further problems were avoided. It still took us 3.5 hours, although knowing the way (and without getting stuck) I reckon we could do it in 2.5.

Anyway, once on the Rio Solimoes, and all the way through to the Rio Negro, the water was as calm as you like, and during the 10km crossing of the Solimoes, it was like being on a lake. Marvellous.

The next planned trip will be to the small town of Novo Airao, on the west bank of the Rio Negro, about 110km upstream of Manaus. There to find lunch and swim with the dolphins. I'm hoping we can do this before the end of July.

The pictures show a few of the igarapes we passed through, a couple with Naice. The others show journey's end (Casa da Silva), and Naice's parents and brother Romulo inspecting the boat.

Voltamos!

We are back on the air again, after a considerable amount of time waiting for the local telecomms company to sort out our phone line. It’s still not back to normal, but it will have to do. I know, I know – “But what about the river levels?” I hear you ask. Okay, well we’re approaching the peak water level now, which will occur on June 22nd. Although it’s higher than last year, it is not going to get anywhere near record-breaking levels. At present it’s sitting at around 28.6 metres (the Port Authority website is down at the moment – perhaps they’re having the same problem we had), and will probably rise to about 28.7 or thereabouts. Anyway, it’s high enough to make the those parts of the Amazon not normally reachable, reachable. We have about two months to make good use of this, so we have trips planned to Careiro do Castanho, Naice’s parents’ house via Anveres, and to Novo Airao. I’ll let you know how we get on.

I notice there seem to have been a number of visitors coming to us from China while we've been off the air, so hello to you and thanks for coming. I would write "hello" in Chinese, but don’t know where to begin – perhaps someone can help?

A lot has happened since my last post, so this will be a (relatively) long one. I would break it into smaller individual posts, but then someone will complain that they missed some of them. So you’ll just have to wade your way through it.

First of all, we’ve now been here a year, incredible though it may seem. We’ve had our ups and downs, but all in all we’re in pretty good shape. Financially, this month will be the first month we will break even on our costs, so we’re happy about that. Emotionally, I suppose I’m still struggling to adapt, but I’m definitely getting there. And anyway, when I’m having my doubts I only have to look out over the forest to feel good about the whole thing again. The house is in good shape, the dogs are fine, we’re in good health, we still have some money in the bank, the phone’s working again; the house, car, bike, boat and furniture are all paid for, and there’s food on the table. Can’t be bad, can it?

The challenge at present is to decide what direction we’re taking: opportunities have begun presenting themselves, and most of them are mutually exclusive. We’ll let you know what develops.

So what’s been happening? Well, we bought a mobile beer cooler (see earlier post), and I’ve passed my test to ride it. We’ve had lots of people staying at the guesthouse, and are fairly well booked up through to 6th July. The guesthouse website has been updated, and we’ve started charging in Brazilian Reais instead of the declining Greenback. We’ve had two wonderful guesthouse reviews written up on Trip Adviser, which is really nice. We’ve finished a third bedroom for ourselves downstairs, and I’ve been reasonably successfully wiring and/or re-wiring various bits and pieces (this 110v stuff is easy!). We’ve finally managed to stop the rain leaking into our office. Our beautiful Brasileira tree (I think it’s called a Brasileira) has been attacked by some sort of mite. I broke our Sky box, so now we have no TV. I also scraped the car, and a friend of ours reversed into it on the same day. This was after one of the brake discs cracked. Fun fun fun. We’ve managed to get Skype working with a landline call forwarding option now, so if you want to phone us for free you can (e-mail me if you want the details). Naice is starting two new courses this month – tourism and logistics management - and I’m well on with the soon-to-be-bestseller ‘The Wisdom of Oz’. Someone has put me forward for teaching Portuguese, which is at the very least amusing (well, probably not for the student), if not terrifying. We’ve had a couple of Golden Tegus (pic) visit the garden, as well as a rash of Sauim de Colera monkeys (pic). The horn and voltmeter on the boat have stopped working, but I’m sure I’ll get it sorted out soon (anyone know how to wire a voltmeter?), and I had to replace the prop after I pranged it on some iron rails. Tsk.

We had an old friend of mine visit us from Boa Vista, which was great fun and naturally led to much drinking and singing and what-have-you. Although he’s now gone back, there may be a joint project for us coming along, and I’m looking into this at the moment.

And I think that’s about it. To those of you awaiting an e-mail, our apologies. We figured we should do the blog first and then tackle the backlog. We will be catching everything up over the next week. We miss all of you back in Ireland. Yes, even you. So take it easy and enjoy your woefully inadequate summer, and remember we’re ready for your visit whenever you can come.