A backlit squirrel monkey poses for Mark’s camera.
It was first described as a cross between a seal and a hippo, though it’s not related to either. Douglas Adams more aptly portrayed it as ‘not so much like a seal as like a travelling case for carrying a seal in’. There is nothing else quite like this perfect piece of evolutionary engineering in the world.
In the old days, when men were men and manatees were much more common, sailors used to confuse them with mermaids. Or so they say (the word ‘sirenian’ comes from the seductive ‘siren’ of Greek mythology – part-woman, part-fish). I like manatees, a lot, but I’m not sure I’d be so keen on a 400-kilo marine temptress with a bristly face.
Clearly, it’s not just zoologists who’ve been drinking too much.
Manatee-ologists say that the Amazonian manatee is active both during the day and at night. But ‘active’ is probably too strong a word. It is spectacular mainly for its single-minded determination to do everything as slowly and calmly as possible.
Either an Amazonian manatee or a travelling case for carrying a seal in.
Oh, and it is vegetarian (not that there’s anything wrong with being vegetarian – I’m just saying so by way of introduction).
The Brazilians call it the peixe-boi, or ox-fish, which pretty much sums it up.
On the plus side, it is a mammal and that means it has to breathe air. This is where things start to get pretty exciting. When it rises to the surface of the river to take a breath, it pokes its bristly snout nearly a centimetre into the tropical world outside for as long as a second at a time. Few people have seen this happen in the wild (a manatee can stay submerged for twenty minutes, which means there are often tediously long gaps between bouts of such awe-inspiring activity) but, needless to say, most of them have never forgotten it.
Despite weeks of trying, Douglas and I had failed to see one all those years ago. Actually, that’s not strictly true. Our jungle guide saw a manatee disappear beneath the surface of a remote tributary of the Rio Negro, I saw the ripples after it had disappeared, and Douglas nearly saw the ripples. We consoled ourselves with the thought that we’d more or less breathed the same air as a manatee.
Stephen and I were determined to do even better.
But first a bit of luxury. The roughing it, the creepy-crawlies, the piranhas-for-breakfast survival cuisine, the jungle-borne diseases and the frightening lack of electrical sockets to plug in Stephen’s Apple Mac could all come later. Stephen, like Douglas Adams before him, was more used to comfortable hotel rooms larger than my flat. Like reintroducing an orphaned manatee to the wild, he had to be habituated first. Some things definitely call for a warm-up.
So we courageously booked ourselves into the surprisingly comfortable Tropical Hotel, on the outskirts of Manaus, and bivouacked for the night in our air-conditioned hotel rooms.
‘We’ were seven of us altogether. We’d brought a BBC film crew with us (although they’d probably say it was the other way round – they brought us) to make a TV series about our adventures: Stephen and I, a four-person team from the UK and translator Marina Barahona De Brito. We were planning to meet up with Ivano Cordeiro, our Fixer, in a few days’ time. We didn’t have a baggage handler or a chef or a masseuse, but with the BBC determined to cut costs we thought we’d try and muddle through.
Manaus is the biggest city in the world’s biggest forest. While much of the Amazon Basin remains unexplored, this particular part of it has been very heavily explored indeed – not least by coach-loads of tourists. It’s the launch pad for a motley collection of half-day, full-day, several-day and one-week jungle adventures.
The salmon-coloured opera house, or Amazon Theatre, is so out of place in Manaus it might as well be on the moon.
Surrounded by rainforest and water, some 1,450 kilometres (906 miles) from the open ocean, the city sprawls along the Rio Negro near its confluence with the Rio Solimões.
These two great rivers have different densities, temperatures and speeds, so they run side by side for several kilometres without mixing. You can actually see a distinct line between them – the dark, Guinness-coloured water of the Negro on one side and the light-brown café-au-lait-coloured Solimões on the other. After years of creative thinking, brainstorming and lively debate by an army of geographers, strategic planners, publicity agents and marketing consultants, the powers that be decided to call it the ‘Meeting of the Waters’.
Sprawling into the surrounding jungle – the city of Manaus.
Eventually, the two rivers grudgingly begin to mix, creating all sorts of intriguing whorls and eddies more like an Impressionist painting. And when they’ve finished, they form the mighty Amazon.
The city itself is best known for its sumptuously grand, salmon-coloured opera house. The Teatro Amazonas, or Amazon Theatre, was completed in 1896 at a time when Manaus was a rubber boomtown and temporarily had an overblown status in the world economy. With its exuberant red velvet seats, crystal chandeliers, Brazilian wood (polished and carved in Europe), Italian marble and 36,000 individually decorated ceramic tiles, it is so out of place amid the hot and humid streets of utilitarian, grime-coloured buildings it might as well be on the moon.
But the best thing about Manaus is the fish market (I realise that only a zoologist – or a fisherman – would have the audacity to say anything so ridiculous). I would never normally admit this to anyone, but I really do like fish markets, despite having to get out of bed at an ungodly hour to see them at their best.
Anyway, there’s no denying that the warehouse-sized fish market in Manaus is in a league of its own: a five-star deluxe version unparalleled by fish markets in lesser parts of the world. It’s not all sweetness and light (it also bears testimony to the industrial-sized fishing fleets now monopolising the market and openly flouting laws and regulations designed to protect Amazonian fish stocks), but it’s worth losing a few hours’ kip for.
The imaginatively named ‘Meeting of the Waters’.
But here’s the thing: it is far and away the best place to see some of the most peculiar and unbelievable fish you could ever imagine in your wildest dreams. A temple to biodiversity, it’s the next best thing to a lifetime of diving in the Amazon (except, of course, all the stars of the show are dead) and gives a wonderful insight into an ecosystem that harbours half of all the freshwater fish species in the world.
Manaus fish market, or Mercado Municipal Adolpho Lisboa to give it its proper name, is a bustling place. Every morning, as many as 100 fishing boats dump their colourful catches into large wooden boxes on the shore of the Rio Negro and then porters run, literally, with these heavyweight aquatic menageries balanced precariously on their heads. They race along the wobbly wooden jetty floating on metal drums, up the concrete steps, over the road and into the white-tiled market. There to meet them in the gloomy light, illuminated only by 15-watt bulbs hanging from a web