Second day in the Amazon--swimming with pink dolphins

After a fantastic breakfast that resembled what we had eaten in Salvador and Rio, we had a short rest before our next outing: feeding and swimming with the famous Rio Negro Pink Dolphins. (They deserve initial caps in their title.)

Our guide for the outing was Cassio again, assisted by one of the darker Brazilians who was piloting the staff boat from that morning. It was neat to begin to piece together the people who made the place go--kind of like your first days at camp. Hell, not KIND of--it was JUST LIKE camp! The counselors began to show themselves: Cassio, Marino (whom we had met the night before at dinner), and Elmo (whom we hadn't met yet). And the junior counselors were Sebastian, the dark guy with us on this outing, and the guy who had taken us on our daylight cruise.

The scenery along the Rio Negro was really neat and beautiful in a time-frozen way. The first thing we saw was a boat under construction. It looks just like something from old Greece. The concept hasn't really changed, has it?

On our outing with us were Yavor and Natacha, and an Indian family we had only briefly met the night before: a father, his stylish and sexy wife, and two lovely daughters. The dad looked like anybody you may have worked with. His wife was open, expressive, and she dressed incredibly, as did her daughters. Her fashion could be described as very modern and Western styled with the very best of Indian influence to give it individuality. I didn't know their names at the time, but they became best friends with all of us international jungleers, especially given that they all spoke flawless English.

The trip to the dolphins was laced with fantastic Rio Negro sights.

It was a riot to hear Jean and Pettus say "gelo." In order to avoid ridicule from the natives, I never said the word.

This floating house was cool. If I were a location scout for big movies, I'd say we had found our place to shoot the scene where Huck finds Pap dead. Yeah?

I guess not everybody loves us. Who was this guy shooting the bird at? Me with my big fat American camera and blubberous countenance? The Anavilhanas Lodge for some reason? The guys on the boat for "selling out" to the tourist trade? Or was he trying to sleep and the motor on the boat woke him up? In reality, he was probably mad to see anybody that didn't belong there, because strangers represent the beginning of the end of life as he knows it. I just hoped it wasn't me in particular. He probably had connections with Iemanjá.

Cool cool sights abounded. Almost Gilligan's Islandey. And don't think I'm not aware of the plethora of TV references I base things on.


Except on Gilligan's Island, nobody would be able to figure out how to make any of those boats go anywhere. The professor was really a professor of literature.

Here's a great shot Pettus took of the intrepid crew. I love the way the youngest Valecha girl was trying to "get out of the shot," meanwhile making herself more conspicuous. It's always fun when that happens. It's odd, though, because her mother was shooting video at the time. What a dilemma! What a polite young lady. She deferred to Pettus' picture over her mother's video.

And then Yavor turned around and took our picture with his camera.


We began to pull into the place where the dolphins were. There was a humongous party boat right there with nary a soul partying on it. The kids were cute as hell, and at least THEY were glad to see us. Hmmmph.

We all got out of the boat that had pulled up onto the sand enough to get my socks 'n' Crocs wet, marveling at the little portlet (NOT Port-o-Let. I said PORTLET, meaning  "a little bitty port") we had landed in. The dolphin place was the first house on the right. This lovable dog and dolphin greeted us.

Inside the little house was an older lady and her daughter and grandchildren, it looked like to me. I don't know how she got possession of the dolphins unless she started this way back when, and the dolphins know to go there. There were a couple of ice chests with drinks in them, and she was selling some kinds of homemade food, in addition to the dolphin food.

On "I don't know how she got possession of the dolphins unless she started this way back when, and the dolphins know to go there."  You may have deliberately skipped over this, but the back story was that the place was originally a restaurant. When they cleaned fish each day, they would throw the remains into the river. The dolphins soon figured out where to get a free meal. As the appearance of the dolphins became a predictable occurrence, people started to come just to see the dolphins. Today, the owners spend most of their time at their villa on the Italian Riviera, paying the old lady and a street urchin two reais a day to preserve the character and ambience of the place.

OK... the part about the rich owners is just speculation. Back to real info: It was interesting that they do limit the hours they'll allow visitors to feed the dolphins so they don't forget how to survive in the wild.

The dish of the day was piranha, and it was for sale by the old lady. Obviously, food for us came with the outing, because Cassio appeared on the dock behind us with a huge bag of it.

Pretty soon, everybody was seated and standing around the dock in time to see the dolphins make their entrance. I think Cassio stomped on the dock a couple of times or something, but surely they were picking up the scent of piranha. I know I was.

Of course, the one on the right immediately reminded me of Spike.

They don't call it the Rio Negro for nothing. It is as black as it looks in the picture. And anything in it looks tea-colored, so this ramped up the pink effect of the dolphins. But when you could see them out of the water, it was obvious that they were really pink. Not all over, but splotchy pink, mainly on their undersides, like they had vitiligo, Michael Jackson's disorder.

 I guess feeding them would be a good prelude to swimming with them. That is, of course, unless they mistook certain body parts and fatty areas as more food. For that reason, I was slightly wary and had to screw up my courage to swim with them. But we had to feed them first. The long snouts are really long alligator like jaws with supposedly benign teeth. But I didn't want any teeth snapping on my money-earning fingers, so was rather the pussy about the whole thing. By this time, Robo had commandeered the camera and began taking these flattering pictures.

Jean was much braver than I was. Look at her hand so close to that mouth. Once it let me know it wanted the fish, I let go.