Around midnight, we saw a feint orange glow miles upriver, lighting up a small corner of an otherwise dark landscape, where the only other light was the subtle shine of the river and the myriad stars up above. It took us another hour to make out the town properly, as we came around a bend in the river. Then, as we got closer, it was easy to see that the town was in festival mode. The square and the streets along the banks of the river were crowded, and music reached us across the water. Closer in, an orderly line of taxi canoes, each with a red marker light stern-side, came zooming towards our boat to escort us in.
Saying farewell to an American journalist and Brazilian student translator I'd met on board, and who I would bump into again several times in the next couple of days, I walked into the centre of town to look for a place to stay. The first hotel was charging an expensive three-night festival package, the second had its doors closed and nobody answering, the third was a dirty little place with a hallway leading directly onto the street but was full anyway, and the fourth (after I ditched my backpack behind a shed to avoid me lugging it around anymore) miraculously had a room available, but I had to leave by eight in the morning. It was already two, so six hours didn't seem long, but it would get me through the night.
I ended up being able to keep my room for both my nights in Barcelos, and the bonus was that it ended up being the cleanest, most modern place on my Amazon trip so far, with an incredible view up the Rio Negro and across to a long white beach on the other side of the river.
After an inauspicious start, I ended up really enjoying Barcelos, a well-organised, friendly and lively little place in a beautiful natural setting.
View from my hotel. Typical Amazon houses in the foreground. The Rio Negro upstream behind.
Boats lined up on the banks- many of the larger and posher ones were here for the festival.
In this creek, there were always lots of covered motorised canoes. They serve as the homes of families involved in fishing and transportation, with too little money to build a house. With kids on board, conditions looked crowded.
Radio Rio Negro.
Bundles of Piaçaba, a palm fibre collected from the forest and used in basket-making.
The local church. The pastor is a large Gaúcho from the Germanic south of Brazil.
Bikes are a popular mode of transport in this small town.
Tent to inform people about dengue fever, but with the local festival going on nobody seemed interested.
Row of taxi boats and the beach on the far side.
Frank, one of the taxi drivers. They were always polite and good-humoured. And I was impressed- it was compulsory for everyone to wear a life jacket on the boat.
Arriving at the beach.
It stretched for a kilometer downstream. Effectively a sand bar, it had water on all sides and gets covered during high water season.
The waters were great to swim in. The tea-colour comes from tannin from decomposed leaves, not pollution. It's perfectly clean, but when you open your eyes under water, they begin to sting from the high acidity of the water. This is what stops mosquitos from breeding on the Rio Negro- in a week in the Amazon, I've only been bitten once and have rarely seen mosquitos.
There was a row of beach huts with thatched rooves.
Friendly employee of Barraca do Enis, below fried plantain chips.
Barbequed Pacú river fish.
Father and daughter at their beach hut.
Around the back, kids were playing on canoes- learning a useful skill for the future.
Baré- the Guaraná brand in the Amazon.
Apart from listening to music in the evening on the square, I was going to miss the main part of the festival, as I had another boat to catch upriver after a couple of nights in Barcelos. However, on a walk around town, I saw a glimpse of the floats which were going to be used in a parade- related to the Rio Negro and its ornamental fish which are sold onto foreign markets for use in aquariums (apparently the trade has diminished over the years due to tougher regulations in Brazil and competition from other countries in Africa and Asia, but the festival still lives on).
Here was some sort of rehearsal taking place in the sports hall.
As I waited on the banks for my boat to arrive, I watched a young group from Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, (a town upriver) dress up in native costumes. Some of them were representing the Yanomami tribe, who paint their bodies black. Generally, there was lots of laughter and fooling around going on!
When the group came on-shore, I got chatting to Inara and Yanuri. Both have spent their whole lives in Sao Gabriel. Inara was the town's beauty queen last year and this is her first trip to Barcelos, with which she is not very impressed! Next year, she hopes to move to Natal to live with her aunt. Yanuri is extremely bored of life in Sao Gabriel and has dreams of visiting the capitals of Europe and experiencing cold weather.
View from my hotel. Typical Amazon houses in the foreground. The Rio Negro upstream behind.
Boats lined up on the banks- many of the larger and posher ones were here for the festival.
In this creek, there were always lots of covered motorised canoes. They serve as the homes of families involved in fishing and transportation, with too little money to build a house. With kids on board, conditions looked crowded.
Radio Rio Negro.
Bundles of Piaçaba, a palm fibre collected from the forest and used in basket-making.
The local church. The pastor is a large Gaúcho from the Germanic south of Brazil.
Bikes are a popular mode of transport in this small town.
Tent to inform people about dengue fever, but with the local festival going on nobody seemed interested.
Row of taxi boats and the beach on the far side.
Frank, one of the taxi drivers. They were always polite and good-humoured. And I was impressed- it was compulsory for everyone to wear a life jacket on the boat.
Arriving at the beach.
It stretched for a kilometer downstream. Effectively a sand bar, it had water on all sides and gets covered during high water season.
The waters were great to swim in. The tea-colour comes from tannin from decomposed leaves, not pollution. It's perfectly clean, but when you open your eyes under water, they begin to sting from the high acidity of the water. This is what stops mosquitos from breeding on the Rio Negro- in a week in the Amazon, I've only been bitten once and have rarely seen mosquitos.
There was a row of beach huts with thatched rooves.
Friendly employee of Barraca do Enis, below fried plantain chips.
Barbequed Pacú river fish.
Father and daughter at their beach hut.
Around the back, kids were playing on canoes- learning a useful skill for the future.
Baré- the Guaraná brand in the Amazon.
Apart from listening to music in the evening on the square, I was going to miss the main part of the festival, as I had another boat to catch upriver after a couple of nights in Barcelos. However, on a walk around town, I saw a glimpse of the floats which were going to be used in a parade- related to the Rio Negro and its ornamental fish which are sold onto foreign markets for use in aquariums (apparently the trade has diminished over the years due to tougher regulations in Brazil and competition from other countries in Africa and Asia, but the festival still lives on).
Here was some sort of rehearsal taking place in the sports hall.
As I waited on the banks for my boat to arrive, I watched a young group from Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, (a town upriver) dress up in native costumes. Some of them were representing the Yanomami tribe, who paint their bodies black. Generally, there was lots of laughter and fooling around going on!
When the group came on-shore, I got chatting to Inara and Yanuri. Both have spent their whole lives in Sao Gabriel. Inara was the town's beauty queen last year and this is her first trip to Barcelos, with which she is not very impressed! Next year, she hopes to move to Natal to live with her aunt. Yanuri is extremely bored of life in Sao Gabriel and has dreams of visiting the capitals of Europe and experiencing cold weather.
As I was taking this photo, the sister ship to the Genesis III was pulling up, so I had to dash. I wished the rest of the group good luck and when I mentioned I was going to their home town, I got an instant cheer and a spontaneous though somewhat disorganised rendition of their performance in the street. A great welcome to what would be my next destination, forty hours from here up the Rio Negro.
