That's what it looks like where the Rio Negro meets the Rio Solimões, one clear and dark, the other cloudy and light. Right here.
The NYT has a travel story up about Manaus. It talks about cupuaçu, a fruit that I find to be too sweet and musky (I like umbu, which is a lot more sour), the opera house (which everyone seems to know about, but not necessarily the stories of well-off women sending their opera clothes abroad to be properly laundered), and has a brief mention of the boi-bumbá, a local incarnation of a festival dance.
One of life's great pleasures... dancing boi-bumbá on the shores of the Amazon, under the stars.
Correctly, the article recommends eating tambaqui and tucunaré (piranha are too greasy and bony), but fail to say that the best way to have them - or your pirarucu - is with something called pirão, which is like a loose polenta, but made with manioc flour and fish stock.
The slide show focuses mostly on the dock and the market, and doesn't really have a good shot of the three decker boats, with hammocks crowded side-by-side for the journeys up and down river to towns that can only be reached by boat. Nary a picture of the floating gas stations, looking like little houseboats but for the Shell sign and red and yellow paint. It's worth a watch anyway, especially for the shot of the man carrying the 200 pound pirarucu.
There is absolutely no mention of the much-feared candirú.
Too bad. I always enjoy telling people about the candirú, even more than telling them about the trypanosoma cruzi.
Posted by binky at March 30, 2006 06:51 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Latin AmericaThat's quite possibly the scariest fish ever. Who knew something so tiny could be so terrifying?
Posted by: Armand at March 30, 2006 09:15 PM | PERMALINK