More nature-touristing (is totally a word)

So, this past week I've mostly hung out and did a few tourist-y things.

(I'm gonna say right away in the beginning: most of these pictures are taken with my phone, because I'm not super comfortable carrying around my proper camera, which I realised is not only the most expensive thing I have with me here, but also probably the most expensive thing I own at all. Also there's something wrong with the (8Gb) momory card of the camera, so I can take about 70 pictures before it informs me that the card is full, despite the fact that the only things on it are the 70 images.)

First of all, I went to Bosque da Ciência (science grove, or something). It's a park area, and it's actually within the INPA (where I'm going to study soon) campus. So it's their science park thing.

I'm like to put here pictures of some turtles and some manatees (hey have manatees in the Amazon!, is a thing I learned. I had somehow never realised there's more than the one species that lives in the Mississippi.), but those pictures mostly show light reflecting off the water surface, so yeah.

But here's some really weird-looking fish

and some... crocodilian skulls. I'm not  actually sure if they're crocodiles or alligators or caimans or what in the Amazon.

And what I understood to be the biggest leaf ever collected for the Amazonian collection in Basil. It's like 2.5 m tall and 1.4 m wide. So yeah. That's a big leaf.

And a toad in a jar. Or possibly a frog. I don't know. Some kind of an amphibian.
A cane toad, apparently, tells me Wikipedia when I google the name visible in the picture.





(I also ate my first ice cream of the trip there.)

Ok. The following day I went out onto the river again, this time up Rio Negro, to this place called Ecopark, that's actually on the premises of this pretty much paradise hotel. You know, fancy huts people live in, and a beach, and extremely good food, and some naturals pools to swim in, if you'd rather swim in the shade than out on the sunny river from the beach. And far enough from the city that nature was pretty much everywhere.
Ok, so Ecopark. There were monkeys. Here (these pictures are actually taken with a proper camera):

 You know, I'm realising I could actually put some fotos on Facebook too. I wonder why I haven't done that yet. That might be a more logical place for all the pictures. I guess I want you guys to get them first!

Also, there was a stretch of a very small river on our way, and we happened to spot a sloth in a tree right at the... bank? I mean, it wasn't actually on the bank, because the tree it was on grew straight out of the water near the bank. I guess when if the water was lower it would have been on a bank.







We also went even farther up the river to Museu do Seringal (aka rubber museum) that told about how rubber was harvested from the trees somewhere along the river. There was this rich family who brought people from farther away to work for them in really bad conditions and stuff, so they could then sell the rubber. Anyway, I found all the animals way more interesting.
And then, just as we were about to leave the museum, it started raining. So we sat in the tiny motor boat for forty minutes in the downpour on the way back. And once the rain stopped, the wind started up and the waves were huge. And we were in a tiny motor boat. That kind of thing.
(Right, I forgot to say, I was there with the person I'm living with here, and a couple of her friends, one of who apparently is a vet at the Ecopark, taking care of the monkeys. So there were four of us in the boat that was a pretty much a four-person boat. So that's the size I'm talking about when I say tiny. Most of the boats I've seen on the river have been bigger.)

Ok, and then yesterday.
Yesterday I went to MUSA, Museu da Amazôias. Which is a botanical garden at the very northern parts of the city. There was a tower there, where you could see above the canopy of the rainforest. And I can tell you, the canopy is very high in a tropical rainforest. There were 242 steps. Since you want to know anyway. Here's the view (with the phone camera again):

Down from the tower.
I also have a panorama picture of the actual view, but apparently blogspot doesn't like panoramas, so you're not getting to see it.
And besides, I think it might not be so good anyway, because you should look at it pretty close to be able to see it properly, so it would be shown too small on a blog anyway.







I also went to see Coco yesterday. In Portuguese. Because this is a country that dubs almost literally everything. Almost meaning if you're lucky, you might catch a screening of a subtitled instead of a dubbed version of some popular movie with actual actors.
But animations work fine dubbed, so it was all good. And I understood enough to perfectly well keep up with what was going on, though I probably missed the best jokes. Either way, I do need to see it in English before I can quite tell how good it is. But you should go see it.

Ok. Bye.

~matu