About the nature

I've been here for a while now. During that time I've had time to see quite a bit of the nature here. Not all that much, actually. I've mostly stayed in the city. But a bit. Been out on the river a few times. That kind of thing. I've talked about a bunch of things that have something to to with the nature. But not about everything. I think there are a couple of things that I haven't mentioned that somehow came as a surprise to me.

The first is about the river.
So as everyone knows, flooding is kind of a big deal when it comes to rivers. The Nile floods. The Tigris floods. That's why the people settled there thousands of years ago, because the flood brings with it fertile soil to grow crops on. And it comes every year, predictably, at the same time, and refreshes the fertility. I would guess the same thing in the Chinese rivers. The European rivers... I don't actually know if Thames or Seine or what are the big rivers in Europe, I'm not sure if they flood. But the really big rivers in the world have seasonal floods. And yet, somehow, I had not realised that the Amazon floods too. It had never even crossed my mind. Which is especially weird, because I think I had heard about the flooded forests around Amazon, and I still hadn't realised that the Amazon (and attached rivers, like rio Negro) flood. I don't know how that's possible.
Either way. It floods. And the difference in the water level at its highest and at its lowest is enormous. They measure the water level here, in Manaus harbor. It's checked daily, and has been for apparently over a hundred years. Because when you live in an area that floods, it's kind of important to keep track of how much the actually floods. And like I said, it's a lot. The difference in the water level is something like 10 meters between the highest and lowest levels (or 6-15 m during the 1900's, according to this article. That is a lot of meters.
What makes it more stunning is that the river is enormous. You need a lot of water to make the whole thing 10 meters higher. Not to mention the fact, that the area of land it covers when it's flooded is not only the main river channels. A ridiculously large area of forest is flooded every year. That is so much water.
I asked someone, weeks ago, where does all that water come from. Because the water level being higher in the spring in Finland is due to all the snow melting all at once, but the water level differences there are tiny compared to what it's here, and there is no snow to melt all at once. The answer was simple. There is a rainy season and a dry (= less rainy) season, and the difference in rainfall all around the area from where the water gathers in the Amazon is enough to make the water level change that much.
I still can't quite believe it. Because it's so much water.
But that's why you get the floating towns and building built on poles above the ground here. Because when the world around you floods, you still want your home to not flood. So floating is the way to go.

Here's a picture for you of a floating village. Somehow (I don't understand how it's possible) I don't have a single picture of the houses on poles. I've sure I've taken some, but nope. I flipped through all two months of pictures I have, and zero houses on poles. But I will get you some pictures of houses on poles. I promise

The other thing I somehow failed to know is the palm trees. (Those I have pictures of, so here, I put some around.) In Finland (we have no palm trees) palms are always depicted in the tropical scenery of travel ads. I mean, can you think of a travel ad that doesn't have palm trees?
I can actually. The ones that let you know that the flights to Scandinavia or Amsterdam or Paris or Dublin or London or what ever are only a few dozen euros. Those don't have palm trees in them.. But anywhere souther than that, there are always palms.
And the palms are always depicted in places like beaches, or hotel poolside gardens, or along a road. And this had somehow created at least in my mind a picture of palm trees as open-environment plants.

 Those travel ads have been lying to me for years, because oh boy was I wrong. I'm in the middle of a rain forest (which is all the movies is depicted as something impenetrable without a machete. Now don't get me wrong, I have in my time here actually been out in the forest with a person hacking his way through with a machete, but honestly, it's hardly necessary. In most places at least.), and rain forests are definitely not open environments. Just the opposite, actually. The forest is thick, especially the canopy. Which is why you don't need a machete. The bottom of the forest only gets a little light, which means everything tries to live anywhere but the bottom, to get as much light as possible. So it's relatively easy to walk on the ground (unless it's filled with enormous palm saplings. I mean, when you have essentially a palm tree, except without the trunk. The leaves are huge).

Because of the lack of light on the bottom, a smart person quickly figures out that the thing to be is tall, with enormous leaves, but only at the top, because... they're... no use any lower... Where have I seen something like that bef
ore...?
Oh, right, that's literally the definition of a palm tree. (It's not.)
So yeah, I feel like I should have realised that palm trees are what it's smart to be in a rainforest. Well, other than epiphytes, that just don't bother with the whole growing tall thing, ans instead simply grow on other things that grow tall. Saves energy and time and all that.
Which also means there are so many lianas out there. Speaking of lianas, I always thought that the whole swinging on lianas thing they do in movies would be impossible, because it's not like they would be able to take the weight of a

person without snapping. I was wrong. They do take the weight of a person. Easily. Swinging with them is impossible for three completely different reasons: 1. The forest is too thick. You're not swinging anywhere with anything. 2. Most, possibly all of the lianas I've seen have actually had wooden trunk. Not a straight trunk like trees that hold them up, because they definitely need the support of other plants to hold them up, but yeah, equally definitely it's wood. Which means you're not swinging anywhere with them. And 3. They are completely tangles with the other vegetation. It would be impossible to untangle one to use for swinging. So yeah, that's not a thing that you can do, just for completely different reasons than I always thought.

Anyway, back to the palm trees. What I also didn't know when I got here that in the Amazon area, they are a big source of food. Because they make fruits. Well, whether or not they're actually fruits is debatable. Biologically they are definitely fruits, no question, but at least in my mind fruits as a general everyday word means a sweet thing that you eat for a snack or something. Like apples and bananas and oranges. And if it's not sweet, it's a vegetable, like tomatoes and cucumbers and whatnot. So by this definition many of them aren't really fruits, but I wouldn't call pupunha or tucumã vegetables either, because they are nothing like what I associate with the word vegetable. So they're just palm fruits. I don't know how to classify them in any category I was previously familiar with.

We were in this forest reserve area one day last week for a course, just getting to know the un-flooding (of terra firme) forest, and there were these black dead palm trees just standing up in the forest among everything else. They reminded me of Moana. Because their palms also turned black. Although these weren't coconut palms. I think. I'm almost certain. I don't think they have coconut palms here. No, wait, they probably do, because I've seen some coconuts on sale in markets, so that you just stick a straw in through a hole and drink the water inside. But I don't think these were those. Side note: I've always found the whole coconut thing in Moana kinda odd. I mean, sure, maybe they are an important source of food and fibers for building and clothes and something in the area, but every part of the coconut is all we need?

Really? You need nothing else but the coconuts to live?
Ok, yeah, a song in a cartoon. Still. I've been thinking about it.

Anyway, here's a picture with some lianas for you guys. Or what I think are lianas. I might be wrong. But do you see anything here that could be used to swing from tree to tree? No, didn't think so.





Oookay, I want to go to sleep now. It's actually Monday evening. I somehow got stuck writing this now, in the hopes that tomorrow evening I might do something efficient. Because today I'm too tired. Because I had lectures in Portuguese from 8:30 to 17:00, and then we were given some reading for tomorrow, and I was like I'm sorry what, we have already been working for eight and a half hours today (fine, there was an hour for lunch). That should be enough. Because no. My efficient time of the day is way gone now. The morning is easy, and then as the afternoon passes it gets harder and harder to concentrate, and doing some more studying after I get home at about quarter to six? Nope. If I hadn't spent literally the entire day already studying, I might be able to do some light reading, but reading scientific articles that time of the evening? Forget it. I'm just wasting my time staring at the pages and not learning anything. Even if the text is in English. Even if it was in Finnish. That's not a thing I can do.
Yeah. So this schedule of studying they use here is definitely not for me. Also, while in Finland the 27 hours of work per credit is usually an overstatement, here the 15 hours of work per credit is definitely understating it. If we didn't have to do anything at home it wouldn't be, because the number of days per credit match about 7.5 hours of work per day. But no, apparently we also need to work at home. Which means the credits here require more work than it seems if you just look at the hours that are supposed to be spent on them. And I don't like that. mostly because it means I have to be able to cram too much work into one day. Doing that for a week or two is fine, if I happen to have a busy semester in Finland, but that being the norm instead of the exception? I don't know how they do it here.
Ok, I'm going to sleep now.

~matu