When in Amazonia...

Do as the Amazonians do, or did, at least a few of the very rich ones did(in the late 19/early 20th centuries){wow, talk about some caveats}. Starting tomorrow I'll be doing what the many more of them (the landless and generally poorer peasants) are doing these days, and have been doing since the Amazon was characterized as "A Land without Men for Men without Land" (sic) ((a great future paper title)) by the Brazilian Agriculture and Colonization organization in the 1970s (((remember I told you this blog would be somewhat educational))).

Anyways, per that tangential introduction, I am staying, currently, in the renovated mansion of an Amazonian rubber baron (Amazonia was the epicenter of the rubber book prior to World War 2, when Malaysia took over as a cheap source)



It's a beautiful house, as one might get an idea from these not so great photos...



it's a little hard to get a sense of the scale here, but the ceiling is probably close to 25 feet high (those things in the right are knee high trash cans). It's really an amazing place with gorgeous wood floors (no doubt carved out of what was an even closer Amazonian forest a hundred plus years ago. The place has all sorts of interesting details, such as these wooden windows:



but there are some pretty shady characters here, such as this one individual, who is pretty sad that his female hostel companion is on a far distant shore...



So enough about the hostel, the city it's in, Belem, is quite interesting: founding in the 1600's, it has a mix of colonial and very decrepit modern architecture, actually most of it is decrepit regardless of whether it's 400 or 4 years old, which I'm not sure bodes well...but one thing that is looking quite vivacious is the greenery.



These are giant mango trees that line the road in front of the hostel (no, unfortunately there are no mangoes on them now, although if they were ripe they'd be falling on me, which is a liability, so it's good I guess their not)

The trees here are just, well, what one (might) imagine of the Amazon, covered in bromeliads and lianas (a fancy word for vines).





Aside from the greenery, the city itself is quite nice; for those of us not so geographically inclined, Belem is located on the mouth of the Amazon (i.e. where it flows out into the ocean, not where it starts). Here's a photo of me by the river with the daily storm a-brewing in the background (do I really look this ridiculous, or is it a function of the lens...)




also, there's always time for a dip in ye ole amazon (for those who are braver {read younger and stupider than yours truly)




Aside from the riverfront which has "benefited" from a massive redevelopment scheme, and of which I have benefited from its fine new restaurants...




there are also the beautiful colonial buildings I mentioned earlier....




anyways, well i think that's it for today's blog entry, i hope that wasn't too many photos, i thought it easier for the reader to have them embedded in the blog rather than putting a link to snapfish/picassa where they'd be decontextualized, if you don't like it like this, however, just let me know! I aim to please. Ok, so off to visit a "zoological park" and then to a meeting with remote sensing folks from EMBRAPA! Ate logo!