Pink dolphins of the Amazon
Posted: Friday, June 01, 2007 10:35 AM
Filed Under:
On Assignment
By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News Correspondent
Pink dolphins. Sloths. Toucans. Monkeys. Hawks. Parrots. Caimans. Snakes. Piranha. Macaws. We encounter all of these within two days, half of them within a 30-minute span.
The multitude of birds, even the front-heavy toucans in flight, has almost become commonplace and barely turns heads anymore.
Only the anaconda seems to elude us, doubtlessly slithering somewhere below as we wind our way in small motorboats through the endless tributaries of the Rio Negro, a major tributary of the mighty Amazon. It supports more life than we fully understand, the greatest moving mass of fresh water on earth.
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| NBC News/ Michelle Kosinski |
| Children of Novo Airao play in the waters of the Rio Negro. |
Yes, we are wide-eyed tourists -- well, actually journalists with some of the appearance and all the excitement of tourists -- traveling with other tourists from all over the world.
There are indeed "tourist stops" along the Amazon. Who knew?
Flipping into a river of dolphins
Our first encounter came in the tiny town of Novo Airao. We are told the "old" Airao was abandoned after it was overrun with ants. And we believe it, as a tough army of almost inch-long biters invades our boat, sending everyone into a crazy, stomping, slapping ant-dance for about ten minutes.
The kind and welcoming people of Novo Airao have set up a stand amid their floating houses and boats to sell crafts, and to let people swim with the group of pink dolphins they have befriended.
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| NBC News/ Michelle Kosinski |
| Pink dolphins of Novo Airao. |
It all happened slowly, the proprietress Marildha tells us. She is dressed in tight, stylish clothing and very high heels -- yes, on a floating, hand painted wooden house on the river. Not what we expected, but it's a unique place.
Local children do flips off of tree trunks into the warm, dark brown water of the Rio Negro. As it flows, it is full of vegetation and rich jungle nutrients, like a well-steeped tea, in fragrance as well in appearance.
The water here is so acidic, in fact, that many bacteria and parasites cannot live here --and neither can mosquitoes! So we feel pretty safe to obligingly slip into the water's edge with the dolphins, feeding them chopped piranha and wondering how on earth we made it here.
Tourist dollars help school system
Our extremely knowledgeable local guides tell us the tourists, whom these locals see an average of once a week, help them to survive. They allow them to improve their education and health systems. Education is highly valued here; we pass many small schools along our journey, weathered wooden open-air rooms, filled with tiny beautiful faces framed in thick black hair.
One tribe we visit, the Bare (pronounced bah-RAY), well upriver from Manaus , tells us the money from tourists is helping to build a new medical clinic and a school, after a fierce storm demolished the old one.
Soon after we arrive, the leader Jose (pronounced Zho-ZAY) asks some children to fetch his headdress so he can put it on for us, its gleaming blue feathers curiously topping off his t-shirt and shorts. It partly makes us want to tell him he doesn't have to put on a "show" for us.
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| NBC News/ Michelle Kosinski |
| Jose, the leader of the Bare tribe, dons a feather headdress to greet visitors. |
The people of the village have already come out of their homes to set up their array of well-made crafts on tables -- necklaces of woven seeds and even fish vertebrae, wooden frogs that are musical instruments, and the ubiquitous bows and arrows.
They may seem isolated, living within the thick forest -- but the leader surprises us by mentioning their television access. That's right, soap operas and news, in the heart of the rain forest.
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| NBC News/ Michelle Kosinski |
| Some of the beautiful necklaces hand-crafted by local women. |
Striving for balance
One of our guides shakes his head grimly. He doesn't like this at all. He says television has given many indigenous people dreams of the big city and material things. But when they arrive in Manaus, they have little if any means to survive, and so live in poverty on the fringes of the relative hustle and bustle.
It's always been a touchy question for outsiders: Should the approximately 120,000 indigenous people in the Amazon region be intentionally kept isolated? Or should the outside world share technology with them? And anyway, who has the right to say they shouldn't do as they please?
Jose, who himself spent some time in the city, put it this way: they like a balance. They want to "improve their lives" with technology and medicines, but they also want to live in the forest they love.
Does he like his life here? A definite yes.
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| NBC News/ Michelle Kosinski |
| A local girl from the Bare tribe and her pet monkey – a macaque. |
Just this year, they were able to build a water storage system and pipes. They no longer have to use buckets drawn straight from the river.
The people are friendly, posing for photo after photo after photo. Babies are passed around and cuddled for pictures by the tourists.
How often do they do they put up with all of this ooh-ing and ahh-ing from fellow human beings? About twice a month.
And so the visitors walk away happy, cameras full of colorful stories they can show and tell, and wallets emptied of hundreds of Rais – the local current worth about half as much as the American dollar.
Jose says, it's all good. And his people wave goodbye, in the pouring rain.
