First stop, the Amazon

Finally, we have some quiet moments to write about everything we have been through, seen and had in our minds the last 6 weeks. We are now sitting in a bus on the way from Fortaleza to Jericoacoara, a small beach on the north eastern coast of Brazil and our time in the Amazon is now behind us. We had a wonderful time in the Amazonian basin the last weeks. We saw jungle, savannah, met a lot of nice people, all of them looking for new experiences, much like ourselves. We travelled in the dry season, so it was possible to see many river banks on the Amazonas river, many white sand beaches and it's quite impressive to think about how much the water level drops during the dry season. Judging from the markings on land the difference between high and low season water levels varies as much as 8 meters in some areas. People always ask us if we swam in the river.... while most people here do, we (well upfront) decided we wouldn't. If you had seen all the Piranhas and Caimans we saw, you would understand why!! :-) We entered 5 countries in 6 weeks, beautiful all of them, but Venezuela in particular is worth mentioning because it was really impressive to see. Impressive for its beautiful nature, still untouched in many areas. Overwhelming for the terrible and miserable situation the Venezuelan people are experiencing these days. Outside of Venezuela we are far from understanding that the people there live in a real dictatorship, only focused on making the few in power richer by making the rest of the population poorer, uneducated, forced into "self" exile and oppressed by a Gestapo like military force, which is present and taking bribes everywhere. A force that is there only to keep Maduro and Chavez followers in power. It seems like now finally the situation has reached the bottom as Maduro was not as fortunate as Chavez with the oil prices, so he doesn't have oil money to pump here and there and buy favours. Not even Chavez followers are happy with Maduro, so "maybe" after the parliament elections in December there could be a change. However, general consensus is that while the government makes sure enough cheap food is available in Caracas (no matter if none is available in other areas of the country), the poor population will not start a real revolution and things will continue as they are today. To us this was a very clear example of how bad things can turn when people stop trusting politics and makes us worry about the situation we are living in Chile today, where we have a growing group of people (including ourselves) who don't trust politics and politicians anymore. Venezuela is where it is today because, before Chavez, the politicians in power had been stealing left, right and centre for many generations, so (as happens), people voted for Chavez as a "change" to that situation. After he became president (in year 2000) finally people who never had received anything from the government, finally had something. Even if it was not enough to change their lives, most of the poor population in Venezuela still sees the Chavistas as an improvement to what they had before. And the Chavistas did what the socialists do best...they levelled the economy down "so it was the same for everybody" instead of focusing on how to level the poor population up to the level of the rest. With the Kirchners in Argentina gone, now Maduro is more alone in the South American neighbourhood, so let's hope there will be winds of change for Venezuela soon. We would really love to go back and visit the many places we couldn't see this time, but we feel that today a paid and organized tour (as we did) is the only safe way to travel in Venezuela. You cannot safely travel by bus or expect to get away by driving around yourself with the many police controls there are on the roads; plus, the shortage of gasoline there is...yes, Venezuela has oil, but has no gasoline outside of the capital Caracas...how stupid is that? Besides Venezuela, it was also very interesting to understand how the whole Amazon area (Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela) is connected in one big Indian culture that goes much further back in time than us. Food, languages, traditions are exactly the same in all countries, but now separated by country borders and different languages. When we arrived and started out first vessel trip from Iquitos to Manaus, we were surprised to see how dirty the Amazon (Solimões) river was. EVERYTHING (food, trash, etc.) is thrown into the river from the ships and from the shores, without any consideration "about the environment". After almost two months here we came to realize that it's not the Indians who are dirty, it's our "civilization" who is imposing our culture onto them. Forcing them to live like we do in the big cities, drinking Coca Cola in plastic non-biodegradable bottles, eating sugar and candies to make the children fat, while they have none of the recycling or cleaning facilities or infrastructure we have in our cities. Poverty will never disappear from our world because the capitalist system needs poor people so others can be rich. But it's sad to see this type of poverty because the Indians didn't choose it. If they could live in their own traditional ways, they wouldn't be poor. But they need to adapt to our system without having the tools, skills and education to compete with us. Our civilization needs their jungle and land to breed cattle, produce food, cutting down the jungle and killing all the animals they used to feed on. The Indians are bound to continue being poor and their political votes will continue being purchased with a few chickens or a new TV by whatever political party in charge. It made us think a lot about Chiles own situation with the Mapuche indians, and how we are at a dead end communication wise, since there is no attempt from the Chileans or the Mapuches to understand each other and to find a way to live together. It's always the "civilized" way that must conquer the other "uncivilized" one... Having said that, we found that there are also many areas, such as Canaima (Venezuela), Kaieteur (Guyana), Rio Negro (Brazil) which are very clean and well kept. Most likely tourism (and living from tourism) is a reason for that. The biodiversity is unbelievable and it was a joy to see birds and other animals (which you normally only seen in pet stores or zoo's) living free in their natural habitat. Anyways... we are now off to see the "black" Brazil. Northeast, with its beautiful beaches and happy people. We hope to learn a lot there too. We will keep you posted. A special note to thank our friends Rosa and Karol, whom we met in Roraima (Venezuela), and who allowed us to stay for one week at their place in Manaus and took all their time to show us around. Muito, muito obrigados pra vocés!! Thanks to you we now have a completely different opinion of Manaus compared to the first time we came there. We will stay in touch and hopefully we can meet again soon somewhere in the world. So far we are extremely positively surprised with how warm and friendly all Brazilian people are. We love it! Hope you enjoy the pics, as this is only a short summary of what we have seen so far. Claudia y Carsten