big william's world

we flew to Bueanos Aires and then to Sau Paulo then Manaus. Manaus is about 2000 miles up the Amazon where two rivers meet to form the Amazon it is a dump - a relic of the rubber boom 100+ years ago before the brits took seeds and grew the trees in Malaya. It has a fancy opera house from that time but besides that just a lot of industry - car factories honda motorcycle factories and a lot of electronics factories. You can click on this map I just discovered so you can check my spelling mistakes of place names if you want.

We spent four days on a small cruise ship (50 passengers) we just went up the Rio Negro - Black because of it's chemical make-up. Actually the water is just light brown if you put it in a bottle but the river really looks black. It has a pH of 4.6 which the chemists among you will know is pretty acidic.

One of the first things they did on the boat was to show a map of the Amazon Basin - like I showed you yesterday and put the countries of Europe on it one at a time to show that there was room for all the countries and room for some space between so it is HUGE!

Brazil is, of course, even bigger and the population is 180 million. Argentina is only 40 million and struggling to stay at that.

The river is full of piranha fish, crocodiles, fabulous plants, trees full of parrots, toucans, monkeys and snakes.

I was always scared of the jungle. Remember in 1984 where they had to be subjected to the thing they feared most? Winston (I think that was his name) was put with rats. Well I would have said the jungle but now I do not fear it - it is a calm tranquil place and in order to see any animals you have to try pretty hard and go at the right time of day. I have plenty of photos but haven't sorted them out yet.

Sorry if all that was boring - I will try to show you some photos of it all very soon.

We all need photos of Katie! perhaps if a few readers nag Ben and Elaine with comments here we will get some!