The Manaus Brazil Temple, in Brazil, is in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, but far further downstream. It backs onto the river and, I\u2019m told, actually has a boat dock. (LDS Media Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Monday morning, we spent about three hours out on the Amazon and some of its tributaries.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first thing that we did was to look (successfully, I might note) for fresh water \u201cpink\u201d dolphins.\u00a0 They\u2019re called pink dolphins because, while they\u2019re normally grey, they turn pink when hunting or agitated.\u00a0 This occurs because the blood rushes to their capillaries, which are very visible in their dorsal fins.\u00a0 There are also freshwater gray dolphins who don\u2019t change in that way.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our local guide, who grew up in an Amazonian village, says that pink dolphins are endangered in all of the other countries of the Amazon River basin, but not in Peru.\u00a0 Why not in Peru?\u00a0 Because, he says, the indigenous peoples of the area won\u2019t kill them or disturb them.\u00a0 They fear that, if they do, the spirits of the dolphins will give them excruciating stomach pains.\u00a0 He himself related a story from his boyhood of trying to drive a group of pink dolphins away from his village.\u00a0 He developed a terrible stomach ache and had to be taken to a shaman several villages away who cured him within five minutes but warned him never to bother pink dolphins again.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re really daring, though, the fat of a pink dolphin is alleged to possess aphrodisiac powers.\u00a0 Administered to somebody, it can make that person fall in love with you.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sailing along one of the tributaries, it was amusing to see thatched roof huts with solar panels standing next to them.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We also saw a place where a \u201cblack\u201d river flowed into the brown water of the Amazon, which, as I wrote in a previous piece, looks like coffee with cream.\u00a0 This black river looks like coffee without <\/em>cream.\u00a0 It\u2019s very distinct.\u00a0 The color, our guide says, comes from tannic acid in all of the decomposing leaves that the black river sweeps along.\u00a0 (The brown color of the Amazon comes, unsurprisingly, from a vast quantity of eroded dirt, clay, and mud.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the season of low water \u2013 into which we\u2019re entering now \u2013 the water of the tributaries gets so low that the local people are stranded.\u00a0 Their boats can\u2019t function for lack of water and all the mud.\u00a0 And they need to store up water to get them through about three months when the water that they draw from before their huts is of too low a quality to drink.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
You begin to understand how the drums that we saw a couple of days ago served as the \u201ctelephones of the Amazon.\u201d\u00a0 Their warnings of danger and other such messages could be heard up to two and a half or three miles.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Written in the Peruvian Amazon<\/p>\n
Posted from Lima, Peru<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 On Monday morning, we spent about three hours out on the Amazon and some of its tributaries. \u00a0 The first thing that we did was to look (successfully, I might note) for fresh water \u201cpink\u201d dolphins.\u00a0 They\u2019re called pink dolphins because, while they\u2019re normally grey, they turn pink when hunting or agitated.\u00a0 This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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