Stories from the Amazon - Favorite Rivers

In the jungle there is not much to do as far as recreational activities except going to the rivers. Of course in the Amazon, all rivers eventually lead to the great and mighty Amazon river. Even the smallest creek waters end up there. But I want to tell you about some of my favorite rivers that we swam in. To start with of course, the Amazon itself. I was born in a city right on the banks of the Amazon but never swam in it until my 8th grade year when I was 13 years old. My parents sent me to boarding school for missionary kids in that year. It was a beautiful location and groups of kids lived in a home with a missionary couple. This particular year something went wrong with the well or the pump and they told us that we had to bathe every day in the river. So every day we would get on our swim suits and jump off the dock into the beautiful river, attempting not to lose our slippery bar of soap. If you swam too far out the current would be strong but along the bank it was just like a lake. One day as we were taking our swim, a dead animal, pig sized, floated past us. That was a very short bath day to say the least. While at the boarding school they would take all the kids on special trips. One weekend our special trip was to get dropped off at the beginning of a very long and huge section of the river that was almost like a lake because it cut off a part of the land. We were to float down and the boat would pick us up at the end of it. It took several hours and we all had something to float with, although mine was pretty tiny. All was fun and happy until I let my mind wander to the portion of mind that considers what might be in that slow moving water with us. Note to anyone reading this.... if you ever get a chance to swim in tropical waters or any river in the Amazon, never, and I repeat never, ever think about what swims in the water! Needless to say, the float was quite uneventful and fun and all was well. It stuck in my memory forever. Another river that is one of my favorites but I never actually swam in it is the river I grew up next to, called the Madeira River. That means wood in English. I think it got that name because of all the trees, logs and debrie that was always floating down the river. This particular river made my hometown a place on the map because they discovered gold in the river when I was a child and our town exploded from a 40 thousand people town to a booming 400 thousand people city overnight. There were so many gold mining barges on the river that you could almost cross the river by walking on the barges. The city became a dangerous place filled with many sins, many murders, greed, lust, envy, etc. I was too young to really understand any of that at the time. By the time I became aware of the dangers, my family had already assured that I had a large dog that went with me everywhere and I'm pretty sure God's angels were working double time to keep me safe from all my adventures. I used to love going to the river banks and just sitting there to watch the sunset, which very conveniently set right across the river. One of my favorite rivers we would go swim in was called Rio Preto, Black River. The water looked almost black and there was a beautiful rapids/waterfall up river from the beach area that we swam in. When I was young, our whole mission base would take the hour or so drive that it took to get there and have big picnic get togethers at this river. The water was always cold and refreshing on hot, tropical days. We were told not to swim too close to the rapids because very large electric eels liked to hang out there in those currents and had been known to kill people who tried to swim there. That always scared us kids bad enough that we didn't even attempt to swim close to those currents. I'm sure there were plenty of dangerous undercurrents right around there too. Another river we discovered after we bought our ranch was called the Swan River, Rio das Garcas. It was a smaller river but so nice and we found a place with a very big beach area. We would swim across the river and hike up along the river bank through the jungle for about a 20 minute or so hike till we got to another clearing where there was a rapids and another swimming area. We would always take our inner tubes or styrophome to float back down the river to the main beach area. It was a lot of fun to jump out as close and far into the current as possible and get a jump start on floating the river. Thinking back on that river, I'm sure we probably tickled the backs of a few anacondas but thankfully we never actually saw any of them! This Swan river is the one we had one of our family adventures in which you can read about in another blog post! The Sunken Canoe adventure. We can't forget about the Green River! This has to be the most beautiful river I ever swam in or saw. It was way down the list of tributaries and was remote and quiet and greenish waters, but not gross green. The water was a clear almost turquoise green. You could only get there by boat down several rivers. We also had an adventure on this river with one of our family trips. Another river we enjoyed visiting sometimes was quite a ways away. We discovered a very luxurious resort outside of town where you could rent boats, skis, and cabins and they had a floating restaurant/bar that you could eat at. It was extremely beautiful and we decided one day to go rent a boat and some skis and have a relaxing fun day. They wouldn't let my dad drive the boat, it had to be their worker, who didn't know how to drive the boat so you could ski. He asked if we wanted a tour of the river before we actually started skiing. Since we all enjoy boating and rivers we agreed that would be fun. This particular river was on the lower part of a huge water reservoir and dam. He drove up up to see the dam and was telling us stories about the dam. Then he told us that just last week an alligator had eaten half of a man right there below the dam, as he pointed not too far from where we were sitting in the boat. After then going down stream, he took us back to where the alligator had eaten the man and told us that is where we should start our skiing! David volunteered to try it first. After skiing around for a while it was my turn. I have never been good at skiing and every time I ended up floating and waiting for the boat all I could think about was the alligators. Needless to say, it kind of made the relaxing day a little less relaxing! There are so many more rivers that I got to see and swim in and boat on but those are my favorites.