34. The Igarapés of Rio Negro

Not happy to push Manaus against the Amazon forest, the Rio Negro forces its igarapés¹ into the heart of the city. Its dark waters sometimes stretch between the slopes of the green river banks, sometimes they weave through, like water alleyways, amongst old walls. The São José igarapé penetrates deeply into an amphitheater of luxuriant vegetation: banana trees, jackfruit trees, mango trees, cashew trees surmounted by the undulating canopy of palm trees.

However, in fair retribution, if the river invades the city, the men build on the waters, and everywhere, perched on wooden stilts or on floating balsa trunks, humble rammed earth huts covered with dried palm leaves, small wooden houses sometimes interconnected by genuine floating streets to form a stilt house city of the most extraordinary appearance. The marketplace itself floats along the riverbank, gasoline and diesel oil stations as well as docks and wharfs also float on the black, olive-greenish waters of this well-named Rio Negro (Black River).
1. Small river or chanel, “canoe’s path” in the Tupi indigenous language.