BLED ZEPPELIN
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Monday, 22 September 2008
Sunday, 21 September 2008
O jiu-jitsu, jujutsu ou ju-jitsu (Plena Forma)
O jiu-jitsu, jujutsu ou ju-jitsu (em japonês 柔術, "arte da cessão") é uma arte marcial japonesa que utiliza golpes de articulação, como torções de braço, tornozelo e estrangulamentos, para imobilizar o oponente. Inclui também quedas, golpes traumáticos e defesas pessoais, como saídas de gravata, esquivas, contra-golpes etc.
Basicamente usa-se o peso e a força do adversário contra ele mesmo. Essa característica da luta possibilita que um lutador, mesmo sendo menor que o oponente, consiga vencer. Outra característica marcante o diferencia de outras artes: suas avançadas técnicas de luta de chão, com a qual é possível finalizar um adversário por meio de uma queda e usando-se torções com ambos deitados.
(Prefiro o windsurf, mas nada melhor que dar um tempo de basquete.
Post dedicated to Flávio Navalhada
Friday, 19 September 2008
Eduardo Serique
MEU VERSO (Eduardo Serique)
Meu verso, corre ligeiro
Todos os chãos desta terra
Todos mares e rios...
Consulta os passarinhos
Os peixes, bichos, os meninos
Por esses cantos sem fim.
Procura, meu pequenino,
O amor que, quando eu menino,
Cantava a canção perdida
Que minha avó me ensinava
E o sono me acalantava
Na hora de recolher.
..................................................Meu verso, meu companheiro,
..................................................Segue levando esse enredo
..................................................Por onde quer que te vás.
..................................................No coração das mulheres
..................................................Sopra esse canto sincero
..................................................Para que não percam jamais
..................................................O dom que nasceu com elas
..................................................De abrir do sonho a cancela
..................................................Pra vida ser muito mais.
Colaboração de Eduardo Serique
Comentários encaminhar para:
catauari@ig.com.br
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
www.transmazonica.blogspot.com
Por isso que bom ser adulto! Imagina se ele tivesse que pedir dos pais.
Um amigo me contou que qto um amigo dele tinha 11 anos falou pro pai que ia na lua.
O pai dele falou:
- Só entra de maior lá. Nem insiste.
Qdo ele completou 18 anos ele disse:
- Pai eu vou na lua e volto.
_ A estrada tá ruim e a lua tá em reforma. O genitor replicou
e continou...- Porra, eu tenho um filho lunático.
E ai ele caminhou na direção da piscina pra tomar um banho de sol qdo ele ouviu a canção do Bial " Use protetor solaaar use protetor solarrrrrr"
Ele não tinha a factor 30 e que não queria correr o risco ...
Resolveu tomar uma dose na sombra.
depois eu continuo...
Depois do segundo gole a visão dele foi direto no calendario que tava pendurado na parede como de costume e falou:
Se meu filho tivesse ido aos 11 anos, ele ja teria se formado e talvez até casado e eu com meus netinhos.
O calendario 3019 então sentou-se ao lado da carteira de cigarro com um feto humano deformado e perguntou.
- Cara, essa carteira de cigarro é uma reliquia, qto anos mesmo fazem que foi criado a cura pro cancer?
continuo depois
Ai sem esperar a resposta o calendário ainda mais entusiasmado perguntou ao raro colecionador de reliquias.
- Na sua coleção, qual é a sua peça preferida?
A resposta:
- Não posso dizer que tenho uma favorita, mas a camisinha com detector de HIV poderia ser muito util, mas ai logo depois de descobrir a cura do cancer meu filho trouxe ao mundo a cura da AIDS e esse tipo de preservativo nem foi nunca produzido em grande escala. O que o torna ainda mais raro.
- Seu filho inventou a cura do cancer e ainda eliminou o virus que matou milhares de pessoas nos centuries ago? How? Perguntou o calendário.
-Indo a lua, enquanto eu tomava banho de sol na piscina.
2 B continued
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Super Julia, Minc and Jens_Stoltenberg in Santarem
Heyardal was present somehow, thanks for the funds...that will certainly help. I am problably naive but I never saw such a bunch of good-intentioned people at the sametime.
For the first time it is more like a brain issue and not honesty. If rainforest protection is rocket science, let us take a look at Plato.
Timeline of Amazon history
Amazon History dates back to some 8000 years ago, when Man first reached the region (Roosevelt et al., 1996).
Here is a brief timeline of historical events in the Amazon River valley, from the time of European discovery to 2005. This article is about the river. ...
Timeline
* 1492 – Christopher Columbus discovers the New World, some 14,000 to 40,000 years after the Indians. In 1498, he enters the Orinoco River estuary, sees the mighty discharge from the river mouth, and finally admits that he has a continent on his hands.
* 1494 – Treaty of Tordesillas divides the world into Spanish and Portuguese territories. South America falls almost entirely to Spain. The line runs N-S some 100 km E of Belém, Brazil. How did they know what was out there? After all, the Brazilian coast was formally only discovered in 1500.
* 1499 – Amerigo Vespucci and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón or Alonso de Ojeda discover the Amazon River estuary. This is well established, but the official date of discovery of Brazil is still the next year (1500).
* 1499 – Vicente Yáñez Pinzón sails into the Amazon estuary and claims it for Spain. In the same year, Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral, en route to the Orient, discovers Brazil, landing in Bahia.
* 1539-1542 – First descent of the Amazon by Francisco de Orellana (1501-1550) from Quito, Ecuador, via the Rio Napo to the Atlantic Ocean. He fights Indian women he calls "Amazons." The name sticks to the river. Expedition chronicled by friar Gaspar de Carvajal.
* 1560-1561 – Second descent of the Amazon, this time by the murderer Lope de Aguirre.
* 1570-1600 – Jesuit missions are widely established in the Amazon. Indians relocated and "protected."
* 1595 – Sir Walter Raleigh leads expedition to colonize the Orinoco River for the English. In 1616, he settles for Trinidad.
* 1616 – Founding of Santa Maria do Grão Pará de Belém, Brazil, to mark Portuguese presence. The French, English, and even Irish try to colonize the region.
* 1637-1639 – Pedro Teixeira expedition up the Amazon from Belém to Quito, arriving unexpected.
* 1726 – Francisco Xavier de Moraes, ascending the Rio Negro, discovers the Casiquiare canal to the Orinoco.
* 1736 – Charles Marie de La Condamine sends first rubber sample to Europe from his Amazon expedition.
* 1750 – Treaty of Madrid fixes boundaries between the Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America. Portuguese possession of areas west of the Tordesillas line is recognized, based on occupation.
* 1759 – Jesuits are expelled from Brazil by the Marque de Pombal. Indians left without protection.
* 1799 – Alexander von Humboldt explores the Orinoco and proves the link via the Casiquiare canal to the Rio Negro. Humboldt refused permission to enter Brazil.
* 1808-1825 – Spanish rule in South America ends with revolutions lead by Simón Bolívar of Venezuela, San Martín of Argentina, and O'Higgins of Chile. The arrival of the Portuguese royal family in Brazil (1808) probably delayed independence of that colony.
* 1818-1820 – Spix and Martius on expedition in the Amazon.
* 1822 – Brazil proclaims its independence under Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil.
* 1823 – Charles Macintosh invents waterproof rubber cape. (Amazon Indians, users of rubber waterproof bags for centuries, get no credit.)
* 1826-1828 – Baron von Langsdorff on expedition from Cuiabá to Belém, arriving with sanity impaired.
* 1826-1828 – Cabanagem revolt in Belém and Manaus, with 40,000 fatalities.
* 1839 – Charles Goodyear invents vulcanization of rubber which becomes an important component of the Industrial Revolution.
* 1839-1842 – Brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk on expedition in northern Brazil.
* 1842 – Prince Adelbert of Prussia and Count von Bismarck on the Xingu River.
* 1846 – Count de Castelnau on the Araguaia and Tocantins Rivers.
* 1848-1859 – Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace in the Amazon. (Wallace leaves in 1852.)
* 1849-1864 – Spruce, of cinchona fame, in the Amazon. He gets the quinine tree seeds in 1860.
* 1850 – Manaus is new capital of Amazonas province.
* 1850-1915 – Rubber boom sucks tens of thousands of immigrants into the Amazon, mostly from the drought-stricked northeast of Brazil. Read the book White Gold to get the story from the rubber-tapper's point of view. Another good volume is Jungle by Ferreira de Castro.
* 1851-1852 – Lieutenant Herndon (U.S. Navy) on the Amazon to Belém.
* 1858 – Peru gains rights to navigation on the Amazon River.
* 1865-1866 – Biologist Alexander Agassiz and geologist Charles Hartt on expedition in the Amazon.
* 1866 – Founding of the Goeldi Museum of Natural History in Belém by Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna and others. Agassiz had given stimulus to this when he was in the Amazon.
* 1867 – Amazon River opened to international shipping.
* 1867 – Confederate expatriates settle in Santarém, after U.S. Civil War.
* 1876 – Henry Wickham takes some 70,000 rubber tree seeds to Kew Gardens in England.
* 1888 – Dunlop invents the rubber tube tire.
* 1895 – International arbitration forces Venezuela to cede large area still disputed with Guyana.
* 1895-1899 – Henri Coudreau explores Amazon waterways of Pará.
* 1897 – Manaus' Teatro Amazonas (opera house) opens. Rubber booming.
* 1899-1903 – Acre proclaims itself independent of Bolivia. In 1901, Bolivia cedes rights to Acre to New York rubber syndicate. In 1903, Acre becomes Brazilian by the Treaty of Petrópolis, in which Bolivia is promised a railroad link to the Madeira River at Porto Velho.
* 1907 – Madeira-Mamoré railroad is built by Americans under Percival Farquar. Colonel Church's attempts in 1870-1881 are best called disasters made heroic by tragedy.
* 1908-1911 – Henry Ford, then the richest person in the world, invests in Amazon rubber plantations on the Tapajós River.
* 1908-1911 – Arana's rubber company on the Putamayo River is denounced for atrocities against Indians. English parliamentary inquiry in 1910. (Arana dies in 1952 in Lima after serving as Peruvian senator.) (Read the book The River that God Forgot.)
* 1912 – Rubber from Malaysia exceeds that coming out of the Amazon.
* 1913 – Former US president Theodore Roosevelt and Brazilian Field Marshall Cândido Rondon on Amazon expedition down the River of Doubt (now the Roosevelt River) (Roosevelt, 1919).
* 1914 – Rubber boom bursts with beginning of World War I.
* 1922 – Salomón-Lozano Treaty awards Leticia to Colombia, as an outlet to the Amazon River. In 1933, Peru seizes Leticia but backs down under international pressure, and in 1935 Leticia is reoccupied by Colombia.
* 1925 – Colonel Percy H. Fawcett vanishes near the headwaters of the Xingu River. His eyeglasses are later found among the Kayapó Indians of the Xingu River valley.
* 1942 – Brazil enters World War II. Demand is high for Amazon rubber. Brazil launches the ill-fated "Rubber Soldier" program.
* 1947 – Cerro Bolívar, iron ore deposit south of Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, is found and estimated at half a billion tons of high-grade ore. Puerto Ordaz is selected in 1953 as site for steel mill and huge hydroelectric plant.
* 1960 – Brasilia, as new capital of Brazil, is founded.
* 1962 – Belém-Brasília Highway opens as first major all-year Amazon highway, linking Amazon River port city of Belém with the rest of Brazil.
* 1964 – Military coup in Brazil puts democracy on hold for a generation. Economic miracle declared.
* 1967 – Iron ore deposit at Serra dos Carajás is discovered in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. High quality ore (66% iron) is estimated at 18 billion tons.
* 1967-1983 – American businessman Daniel K. Ludwig invests heavily in Jari wood pulp and lumber plantation. His losses would amount to over 500 million dollars.
* 1970 – Trans-Amazon Highway project begun. Total costs would top one billion dollars. To this day (2008), the highway is impassable between Itaituba and Humaitá, and it ends short of the Peruvian border.
* 1972 – Trans-Amazon highway opens from Imperatriz, Maranhão to the Tapajós River.
* 1974 – Manaus-Porto Velho highway opens.
* 1980 – Gold deposit at Serra Pelada is discovered. By 1986, an estimated 42 tons of gold are extracted from giant pit mine. Amazon gold rush is in full swing. In 1987 striking gold miners would be machine-gunned when they seize the railroad bridge at Marabá.
* 1984 – Tucuruí hydroelectric dam floods the lower Tocantins River valley.
* 1988 – New Brazilian federal constitution goes into effect, with many social and environmental guarantees.
* 1988 – First Amazon Indian congress is held at Altamira, Brazil, to protest the proposed construction of hydroelectric dams on the Xingu River.
* 1988 – Rubber-tapper Chico Mendes is murdered on December 22, in Xapuri, Acre. Two years later (December, 1990), his accused killers, Darly Alves da Silva and his son Darci, are brought to trial and sentenced. (They escaped in 1993 and were later recaptured.)
* 1992 – Brazil hosts UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The US, under President Bush, is made to appear the enemy because of refusal to sign the Biodiversity Treaty. (The US would belatedly sign the same, weak treaty under President Clinton.)
* 1996 –
o Renewed military presence seen in the Amazon region of Brazil, as a result of radar project and militarization of the borders against drug traffic (at US behest?). Secret project SIVAM is revealed.
o On April 17, 1996, 19 landless farmers of the MST movement ("Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra") were shot by police at the "S" curve of highway PA-150 at Eldorado de Carajás, in Pará state. These people were part of a demonstration calling for the federal disappropriation of an unproductive ranch where the MST had mounted a camp called "Macaxeira" with almost 3000 families.
* 2005 –
o On February 12, 2005, American missionary Dorothy Stang (73 years of age) is gunned down in Anapu, Pará.
o Worst drought in 50 years hits the western Amazon Basin. Lakes and streams dry and massive fish mortality takes place. Turtle beaches are sacked by hungry residents.
Here is a brief timeline of historical events in the Amazon River valley, from the time of European discovery to 2005. This article is about the river. ...
Timeline
* 1492 – Christopher Columbus discovers the New World, some 14,000 to 40,000 years after the Indians. In 1498, he enters the Orinoco River estuary, sees the mighty discharge from the river mouth, and finally admits that he has a continent on his hands.
* 1494 – Treaty of Tordesillas divides the world into Spanish and Portuguese territories. South America falls almost entirely to Spain. The line runs N-S some 100 km E of Belém, Brazil. How did they know what was out there? After all, the Brazilian coast was formally only discovered in 1500.
* 1499 – Amerigo Vespucci and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón or Alonso de Ojeda discover the Amazon River estuary. This is well established, but the official date of discovery of Brazil is still the next year (1500).
* 1499 – Vicente Yáñez Pinzón sails into the Amazon estuary and claims it for Spain. In the same year, Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral, en route to the Orient, discovers Brazil, landing in Bahia.
* 1539-1542 – First descent of the Amazon by Francisco de Orellana (1501-1550) from Quito, Ecuador, via the Rio Napo to the Atlantic Ocean. He fights Indian women he calls "Amazons." The name sticks to the river. Expedition chronicled by friar Gaspar de Carvajal.
* 1560-1561 – Second descent of the Amazon, this time by the murderer Lope de Aguirre.
* 1570-1600 – Jesuit missions are widely established in the Amazon. Indians relocated and "protected."
* 1595 – Sir Walter Raleigh leads expedition to colonize the Orinoco River for the English. In 1616, he settles for Trinidad.
* 1616 – Founding of Santa Maria do Grão Pará de Belém, Brazil, to mark Portuguese presence. The French, English, and even Irish try to colonize the region.
* 1637-1639 – Pedro Teixeira expedition up the Amazon from Belém to Quito, arriving unexpected.
* 1726 – Francisco Xavier de Moraes, ascending the Rio Negro, discovers the Casiquiare canal to the Orinoco.
* 1736 – Charles Marie de La Condamine sends first rubber sample to Europe from his Amazon expedition.
* 1750 – Treaty of Madrid fixes boundaries between the Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America. Portuguese possession of areas west of the Tordesillas line is recognized, based on occupation.
* 1759 – Jesuits are expelled from Brazil by the Marque de Pombal. Indians left without protection.
* 1799 – Alexander von Humboldt explores the Orinoco and proves the link via the Casiquiare canal to the Rio Negro. Humboldt refused permission to enter Brazil.
* 1808-1825 – Spanish rule in South America ends with revolutions lead by Simón Bolívar of Venezuela, San Martín of Argentina, and O'Higgins of Chile. The arrival of the Portuguese royal family in Brazil (1808) probably delayed independence of that colony.
* 1818-1820 – Spix and Martius on expedition in the Amazon.
* 1822 – Brazil proclaims its independence under Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil.
* 1823 – Charles Macintosh invents waterproof rubber cape. (Amazon Indians, users of rubber waterproof bags for centuries, get no credit.)
* 1826-1828 – Baron von Langsdorff on expedition from Cuiabá to Belém, arriving with sanity impaired.
* 1826-1828 – Cabanagem revolt in Belém and Manaus, with 40,000 fatalities.
* 1839 – Charles Goodyear invents vulcanization of rubber which becomes an important component of the Industrial Revolution.
* 1839-1842 – Brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk on expedition in northern Brazil.
* 1842 – Prince Adelbert of Prussia and Count von Bismarck on the Xingu River.
* 1846 – Count de Castelnau on the Araguaia and Tocantins Rivers.
* 1848-1859 – Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace in the Amazon. (Wallace leaves in 1852.)
* 1849-1864 – Spruce, of cinchona fame, in the Amazon. He gets the quinine tree seeds in 1860.
* 1850 – Manaus is new capital of Amazonas province.
* 1850-1915 – Rubber boom sucks tens of thousands of immigrants into the Amazon, mostly from the drought-stricked northeast of Brazil. Read the book White Gold to get the story from the rubber-tapper's point of view. Another good volume is Jungle by Ferreira de Castro.
* 1851-1852 – Lieutenant Herndon (U.S. Navy) on the Amazon to Belém.
* 1858 – Peru gains rights to navigation on the Amazon River.
* 1865-1866 – Biologist Alexander Agassiz and geologist Charles Hartt on expedition in the Amazon.
* 1866 – Founding of the Goeldi Museum of Natural History in Belém by Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna and others. Agassiz had given stimulus to this when he was in the Amazon.
* 1867 – Amazon River opened to international shipping.
* 1867 – Confederate expatriates settle in Santarém, after U.S. Civil War.
* 1876 – Henry Wickham takes some 70,000 rubber tree seeds to Kew Gardens in England.
* 1888 – Dunlop invents the rubber tube tire.
* 1895 – International arbitration forces Venezuela to cede large area still disputed with Guyana.
* 1895-1899 – Henri Coudreau explores Amazon waterways of Pará.
* 1897 – Manaus' Teatro Amazonas (opera house) opens. Rubber booming.
* 1899-1903 – Acre proclaims itself independent of Bolivia. In 1901, Bolivia cedes rights to Acre to New York rubber syndicate. In 1903, Acre becomes Brazilian by the Treaty of Petrópolis, in which Bolivia is promised a railroad link to the Madeira River at Porto Velho.
* 1907 – Madeira-Mamoré railroad is built by Americans under Percival Farquar. Colonel Church's attempts in 1870-1881 are best called disasters made heroic by tragedy.
* 1908-1911 – Henry Ford, then the richest person in the world, invests in Amazon rubber plantations on the Tapajós River.
* 1908-1911 – Arana's rubber company on the Putamayo River is denounced for atrocities against Indians. English parliamentary inquiry in 1910. (Arana dies in 1952 in Lima after serving as Peruvian senator.) (Read the book The River that God Forgot.)
* 1912 – Rubber from Malaysia exceeds that coming out of the Amazon.
* 1913 – Former US president Theodore Roosevelt and Brazilian Field Marshall Cândido Rondon on Amazon expedition down the River of Doubt (now the Roosevelt River) (Roosevelt, 1919).
* 1914 – Rubber boom bursts with beginning of World War I.
* 1922 – Salomón-Lozano Treaty awards Leticia to Colombia, as an outlet to the Amazon River. In 1933, Peru seizes Leticia but backs down under international pressure, and in 1935 Leticia is reoccupied by Colombia.
* 1925 – Colonel Percy H. Fawcett vanishes near the headwaters of the Xingu River. His eyeglasses are later found among the Kayapó Indians of the Xingu River valley.
* 1942 – Brazil enters World War II. Demand is high for Amazon rubber. Brazil launches the ill-fated "Rubber Soldier" program.
* 1947 – Cerro Bolívar, iron ore deposit south of Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, is found and estimated at half a billion tons of high-grade ore. Puerto Ordaz is selected in 1953 as site for steel mill and huge hydroelectric plant.
* 1960 – Brasilia, as new capital of Brazil, is founded.
* 1962 – Belém-Brasília Highway opens as first major all-year Amazon highway, linking Amazon River port city of Belém with the rest of Brazil.
* 1964 – Military coup in Brazil puts democracy on hold for a generation. Economic miracle declared.
* 1967 – Iron ore deposit at Serra dos Carajás is discovered in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. High quality ore (66% iron) is estimated at 18 billion tons.
* 1967-1983 – American businessman Daniel K. Ludwig invests heavily in Jari wood pulp and lumber plantation. His losses would amount to over 500 million dollars.
* 1970 – Trans-Amazon Highway project begun. Total costs would top one billion dollars. To this day (2008), the highway is impassable between Itaituba and Humaitá, and it ends short of the Peruvian border.
* 1972 – Trans-Amazon highway opens from Imperatriz, Maranhão to the Tapajós River.
* 1974 – Manaus-Porto Velho highway opens.
* 1980 – Gold deposit at Serra Pelada is discovered. By 1986, an estimated 42 tons of gold are extracted from giant pit mine. Amazon gold rush is in full swing. In 1987 striking gold miners would be machine-gunned when they seize the railroad bridge at Marabá.
* 1984 – Tucuruí hydroelectric dam floods the lower Tocantins River valley.
* 1988 – New Brazilian federal constitution goes into effect, with many social and environmental guarantees.
* 1988 – First Amazon Indian congress is held at Altamira, Brazil, to protest the proposed construction of hydroelectric dams on the Xingu River.
* 1988 – Rubber-tapper Chico Mendes is murdered on December 22, in Xapuri, Acre. Two years later (December, 1990), his accused killers, Darly Alves da Silva and his son Darci, are brought to trial and sentenced. (They escaped in 1993 and were later recaptured.)
* 1992 – Brazil hosts UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The US, under President Bush, is made to appear the enemy because of refusal to sign the Biodiversity Treaty. (The US would belatedly sign the same, weak treaty under President Clinton.)
* 1996 –
o Renewed military presence seen in the Amazon region of Brazil, as a result of radar project and militarization of the borders against drug traffic (at US behest?). Secret project SIVAM is revealed.
o On April 17, 1996, 19 landless farmers of the MST movement ("Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra") were shot by police at the "S" curve of highway PA-150 at Eldorado de Carajás, in Pará state. These people were part of a demonstration calling for the federal disappropriation of an unproductive ranch where the MST had mounted a camp called "Macaxeira" with almost 3000 families.
* 2005 –
o On February 12, 2005, American missionary Dorothy Stang (73 years of age) is gunned down in Anapu, Pará.
o Worst drought in 50 years hits the western Amazon Basin. Lakes and streams dry and massive fish mortality takes place. Turtle beaches are sacked by hungry residents.
Monday, 15 September 2008
Wildlife photography
Wild Red and Green macaws
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| Click to access website |
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| Red and Green macaw |
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| Flying free at nest |
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| Real wild Red and green macaw flying off the nest |
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Gil on Guardian/ The Observer today
Great Latin American journeys
Whether it's driving across the Andes, drifting along the Amazon or catching a bus in Bolivia, we asked five writers to choose one journey which captures the essence of Latin America
2. An Amazon boat trip
By Alex Bellos
Of all the colourful fiestas in South America, a particular favourite of mine is the tropical fish festival of Barcelos. The town splits down the middle - one half paints itself black and yellow, the colours of a local angelfish, and the other half dresses up in red and blue, the colour of the neon cardinal. Both sides clash in an all-night extravaganza of music, dance and debauchery.
But Barcelos is difficult to get to. It is in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon, not connected by road to anywhere nor served by any airline a European traveller would trust. The only way to get there was to sail for 200 miles up the Rio Negro from Manaus.
A few travel agencies in Manaus rent boats for bespoke trips. They cater for scientists wanting to explore flora and fauna and adventurous tourists. The boats offered are mostly wooden craft made in the local style, looking much like riverboats of 100 years ago. I would be travelling with a handful of friends and we decided on a small one - the Iguana slept six passengers and came with a crew of four. The price was very reasonable - about £300 per night all-in, working out at £50 per person.
We arrived one evening at Manaus docks and loaded up the Iguana with ice, drink and food. We set off upriver, watching the lights of the city disappear behind us. When I woke up I looked out of the cabin window. It was one of the most mysteriously beautiful sights I have seen. We were in the middle of a flooded forest, surrounded by the silvery tips of hundreds of trees. The water was still and reflective and there was almost total silence.
Fears that the Amazon would be unbearably hot or irritatingly mosquito-infested were unfounded. The Rio Negro is the colour of Coca-Cola because of sediment that also deprives the water of oxygen - meaning no insects.
The trip was unforgettable. At sunrise we would take small canoes and go birdwatching. In the afternoon we would stop at huge sandbanks, barbecue fish we had caught and play Frisbee. Every day we passed maybe a village or two, some days we saw nobody. Our cook, Doña Graça, had a kitchen so small she barely fitted in it. Yet she made extravagant breakfasts of exotic fruits, three-course meals and kept us supplied with a steady stream of caipirinhas. Our guide, Gil Serique, spoke fluent English. One night we went out with a 14-year-old boy who held a torch in his mouth and speared fish from his canoe. After about a week we reached Barcelos. The tropical fish festival was noisy and chaotic and life-affirming. Yet somehow it didn't live up to the boat journey that got us there.
• To book a bespoke boat trip with guide Gil Serique visit www.youramazon.org. Prices depend on length of trip and number of people. Alex Bellos is a former South America correspondent for The Observer and The Guardian
Gil Serique - Referências /Sebastião Imbiriba
25 Julho, 2008
Gil Serique - Referências
Estou com uma fila de livros aguardando a vez de serem lidos e apreciados. O primeiro é "East to the Amazon" (A Leste da Amazônia), de John Blashford-Snell e Richard Snailham. O Segundo, "Drowning World – a novel of the commonwealth" (Mundo Alagado – uma novela do bem-estar-comum), do autor de bestsellers Alan Dean Forster. O ultimo, "The Thief at the End of the World – Rubber, Power and the Seeds of Empire" (O ladrão no Fim do Mundo – Borracha, Poder e as Sementes do Império), de Joe Jakson, autor do incrível trabalho de pesquisa de "World in Fire" (Mundo em Fogo) que li e comentei recentemente.
O que estas três obras têm em comum? Todas fazem referencias ao nome de conterrâneo muito especial, Gil Serique.
"East to the Amazon", para meu gosto literário e preferências por informações científicas, dentre as três obras a menos interessante, relata como, em maio de 2001, John Blashford-Snell e sua equipe partiram através da densa floresta tropical da Bolívia em busca do Grande Paititi, a mística terra que os conquistadores espanhóis denominaram El Dorado, e dos segredos de suas rotas de comércio para o Velo Mundo. Os aventureiros percorreram rios perigosos em jornadas incríveis em pleno coração da Amazônia, onde encontraram e obtiveram ajuda de Flávio e Gil Serique.
"Drowning World" é uma obra de ficção científica - sobre Fluva, imaginário planeta onde chove o ano todo, exceto um mês - dedicada por Alan Dean Forster a Gil Serique por causa de... "Mamirauá, a floresta inundada, onde vimos a preguiça de três dedos, o boto rosa e o elusivo macaco uacari branco. A força do Iguaçu. A cerimônia do candomblé nas favelas de Salvador. Os grandes jacintos azuis do Piauí. Os pássaros de Itatiaia. A observação de capivaras e jacarés. A estupenda festa gastronômica no pequeno restaurante de Tefé. O licor caseiro de maracujá no Dia das Mães na Bahia. O mercado de Manaus e os sorvetes que tomamos lá e em Barreiras. E, o mais memorável, nadar com lontras gigantes no Pantanal".
De todos, "The Thief at the End of the World" me parece a obra mais importante, quer pelo primoroso trabalho de pesquisa – para a qual contribuíram, entre outros, meus amigos Cristovam Sena e Elcio Amaral - quanto por se tratar de assunto pertinente a Santarém. Joe Jackson narra a estória de Henry Wickham, que se aventurou pelas escuras florestas da Venezuela e do Brasil, das quais emergiu com setenta mil sementes de seringueira, obtidas ilegalmente, o primeiro caso de bio-pirataria em massa da era moderna. O autor enviou a Gil Serique um exemplar com a seguinte dedicatória: "Gil, I couldn't have writted this without you, pal. It's as much your book as it is mine. Best, your friend, Joe Jackson (Gil, eu não poderia ter escrito isto sem ti, meu chapa. Este livro é tão teu quanto meu. Tudo de bom, teu amigo, Joe Jackson".
Além de haver contribuído para a produção literária de outros, Gil possui seus próprios méritos como autor de "Birds – Your personal guide to Amazon wildlife (for the inquisitive initiate)" (Pássaros – Seu guia pessoal para a vida selvagem da Amazônia [para o iniciado inquiridor[). Eis o que Alan Dean Foster, autor de Star Trek, Star Wars e Alien, escreveu sobre "Birds": "Mestre guia e naturalista, Gil Serique não apenas vive na Amazônia... Ele vive a Amazônia cada dia de sua vida. Desde suas populosas e vibrantes cidades às pequeninas vilas que abraçam igarapés margeados de árvores, das filas de formigas hiper-ativas, em busca de alimento, à onça que, silenciosamente, percorre sombras beijadas pela Lua, enquanto ruidosos macacos fazem coro nas copas, ninguém conhece os segredos do grande rio, e do território que o envolve, melhor do que Serique".
postado por . . | Sexta-feira, Julho 25, 2008
Saturday, 13 September 2008
The thief at the end of the world by Joe Jackson
"Jackson, an American, gets at something fascinating about Victorian England: how deep scholarship and daring were yoked to ruthless expansionism, a quest to control pretty much everything. . . . Wickham never really gave up on his manias. The jungle robbed him of his judgment, and that’s why this story moves and haunts. Perhaps man can’t, in the end, control nature; he can’t even control himself."
– Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Wickham, like all the more celebrated explorer/adventurers of his day, is a creature of the past. Big corporations now do the dirty work of extracting the Third World’s resources and delivering them for the convenience of those of us in more privileged circumstances. But his remains a cautionary tale, as Jackson well understands. Exploitation is exploitation, no matter how it is done and by whom."
– Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
At the height of the Victorian era, Henry Wickham—a man with no formal education, little funding and limited experience—went adventuring in the darkest jungles of Venezuela and Brazil. He had learned of a particular kind of rubber tree that produced the strong and durable rubber that scientists and entrepreneurs in England craved. After a few near-death experiences, encounters with gigantic insects and the deadly inhabitants of the Amazon River, he emerged exhausted, ragged, and sunburned, with 70,000 illegally obtained rubber tree seeds. It was the first case of massive bio-piracy in the modern era, and it would change the world.
The Thief at the End of the World is the story of the use and misuse of nature in the quest for global dominance, and it is the story of one ordinary man’s obsessions drove him to extraordinary lengths. Wickham’s seeds were transported successfully to London’s famous Kew Gardens, and biologists there quickly shipped them off to colonial outposts in India and New Zealand. Within a few years, those seeds produced the trees that yielded the rubber used in everything from trains and airplanes to condoms and baby bottles. It is no exaggeration to say that rubber was the oil of its day—an incredibly valuable resource found in only a few remote places, that powerful governments would go to great lengths to get their hands on.
Meanwhile, Henry Wickham and his wife Violet were gradually shut out of the wealth and glory of the “Rubber Boom” by the very government they had hoped to serve, and they wandered further and further from the new world they had helped to create. Author Joe Jackson pulls from their letters and journals and the innumerable records left behind to draw a vivid, fascinating portrait of the man known in Great Britain as “the father of the rubber trade” and in Brazil as “Executioner of Amazonas.”
Ultimately, Wickham’s adventures tell the story of Victorian England’s adventures in the Amazon, with all the characteristics of the era: idealistic patriotism, ambitious colonialism, and a colossal greed rivaled only by fanatic industry.
Twenty-year adventure in the Tapajos Gold Mines
When I was still working with Joe Jackson on Thief at the End of The World, when he mentioned that a book about Garimpos would be a good idea. Months later when I was printing my book I bumped on Mr. Elval Rabello's book. It tells his pioneering adventures in the upper Tapajos river. The book is composed of some 18 stories he tells in a laconic and enthusaistic way. I started translating it a month or so into English, so that more people can read such amazing stories. Joe Jackson suggested that we should write his biography based on this very book. It is going all right. Beatiful, I am suspitious but finally another great book about my region and people is coming out. I can hardly wait to get it finished.
Monday, 8 September 2008
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
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