Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira - Morro do Seis Lagos

Day 1

Getting to Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira is by far more exciting than staying there. RICO airlines have regular flights to Sao Gabriel. A word of advice: having a reservation does not guarantee you a seat in the plane. Buy your ticket, and show up at least an hour earlier to make sure you will actually get on the plane. Once on board, you are well rewarded for your trouble - a vast, pristine green sea stretches below, there are no roads, no towns, just waves of green. As if this is not breathtaking enough, the dark waters of the Rio Negro spiral through the rain forest, punctuated by islets and beaches of white sand. We thought about taking a boat from Manaus to Sao Gabriel - there is an express line that makes the trip up the Rio Negro once a week, and it takes less than 2 days to get there. A trip on a regular boat that makes local stops takes about 5 days. But we decide not to take a boat - the beautiful, dark red waters of the Rio Negro are not a very hospitable environment for fish, which means there are relatively few birds and animals that live near the river. (This is not to say the trip is not worth it - click here for details of the river trip from Sao Gabriel to Manaus).

As we get nearer to Sao Gabriel, the landscape changes - rocks and hills start to appear, and we see some quite spectacular river rapids. Sao Gabriel is not exactly a tourist spot. It is a border town, situated close to both Venezuela and Colombia, and the biggest local employer is the army. Perhaps because of that, it is not a poor town - it has a lively market area where you can get useful trip supplies such as mosquito nets, rope, water disinfectant, and food. We easily found a local restaurant that served good food. Evenings are quite lively, especially on the weekend. The riverbank is transformed into an improvised outdoors food court, to the delight of the many well fed street dogs. A local specialty worth trying is açai juice sparkled with pearly tapioca grains and sugar. Most locals look Indian; there are 13 different tribes in this area. We see a lot of young people and children, as well as some older women, but for some reason older men are nowhere to be found. Because this is such a remote area, and most things need to be hauled upriver from Manaus, prices are relatively high here.

As far as we could tell, there was only one hotel in town, and you would be hard pressed to find it on your own, as it carries no visible sign. Be prepared to share your hotel quarters with an extra large cockroach or two. And, bring earplugs if you are staying over on a weekend night - the hotel is right across the street from the town's two favorite teenager hangouts, that apparently compete fiercely with each other as to which one's loudspeakers can make the hotel windows burst.

As with any trip, the biggest challenge is to find a guide who is knowledgeable about the area. We managed to get in touch with a tourist agency through the local tourist bureau. At the end of our first day in town, as we were looking at the sunset from the top of a steep hill, we asked our guide how safe the Sao Gabriel area is. He assured us that there was no crime here. We told him we had heard that drug trafficking was a problem in this area. A puzzled smile appeared on his face, and then he said yes, there was some drug trafficking, but there was no crime in the area. How nice.

Most tourists who come to this remote location are heading for Pico da Neblina, the highest peak in Brazil. We were more interested in the rain forest and its inhabitants, so we decided to visit the Morro do Seis Lagos - a remote and not very popular destination. As it turned out, it was not a particularly wise choice. Few, if any tourists ever venture there, which of course means that few guides really know the area well. To his credit, the manager of the tourist agency tried to dissuade us from making the trip - he warned us about the difficulty of the hike, the heat, and the abundance of insects. Finally he relented, but insisted on having us accompanied by two people - a guide and a porter-cook.

Day 2

Getting to the Seis Lagos area is not easy. First we rode in the back of a seatless truck for more than two hours. We followed the road that links Sao Gabriel to Venezuela, a main road according to the map. As it turned out, this road sported some of the nastiest bumps and potholes we had ever seen, so the ride was a first rate upper body workout. A small reward along the way - the road crosses the line of the Equator, and we could not resist the photo op. There are no villages to speak of along this road, just the occasional farm or soldier camp. We passed by several plots of land where the forest had been cut down a long time ago, for no apparent purpose - nothing is planted, and there is no cattle grazing. This seems to be a common problem around towns, big or small, in Amazonia. We also passed by people walking or riding motorcycles, and almost every man we saw carried a rifle.

We finally got off the truck, expecting a pleasant three-hour boat trip to the beginning of the trail that leads to the Seis Lagos trail. The boat trip was interesting - the small river lead deep into the forest. Giant iridescent-blue butterflies fluttered about, and flocks of tiny bats paraded their amazing flight skills over our heads. But it was also challenging - the river was unusually dry for the season, so we ended up carrying the loaded boat half of the way, and our guide had to hack through dozens of branches and fallen trees. We reached the start of the trail in the late afternoon, and had to spend the night on the riverbank in the company of swarms of very hungry insects. The campsite was a small clearing on the bank, featuring a set of wooden poles and an improvised fireplace. The poles supported the tarmac roof our guide brought, as well as our hammocks. The roof is a must, unless you enjoy getting soaked by a strong outburst of rain while you are sleeping. Mosquito nets and insect repellant are also a must, although they do not guarantee you a sting-free night. As we soon discovered, the darkness brought on tiny voracious bloodsuckers that had no trouble getting through the mosquito net, or even stinging your back through the fabric of the hammock. Insect repellant staved them off for about an hour or so, allowing us to fall asleep just so we could walk up feeling as targets on a very busy shooting range.

On the eve of the jungle hike, the guide and the cook entertained us with heartwarming stories about the group of American researchers who came to measure the depth of the park's lakes, and never left their tents unless absolutely necessary, or about the German tourist who got so irritated by the flies at the top of the mountain, that no sooner had he reached the first lake, he ran straight back. Our guide, Antonio, was a silent Indian from Colombia. The porter, Batata, was very talkative, but it was difficult to figure out what he was saying most of the time. He had moved to Sao Gabriel a few years ago, his family lived in Presidente Figuereido, near Manaus.

It rained several times through the night.

Day 3

It is early morning and we are embarking on our jungle trek. As the name suggests, there are six lakes in this park (park is really a misnomer - the overgrown trail and the two campsites are the only recreational facilities in the area). We plan to visit four of them, as we are told that the remaining two are inaccessible. The lakes are in a hilly area, and the relatively steep escale starts right from the riverbank. Under normal circumstances, this is not a very difficult hike. But the heat and humidity make you feel like you are jogging in a sauna dressed in a nylon sports suit. You have to carry your own equipment - hammocks, clothes, water, cameras, everything except for the food. And, you need to be extra careful, as you are not actually walking on firm ground. Rather, the trail is a thin layer of compressed leaves supported by tree roots, so it feels a bit like walking on a trampoline most of the time, which is nice. However, every now and then your foot sinks through, which can lead to unpleasant injuries. Also, the trail had not been used in a while, so the fallen tree trunks and protruding branches meant a lot of crawling and climbing was necessary.

Our guide Antonio helped us spot some interesting insects and plants, but most of the time he and the porter stayed far ahead of us, so we did not get to learn much from either of them. Also, as they were so far ahead, they managed to scare off the rare bird or animal that ventured near the trail before we had a sporting chance to get a glimpse of it. Batata, the porter, kept saying every time he spotted or heard an animal: "If only I had my rifle with me!"

As we climbed up, the forest started thinning, and the trees became shorter and shorter. Then we saw the first one - way down below the trail, in the midst of a crater of vegetation, the still, green surface of a lake. It was a strange sight - there was no logical reason for a lake to exist there. There was no trail going down to it, so we pressed on to reach the camp site near Lago do Dragao, the Lake of the Dragon.

The Lake of the Dragon was quite beautiful - kidney-shaped, with tall banks made of porous ochre-red rock hosting swarms of small bats. The water looked brownish red, and was quite warm, as we found out when we went for a swim. As we were setting up camp, we discovered why tourists were not flocking to visit Morro do Seis Lagos. The abelhas (a kind of small flies) were all over us; they followed us constantly, a buzzing black cloud that only went away in the evening. Although they do not bite, they tend to get into your eyes very often, and when they do it burns and stings. Also, they make an incredibly annoying noise. The only place where they would leave you alone during the day was if you were swimming in the lake.

Batata was a very good cook, he made a great dinner, but the heat and flies had killed our appetite. On the positive side, the invisible insects that kept stinging us down by the riverbank apparently did not like altitudes, so we had a relatively sting-free night.

Day 4

We planned to see three more lakes, but we only managed to visit two of them. Antonio could not find the trail that leads to Lago Verde, which is supposed to be the most beautiful. We managed to take a swim in Lago dos Patos, a serene and beautiful lake surrounded by steep green hills. But the heat and flies were starting to get to us, not to mention the stinging ants. We had the misfortune to stop for a snack on a spot of the trail that harbored a colony of feisty red ants. It felt like acupuncture gone awry - dozens of them had managed to get under our clothes.
We decided not to spend another night in Morro do Seis Lagos - beautiful as the lakes were, there was little else to see. The way down was by no means easier than the way up. We had to spend another night on the riverbank, as it was getting dark. Yet another night of being at the bottom of the food chain - we did not get much sleep.

Day 5

The boat trip back was just as exhausting as before, but it was worth it. The forest was absolutely beautiful. We finally reached the road, only to discover that the truck that was supposed to pick us up was broken. We spent a few hours watching the traffic go by - a total of one bus and one truck. To our astonishment, the driver managed to fix the badly broken truck, and we made it back to Sao Gabriel without further incidents.

Day 6

The Military Police at the Sao Gabriel airport searched our luggage - the owner of the tourist agency told us that this is customary, and they are looking for seeds and plants. Local people are quite resentful of foreigners who take plants and seeds to study and then patent medicines derived from them. They see it as bio theft. We did not have anything worthy of MP attention, but they gave me a hard time nonetheless, because I was not carrying my Cartao do Entrada/Saida with me. This is an Entry/Exit form that tourists are given when they arrive in Brazil, and they are supposed to give it back to passport control when they leave the country. The flight Sao Gabriel - Manaus being a domestic one, it did not occur to me that I might need the form. Apparently I was wrong - the law requires all tourists to carry this form at all times. There were about five minutes left to take off, and if I were to miss this flight I would have missed all my connections and my flight out of Brazil. But the officer seemed unrelenting. Finally he let me go, but told me that as soon as I get to Manaus I should report to the MP there, and that a colleague of his was going to be on my flight, making sure that I do so. I had no problems getting on a plane in Manaus, but the whole episode confirmed Sao Gabriel's status as one of the less pleasant destinations in Brazil.

back...