The best part of the day is 5-7 pm when the air cools off and we can sit in the shade on chairs outside of our cabin to watch the water, trees, clouds, and sunset. Very soothing.
We should have mentioned earlier that we will be no where near indigenous villages on our trip. Given the barbaric treatment the indigenous people received over hundreds of years from the Portuguese, the Catholic Church, settlers, slavers, rubber barons, and poor farmers who moved to the Amazon from draught-ridden lands of the northeast of Brazil, many of the remaining indigenous people have over the last several centuries gradually hidden as far as they could into the Amazon forest to avoid contact with white man, whom they long ago learned to fear and despise. They also fled from the impact of smallpox and other European diseases.
In the last 25 years or so, FUNAI, the Brazilian government's indian agency, changed its approach to indigenous people. Instead of trying to acculturate them into modern society, the government has implemented new policies to isolate and protect these peoples from contact with modern man and to encourage them to preserve their tribal traditions. This basically means that modern man is prohibited from economic and social contact with most indigenous tribes. However, given the land pressures in Brazil (agriculture, hunting, logging, gold mining, etc.), it is problematic that this new policy will succeed.
In spite of the above, there has been much blending of the races since the first Portuguese entered the Amazon region in the early 1500s. Most of the people we have seen in villages and canoes along the river appear to be of mixed race.
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