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| Parintins Shoreline, partly eroded by the river |
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| Stuffed Piranhas - Everywhere... |
We were heading downriver again for a last port of call in
Brazil, Parintins, which lays half way between Santarem and Manaus on
Tupinambarana Island. The town is 200 years old, and used to be a resting point
for indigenous people, who fled through thousands of miles of dense rainforest
to escape Portuguese slave trade.
Today, about 100,000 people live here. The tallest building
is the church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen; the most decorated is the municipal
market. Being Carnival Monday, the fish market was closed, thus making it
impossible to see the fisherman carrying their catches of the favorite local
fish, the enormous piracucu, which reaches more than 250 kg, from boat to
market.
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| The old Club Building of the Caprichoso Team |
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| Parintins Wall Art |
But, the claim to wide spread fame of this town is its semi
pagan Boi Bumba Festival, celebrated at the end of June each year. It re-enacts
a 19th century fable about a resurrected bull, which is in love with
a human princess.
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| Red and Blue Bois (Bulls) |
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| And Again... |
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| And Again....note the Star on the Caprichoso Black Bull, and the Heart on the Garantidos White Bull |
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| And Again....this time stuffed and mounted.. |
Two teams, the red and the blue, the Garantidos and the
Caprichosos, the white bull and the black bull, the heart and the star, compete
with each other to outdo the opposing team in the retelling of the story. The
celebration consists of parade floats, dances, music, elaborate figures of
mystical forest animals, dancers and actors clad in dazzling costumes, a vast
arrays of colourful feathers, and especially the dances of the bulls (humans
dressed in bull costume).
We anchored mid Amazon River in pretty strong currents and
tendered to a floating pier. The up-river side of the pier was clogged by a
dense log and junk jam, which pressed against the pilings of the pier. A few
municipal workers clambered about the logs with chain saws to nibble away at
the huge float. Frogs could be heard croaking amongst the mess, they would have
a lot of time before having to vacate their perches, as that log jam was not ever
going to disappear by itself or be removed sooner or later by human
intervention in a hurry.
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| Major Log Jam at the Pier |
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| Morning Chat on the River |
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| Working on the Log Jam |
As a courtesy to visiting passenger cruise ships – which
arrive about one per month – a mini version of the Boi Bumba festival has been
modified for Broadway tastes and is offered as a tourist attraction in the
local ‘convention centre’. I went to see it, of course. Colourful as ever (I
saw it years ago in an open air in an non-adulterated version) it gave an idea
of what the real thing would offer, however, this time around the mystical bull
devoted his dance more to audience participation than wooing his glittering
princess, which emerged out of a huge opening flower on the head of a jumbo
sized crocodile.
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| Paintings and Souvenirs of the famed bulls |
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| T-Shirt anyone |
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| Parintins Ship Schedule |
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| Boi Bumba Show |
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| Mystical Monkeys in the Boi Bumba Show |
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Dancer at the Boi Bumba  |
As they say, a good time was had by all, especially when
fuelled with a couple of no charge Capiringhas, the local devastatingly
effective cocktail of cane liquor, squished limes, sugar and ice.
