Day 5 - last full day

This morning we went fishing again. The piranhas in Rio Negro are different from the ones on Rio Solimoes. There are no red ones here but there are the black ones which are the largest type, up to 5kg. Roberto, our resident fishing expert, caught two of these black piranhas. 

Morning canoe ride - glassy waters 

Passion flower

Our next excursion was a visit to an Indian village. Apparently during the early days of European settlement, ships traveling down the Amazon noticed that there were many Indians that were sick from European disease so they took them by boat to the town hospitals. Once the Indians got better they didn't want to go back to their sickly villages and created new ones in Terra preta - black earth. They came up with a new language that the mixed Indian people would speak. We saw the Indian people making farina and tapioca from manioc. We saw their pet tapir and macaws. We also saw their flat screen TVs and mobile phones and wondered how they could afford them. The only exportables we saw were the little souvenirs they made ranging from 3-30 reales which clearly doesn't buy each family a large screen TV.

Tapir

blue and yellow Macaws

In the afternoon, we went to see the pink dolphins. We paid 50 reales to take pictures with and touch pink dolphins that come up to a platform area off a floating river house.  They dolphins were not cages and allowed to come and go but stuck around because they knew they'd get feed fish by the people in the house. We all stood on the submerged platform as the dolphins came for their fish and we were able to pet them. I was surprised at how soft their skin was, much softer that the ocean dolphins I encountered in Mexico. Instead of sleek tight skin they had soft pudgy skin, maybe they were overfed :) then we tried our hands at fishing the largest river fish - the pirarucu - which we've had for dinner several times. This was an incredibly large and strong fish! No one succeeded of course.

Next we went on our last canoe trip and it was an awesome last trip. We were along the Arieu river area and saw a large ecolodge. Nearby we encountered a large group of squirrel monkeys that came very close to our boat and spent some time playing in front of us. They were adorable.
We also saw a couple hawks fishing and a sloth. We watched the sunset on the river. It was a great ending canoe trip.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil