Brazil opens up the Amazon

Press, 23 November 1976, Page 24

Brazil opens up the Amazon

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A. H. STARK

Last month, a petite and elegant New Zealand woman journeyed up the mighty Amazon River to the interior of Brazil—a trip that, in the past, only the hardiest of adventurers would have dared to dream about. Yet, far from roughing it. as one wolild imagine, she went in style—travelling by air and staying in luxury hotels along the jungle-covered shores.

It was only from the air that the immensity of the Amazon, the world’s largest river in size, volume and number of tributaries, could be truly appreciated. said Mrs Pam Thorpy. With her husband, Frank, Mrs Thorpy travelled on Brazil’s airline, Varig, up the Amazon to Manaus, a city 1600 km from the eastern seaboard. Mr Thorpy, of Auckland, is Varig's New Zealand

sales representative. (The airline also operates an extensive international service).

On the way Mr and Mrs Thorpy spent four days at Belem, a Portu-guese-influenced city only 145 km from the sea, and another four days at Santarem, an old town founded in 1661 at the junction of the Tapajos and Ama-zon-rivers, 884 km inland. There they .explored the Amazon by canoe, an experience Mrs Thorpy found “awe-in-spiring.”

“Our Indian guide paddled the boat so quietly that peacefulness of the jungle was awe-inspiring,” she said. “I felt so close to my Creator. It was so quiet I could even hear the wings of a dragonfly as it flew past. And there were butterflies as big as birds, with gorgeous iridescent coloured wings. I have never seen anything so spectacular as one of those giant butterflies flying overhead.” Mrs Thprpy said that the Amazo-

nian jungle featured more diverse plants, flowers and trees, snakes, insects and animals than any other in the world. About 1800 varieties of birds, mainly multi-coloured parrots, thrived in the earth’s largest and densest rain forest and 1500 varieties of fish flourished in the Amazon and its many large tributaries. (Of the 20 largest rivers in the world 10 flow into the Amazon.)

The isolation once enjoyed by Amazonia, however, was fast disappearing as the Government completed new highways and Indian tribes and wildlife retreated further into the depths of the jungle as civilisation encroached.

Now the Amazon was even linked directly to Paris with the completion at Manaus, early this year, of an international airport capable of handling the supersonic Concorde. Modern hotels were being built in the cities along the Amazon and a 750-bed hotel was recently completed in Manaus.“One might wonder how thev would fill up that number of beds in" such an isolated area, but in August alone the hotel accommodated 1186 tourists,” Mr Thorpy said.