Monday, May 19, 2014

What to do at the 2014 World Cup in Manaus, Brazil between soccer games


As the media ramps up to the World's Cup soccer games in
Brazil, we will soon be hearing a lot about June 18-25 matches in the "jungle city of Manaus." We will hear that they built a big stadium there just for this event, and that the stadium was actually completed before the event! The announcers will probably be talking about the heat and wondering whether the Swiss team will be disadvantaged relative to the Hondurans. Airborne cameras will pull back from the field to show viewers the space-age stadium surrounded by a cluster of midrise buildings . The cameras will pan along waterfront shantytowns and into a broad expanse of water dotted with the occasional boat. And that may be all that the world of soccer fans gets to learn about that jungle city called Manaus.



Meeting of Rio Negro (foreground) and Solimoes
(background) rivers, forming the Amazon

Fast passenger lifts bow wave of black water of the Rio Negro
with the skyline of Manaus in background


Thus I am inspired to devote a blog to this interesting city, which I explored as part of my boots-on-the-ground research for my mystery-thriller, Amazon Gold. www.dirk-wyle.com/index.htm#ag The Amazon is the perfect setting for a story of mystery and adventure, and Manaus has had its share of both. The city lies about 800 crow-flight miles and about 2,000 winding river miles from the Atlantic ocean, yet it is a port for ocean-going freighters. It lies on the north bank of the Rio Negro just a few miles from where its black waters dump into the muddy red waters of the Solimoes (upper Amazon), in a visually dramatic "meeting of the waters."

The merger of these two rivers gives full strength to the Brazilian-named Amazon. And what a mighty river it is! As my protagonist Ben Candidi said in Amazon Gold www.dirk-wyle.com/index.htm#ag


"Of course my river was bigger than Tom Sawyer's. The Amazon is a heck of a lot longer than the Mississippi and it puts out 12 times as much water. Even the Rio Negro, its northern tributary on which I was standing, puts out more water than the Mississippi."

From the late 19th Century to around 1912, Manaus' fortunes rose with the world's demand for Brazilian rubber, which became essential with the growing use for tires and hoses. To harvest it, Indians opened the bark of rubber trees and collected the milky sap, which they dripped on a large stick and evaporated, coagulated and scorched over an open fire to produce large balls of black latex, which they trekked out on foot and then dugout canoes.

Manaus became the ultimate trading post and large fortunes were made, giving rise to colonial mansions, high society and even an opera house. But the rubber boom fell apart when Sir Henry Wickham "smuggled" out 70,000 rubber tree seeds and the British established their own plantations in Malaya (as it was called back then). Commercial life in Manaus is now sustained by government-subsidized manufacturing plants, free-trade, regional administrative activity and tourism.

In Amazon Gold, www.dirk-wyle.com/index.htm#ag, Ben Candidi wonders whether the discovery of new drugs in the rain forest could create a pharmaceutical boom.

The Manaus Opera House (Teatro Amazonas)


A soccer fan can find many interesting things to see in Manaus between the games. Colonial-style houses and churches are encountered by just walking around. A must-see item is the Opera House.

Italian chandelier and ceiling
(Manaus Opera House)
Hall of Manaus Opera House

Fresco of Manaus Opera House


It is a grand old hall, as stately and artistic as what was found in those days in Europe. A ceiling fresco expresses revelry. A wall painting shows the wonder of an ocean-going steamer sighted through a curtain of jungle. Another painting renders an operatic abduction in Amazon Indian costumery.

Indigenous-Inspired Fresco
Manaus Opera House


Ocean-Steamer-Through-The-Jungle
Painting in Manaus Opera House


 

 

 
 
 
Behind the Opera House, a portion of its original rubber-brick pavement is preserved. This was installed so that the enjoyment of performances would not be disturbed by the clatter of carriage wheels and horses hooves.
 
Rubber-Brick Pavement
Manaus Opera House
Author Dirk Wyle
at Manaus Market
 
Another relic of a bygone age is the Parisian-style market constructed from black filigree iron. A collection of boutiques, it functions as the city's grocery store. It is also a good place for a quick lunch or just a beer.
 
Manaus Market, exterior
Manaus Market, interior

 
The soccer fan interested in old-style architecture can also visit the public library, which has a quaintly outdated collection of economic books by English authors and a handsome iron staircase. A painting expresses the theme of  New World beauty and abundance as a gift to the gods of the Old World.
 
Filigree iron stairway, Manaus Public Library
Classical painting depicting bounty of New World
Manaus Public Library

The next item on the agenda should be a walk down to the waterfront. Yes, it is a walk down because Manaus sits on an elevation. The river has a seasonal variation of about 40 feet. In places it is 20 miles wide, with broad and variable flood plains (and inundation forests) that are fed or drained by inlets called ingarpes. Thus the commercial boats receive and discharge passengers and cargo at floating docks located along a high seawall. And tanker ships discharge fuel at special mooring sites.
 
Floating dock at commercial harbor, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil
 
Manioc ready for
eastward transport, Manaus
Bananas for eastward transport, Manaus
 
 
From the vantage of the seawall, one can also see families arriving to visit the market -- in outboard motorized boats, as shown, or paddling a traditional five-plank boat. After hanging around long enough, one usually finds a sympathetic soul interested in conversation. Hopefully, the World Cup experience will not change this. My Spanish was good enough for his ear to convert to Portuguese, and vice versa.
 
Transporting groceries home by boat
Author Dirk Wyle with citizen of Manaus
 
 
Regarding port activity, the smaller cargo and passenger boats that travel still farther up the river pick up and disgorge at the Sao Raimundo landing, one mile up river. There is no floating dock. The boats simply push up onto the mud bank and hang a gang plank to shore through a rubber tire. Heavily laden stevedores and passengers alike walk the plank to and from the muddy bank. Destinations and departure times are posted on a banner draped in front of the pilot house. To continue my tennis-shoes-on-the-ground research for Amazon Gold, www.dirk-wyle.com/index.htm#ag I took one of these boats up river. (More in the next blog.)


Author Dirk Wyle at Sao Raimundo landing (Manaus) seeking westbound boat
 
As the reader may have guessed, the riverboat is the major form of transportation in these parts. Yes, Manaus has an international airport. And, yes, it has automobiles and even a highway that goes north to the city of Boa Vista.  But to drive south you need to put your car on a ferry, and from the Amazon's southern bank you will have only a few asphalt-surfaced miles before you are driving on clay. Such roads become quite unreliable after tropical rainstorms.
 
Thus the riverboat is king in Amazonia. It is the combination semi-trailer and Greyhound bus, packed with cargo in its hold and lower deck, and carrying passengers in the one or two decks above. There are few "staterooms." Almost everyone travels hammock class, which I found exciting and not uncomfortable.
 
Returning our attention to the city, Manaus' government-run zoological garden has many interesting creatures. The most entertaining were the river otters, who played so wildly and continuously that a still photograph was next to impossible. The aligator-like caiman was more patient, as were the manatees, who have much narrower snouts than the ones I know in Florida.


Playful Amazon river otters at Manaus Zoological Garden

Amazon Manatees
Manaus Zoological Garden
Caiman at Manaus Zoological Garden
 
 
But the most interesting animal was a fish at the Natural History Museum, located at the edge of the industrial district. To get there I had to take a cab. Yes, the museum has a good collection of anthropological exhibits and preserved animals. But it also has an enormous fish tank that houses several six-foot specimens of pirarucu, a fish that lives in these rivers. The largest one caught was, as I remember, over 20 feet long. In my backcountry travel I saw a small one, freshly caught. The pirarucu has an extremely vertical hind section, which transforms to cylindrical in the mid section. The head is still narrower and looks like it could belong to an eel. But the eyes of these big creatures peering back at me through the glass were both placid and curious. They seemed almost human-like. I will confess to having spent half an hour gazing into them and pondering the Confucian question of what sort of thoughts could this fish be capable.

Pirarucu (two-foot specimen)
Traditional five-plank boat in background
Amazon backcountry
Pirarucu (6-foot specimens, live)
Natural History Museum, Manaus
 
 
The photo showing the freshly caught pirarucu was taken during my travels in the Amazon backcountry. That will be the subject my next blog installment.
 
In the meantime, I invite you to visit my website www.dirk-wyle.com where you can take a look at Amazon Gold and read sample chapters that describe the river- and landscape a couple of hundred miles west of the big soccer games.

If you are going to the games in Manaus, afterwards you might want to drop by Iguana Turismo at 10 de Julio Av. and make arrangements for them to take you into the rain forest outside the city.

Iguana Turismo (highly recommended)

 
 
 
 
 





















Rua 10 De Julho,679 | Centro, Manaus,
State of Amazonas 69010-060, Brazil
+55(92)36336507
iguanatour@hotmail.com



Amazon Gold, fourth in the Ben Candidi Series
 
 


Saturday, April 26, 2014

Why another blog, and who in the hell is this scientist and writer guy?

What can you get from following this blog by Dirk Wyle, Mystery-Thriller Writer?
I thought it best to start my first blog by answering this question. There must be hundreds of new blogs starting each day, and Facebook pages offer all sorts of delight and titillation from people you don't know. Today, while looking at my Facebook feeds, I saw a video of a "Ninja Cat" with a variable light-sword drawn on his right front paw. He vanquished an adversary in a fight, until it was interrupted by a dog. The special effects were clever, but did I really learn anything new about cats. A day or so earlier, I saw an underwater picture of a cormorant taken by a San Diego biologist. That attracted my attention because I have observed these aquatic birds in South Florida, but never under water. Following the links to the guy's website, I found the underwater video from which it was taken. It was amazing how fast that bird traveled, and I was pleased to be able to see how much of the propulsion was from the wings versus the legs.
 
As a partial answer to the first rhetorical question, I reposted the cormorant video but not the ninja cat. One can learn something new from the bird -- how it makes a living by chasing fish. Also, the video triggers thought about how the cormorant swims differently from the penguin. But one doesn't learn anything new from the cat fight. So one reason to follow my blog is that I promise to select mostly things that a guy or gal can learn from -- stuff that might turn out useful when encountering other new things.
 
So is this Dirk Wyle is some sort of tree-hugging, holier-than-thou education type? No, not really. I'm just a guy with a burning interest in how things work. We've all had such interest as children, but many of us lost it on the road to adulthood. Sometimes a kid's curiosity is stifled by impatient parents who get tired of answering questions. Sometimes it is stifled by school, when the memorization of unrelated facts becomes the basis of tests where an "A" is the only acceptable grade. Under the pedagogues, literature becomes a bunch of old stories that you have to read, science becomes a drag, and algebra and geometry become horrors that you get through somehow and never, ever, want to see again.
 
Of course the path to adulthood does take us -- most of us -- to a job and means of making a living. But it often extinguishes our natural curiosity about things that are not integral to the job or profession. The point I'm trying to make is that life -- and especially our leisure time -- can be a lot more interesting when one's natural curiosity is fed on a daily basis and is not allowed to die.
 
Thus the cormorant is in, but not for the sake of "education." The cormorant is chosen for the child within us, who is interested in how such critters make a living.
 
So is this guy's blog going to be about nature posts? Yes, but not only. Warm furry animals are attractive, but there is a host of other things that that can reawaken our childish curiosity: Giant machines, rockets that go into outer space, the mechanisms of diseases, and why people die from them. And when a guy or gal gets a handle on such things, there is still a bunch of even more exciting stuff for which modern science is developing explanations. This includes how the brain works, human psychology and the understanding of our behavior in small and large groups. What's more, a lot of this information can be useful on the job. Many jobs involve not only the management of subordinates and interaction with the boss. Many professionals can benefit from a better understanding of sociology, economics, deterministic calculations and even literature.
 
So is this guy's blog going to be feeding us a lot of academic stuff as some sort of self-help course or regimen?
 
No, I don't feel qualified to write a self-help book, and writing fiction has taught me to never assign chores to the reader. But what I am proposing is to give the reader a healthier menu to choose from. "Man ist was man isst," the German philosopher Schopenhauer wrote. "One is (or becomes) what one eats." In the same spirit, Aristotle said that we become that which we habitually do. Applying that to the Digital Age would mean that our minds tend to become what we habitually read or watch. What if blog and post material were selected to be intrinsically interesting or even subliminally instructive? That's my goal. Will my material be better than the run of the Internet mill? That will be for you to decide.
 
Okay, one may be thinking, he is promising to select better stuff for us. But there has to be an angle. He is trying to sell us his mystery-thriller books. Right?
 
Yes, I am looking to sell more books. But I am not doing it for money. I had made enough already, before taking up the pen. I began writing novels because I felt that I had novel-length stories within me that would not be told by anyone else.
 
Inspiration was spurred by reading the stories of great literature, mostly around bedtime. This has been a lifetime habit. Eventually, I came to realize why these timeless stories were so fascinating. They were actually worked-through examples and experiments that dealt with important things in my life. The stories dealt not only with challenge and response, or with social navigation. They dealt with fundamentals such as friendship and love. When I read a good story that treats one of these themes well, I spend some time analyzing it. After that I become less easily satisfied with a new story that is less thoughtful.
 
Another realization came to me in mid-career. As a professor of pharmacology, I had invented a way to make water-insoluble drugs injectable. To set my nascent technology on the path to commercialization, I had to retool as an entrepreneur. One of my ways for doing this was by subscribing to Inc. Magazine, which I read in the evenings in the living room. It had not only articles with helpful advice, but also stories by people who had made it -- or had almost made it. The stories were most enjoyable. They dealt with real people and real challenges. That was when I realized that a good story can be the best method for certain types of learning. Thinking about this more, I realized that every quest involves a story, and that every story involves a quest.
 
That realization was a great help in commercially developing my technology. As that quest came to fruition, I entered that sweet spot in professional life where work and play are not mutually exclusive activities. Work loses its compulsive overtones and play acquires underlying purpose. Today, research for my writing involves many playful thought experiments. It also involves much purposeful-but-leisurely travel. This is how I find new theaters of action for my protagonists, Ben Candidi (freelance scientist) and Rebecca Levis (world health physician).
 
To learn more about the books, I invite your visit to my author's website (www.dirk-wyle.com). And for more of my thoughts on the nexus of science and fiction, please follow this blog. And for daily nuggets of "brain candy" selected from other people's posts, please "like" my Facebook page (Dirk Wyle, Mystery-Thriller Author) or (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dirk-Wyle-Mystery-Thriller-Author/471924042839851?ref=hl). And for the professional side, I have a page at Linked-In (Duncan H. Haynes, Ph.D.).
 
I invite all to submit comments and suggestions to me at dirk@dirk-wyle.com. When writing, please indicate whether I have permission to quote you, citing name and e-mail address.