Our Amazon guide said that if we wanted to see the Amazon, we had to see it by boat. He said that there are no roads in the Amazon, only the rivers. He also said that satellite photographs have proven this to be true. Kids go to school in school boats, not school buses. Soccer players get to their matches by boat. People go to the market and back by boat. I didn’t get many photographs of this but I thought it would be good to post some to give you a flavor of this.

One thing that is supposed to be causing great destruction to the Amazon rain forest is logging. I’ve read that clear-cutting the forest has caused tremendous problems. I don’t know about clear-cutting but we did see several lumber barges on the Amazon, so some foresting work is being done as you can see below.

This was a view of some fruit being loaded onto a boat on the edge of the river. They mostly had loaded papayas and bananas.

This shows where the people sit as passengers on many river boats.

This shows both the plant crops on top and the human passengers down below. The local in the small boat is sending his crop of papayas to market. He threw one papaya at a time to the guy on the transport boat to load them. Passengers were helping hold his boat in place.

The locals use boats for transportation but also for fishing, such as the family in this photo. The put out nets, splash the water, then recollect the nets and any fish that get caught in them.