
Down on the pier, the tour boats for piranha fishing were
lining up. This was the big thing to do when visiting Santarem. There were at
least six boats tied up there for us and more jockeying for position. We were a
little early and got on the first boat and were off quickly and on our way to
Maica Lake.

Many places we passed were still inhabited although I don’t
know how they could be. One which was up higher apparently than the rest even
had a container garden on their front porch.

Transporting people from place to place many times happens
at night since the trip can be very long. The boats are all made to hang
hammocks and people spend the night sleeping in the hammocks while the boat
takes them to where they want to go.
I felt like we were on another safari of sorts as we entered
Maica Lake. Our lovely tour guide who in her spare time teaches English and is
an obstetric nurse who makes health journeys up and down the river and is
raising five children and being a guide for her husband’s tour business, began
pointing out birds and explaining the foliage as well as a little about the
piranhas.

The piranhas were not man-eating, she said, no matter what
we’d heard. The only time they are really aggressive is during the dry season
when food is scarce because they are trapped in smaller pools of water. There
was a story told on ship that when Theodore Roosevelt visited the locals had
trapped some piranhas in an area of the river and let them get hungry. Then
when the president arrived, they tossed in a cow and the rest is history, so to
speak.

The boat pulled off to one side of the lake in an out of the
way place and we were handed our fishing paddles fully baited with a piece of
red meat. We lowered the treats into the water and began our patient or not so
patient wait.
I could feel the first nibble and jerked but didn’t hook
anything. Another nibble. Another jerk. Nothing. I pulled up my line and sure
enough the meat was gone. I tried with a fresh piece. Again nibbles and jerks
and bait was gone. About the fourth time it happened, I joked that I was
feeding them not fishing for them.

On our way back to the ship, we found an iguana in the
bushes eating pretty purple flowers and then as we neared the city, we pulled
closer to the fish market on the shore. People were gathered there watching the
water for pick dolphins. This is the only area of the world where this dolphin
lives. We’d seen the backs of a couple of dolphin as we’d left the ship in the early
morning but weren’t close enough for pictures.
On the market pier, someone had a couple of lines with fish
tied to the end that they were slapping again the water then pulling in quickly
and sure enough, there was a pink dolphin! Yes, truly pink! Pepto Bismol pink!
We slowly and idled nearby and watched the men tease the
dolphins with the fish. Several times we could see a head pop up and noticed
that these dolphins have a pointier nose than the gray dolphins we’re so used
to seeing. They use that nose to dig through the silt to find crabs and shrimp
to eat. Like flamingoes, that diet helps maintain that pretty pink color.
There is a legend that says the pink dolphin is magic and
that the male can become a human form and entice young ladies into romance and
then disappear again into the water. Of course the young lady is then pregnant
and blames the dolphin. It being bad luck to harm a pink dolphin, the father of
the young lady has no recourse for revenge.
All too soon our morning excursion was over. It was one of
the highlights of our trip. How many people get to say they were piranha
fishing in the Amazon?
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