BOCA DA VALERIA, BRAZIL

A day in the life of an Amazonian Indian village … what a delightful visit! This community of about 75 families is very friendly and very poor. However, they’ve quickly adapted to tourism. Children greet visitors showing their exotic pets like parrots, sloths, lizards, an anaconda snake, a baby alligator, a catfish, various canary-sized, colorful birds, and various insects, and pose for pictures with them (all for $1 per picture, of course!). Many children of all ages dressed in fancy outfits made of feathers and had painted their faces to make themselves look more appealing. We rewarded their efforts with the gold foil chocolates we get every evening, and they loved them!

Their houses are wooden shacks, built on stilts because the river overflows its banks by many feet during the rainy season. They have no plumbing or bathrooms, but are very proud of their electricity. We heard music from boom boxes coming from some of the homes, and even saw a few satellite dishes in front of some of them! There is a school, and Holland America donated a large globe to them on a previous trip.

The children loved to take our hands and walk along with us, chattering and smiling the whole time even though they couldn’t understand English. One woman carrying her 3-year old daughter took us all the way to the other end of the village to show us her home, and proudly brought out a box of books and told us she was studying. She also showed us several pictures previous visitors had sent her, and produced a crumpled envelope with her name and address on it, indicating that she would like pictures from us, too.

What a wonderful experience interacting with such happy, friendly natives!