Business Trip Extraordinaire--Day 14

Today I visited the temple I helped build.



A lot of people have worked very hard to put a temple in Manaus. Church members here are faithful to the Lord and to their families, and they share the gospel with everyone. They travel for days to get to the current temple and back. Missionaries here endure heat, humidity, rain, and disease, and their families have supported them and have had to wonder what kind of place this must be if it takes letters three weeks to get home (not that letters are written anymore now that everyone uses email). But the Lord is pouring his influence out on this city, and they are escaping physical and spiritual poverty one day at a time. The Manaus Temple will be a huge blessing for this region.

I arrived at the Manaus Temple on bus 120, which goes from the Centro to Ponta Negra. This is a small temple, and the bus went so fast that I almost missed it. Thankfully, I knew that the streets on the other side all had names of countries, and a street sign caught my eye, so I got off. By the way, the four streets closest to the temple (other than Avenida Ponta Negra itself) are named Itália (Italy), Inglaterra (England), Alemanha (Germany), and Pais de Gales (Wales)--the four countries from which most of my ancestors came. Coincidence? Probably, but I thought that was neat to have a reminder of my ancestors across the street from the temple in the city where I served.

I have a lot of photos, but the bandwidth is dreadful here so I'll upload what I can now and put the rest on Photobucket next week or the week after.

The temple and housing for traveling temple patrons are both under construction.

Constructions workers on the roof

Sign at the temple site

Artist's rendition of the completed temple. I reached as high as I could to avoid the wall enclosing the temple site, but I guess my billion-dollar arms were not long enough.

A view of the east side of the temple. The front faces north, i.e. toward Salt Lake. Coincidence? I guarantee it.

The only bad news:


For those of you who don't falam português, this is a sign for a visitor center. I didn't know there was one! The reason it's bad news is that it lists hours for Monday (Segunda-feira) through Thursday (Quinta-feira) and Friday (Sexta-feira), but not Saturday (Sábado), which is today. Que pena! I'm flying away early Monday morning and won't have time to see it. But that's okay. I saw what I came to see.

Plants with little velcro-like pieces stuck to my shoes in the median of Av. Ponta Negra while I was taking photos of the temple.

After the temple, I went to the same bus stop where I got off the bus. The bus shelter had an ad:

"Small Prices."

I beg to differ. R$8.00 is about $4.80, and R$5.00 is about $3.00. That makes your Big Mac, small fries, and small drink about $10.80. ("It's just a McDonald's ad. Who cares?," says you. "Be patient," says I.) But I am curious about where the McDonald's is located. There famously was not one in Manaus when I lived here.

Near the temple was also a Coca-Cola ad (which made it into my first temple photo by mistake; deleted), as well as a billboard for a "motel," which means something quite different here. Let's just say that temple patrons would not choose to stay at a "motel" in Brazil.

Back to the main subject. The reason I went to the same bus stop was to head further west through Ponta Negra in order to visit the Museu do Seringal. ("Museu" means "rubber," "do" means "plantation," and "seringal" means "museum.") I wasn't sure exactly how far out the bus went, but I found out after about two minutes when the bus did a U-turn and started heading back toward the city. I got off the bus immediately. I was then at the Praia (beach) da Ponta Negra. Interesting place. I didn't go all the way down onto the beach since I wasn't dressed for it. But I wandered down near the food vendors to find a restroom. I found a typical Manaus facility, which means that you, gentle reader, have never seen a bathroom like this. Use your imagination. But the city is revitalizing the area, as you can see in some of the photos, and the natural beauty is evident:

Praia da Ponta Negra, on the Rio Negro, one of the two main tributaries of the Amazon (the other being the Rio Solimões (say SO-lee-MOINGS)). The gray and red thing on the right is one side of an arch that is part of the revitalization project. The building in the center is a hotel I believe.

Rio Negro, taken from Ponta Negra. The city center is downstream/left/southeast of here.

At Ponta Negra, the top of a wrecked gazebo. I can relate.

I'll bet you didn't know there was a bridge across the Amazon, did you? Neither did I. They must have built it in the last 13 years. Wow. Now maybe they can make the highway to the south passable, and suddenly Manaus will be connected to the rest of the country. The left side is somewhere in Manaus, on the north bank, and the right side is on the south bank.

Maybe the revitalization project will address these steps. But maybe not. No ADA, no problem!

After visiting Ponta Negra briefly, I decided to try walking to the Marina do Davi, where I could supposedly catch a boat to the museum. I had a map and probably would have made it, but not two minutes into my walk, a nice-looking couple offered me a ride and I gratefully accepted. I am not one to hitchhike, and I did not, but in northern Brazil I trust people who offer rides. I wouldn't do it in Rio, which is fine because they would not offer. This very kind couple was going to the Marina as well, and they even showed me exactly which boat to catch.

Marina do Davi, near Ponta Negra in Manaus

The motorboat I rode really cooks. I don't know how fast it was, but faster than I expected. It can hold about 30 people when it's full, and the driver would not leave until it was full. We made lots of stops at various beaches and villages before the museum.

One of the beaches where the boat let people off

The forest growing in the Rio Negro. This time of year is high water, though many of the beaches have usable space this year.

DUUUUUUUDE! No wonder so many people go motorboating.

After about half an hour of dropping people off at various places up various creeks upstream/west of Manaus, we arrived at the museum. To my surprise, I was the only one to exit the boat there.

My boat, leaving the museum, with a few passengers left to drop off.

This made me wonder if maybe the museum wasn't such a good idea. But it looked interesting enough, and besides the boat had already left, so I gave it a try.

Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso from the boat dock.

The museum turned out to be immensely interesting. A gentleman greeted me on my way up to the buildings, and he called out to someone, "Ele tem português" (literally, "He has Portuguese"). Unintentional best compliment of the day. Thank you sir!

The someone he was calling turned out to be my tour guide. She spent a long time showing me the whole facility and knew all about it. It's a replica that was built for a movie, and they have kept it running as an actual rubber plantation, except that they only have a few people working it. The real plantations were owned by rich Europeans and/or Brazilians, and they were worked by basically slaves from northeastern Brazil. It was a horrible life. They lived under a tiny shelter, where they also had to make the rubber, which involves pouring the rubber milk onto the mass of rubber while turning the rubber, and then putting it over a fire. Remember, this is inside their living quarters. They also had to collect the rubber milk from the trees in the middle of the night, because that's when conditions were best. They were not free to leave and had no chance to escape.

The owner of the plantation would trick them out of their meager salary. For example, he had a chapel built for one of the Catholic saints, and once a year they would have a party for a month in honor of this saint, where food and drink were provided. Little did the workers know that the owner was keeping track of the food they ate and counting it against them!

Nowadays, it's run by my tour guide and her husband. They live there, in modern quarters apparently, and the rest is built to look like an authentic rubber plantation.

The owner's dining room

The owner's kitchen. The disc on a rope is to keep scavenging animals from getting the fruit. They would grease the disc, so that if an animal climbed down the rope, it would slip on the disc and lose its balance and fall. You probably think that's overkill, because you have never lived in northern Brazil.

The company store, one of the multiple ways the owner would trick the workers out of their money. The gray cylinder with a hole through it is a replica ball of rubber. The replica weighs 8 kg. A real one weighed 50 kg.

The private bath for the owner's daughter. Not quite so private, because it faced the river, where the workers bathed.

Rubber milk dripping from the tree and running into a little cup, which a worker would empty every night and then carve a new groove

Home of the top worker, selected by the owner as an incentive to work hard

Home of a regular worker. The little tower in the middle is a fireplace. The rubber ball is over it. They would sleep wherever there was room. I will never complain about bringing work home with me again.

My tour guide (I forgot her name but she was great), showing a simple Indian device for drying out manioc flour (farinha). Put the coarse flour in, pull the ends, and the moisture is squeezed out. Indians' only involvement with the rubber industry is that they would sometimes attack and kill the workers. (If you think it's politically incorrect to call them Indians, go to Brazil sometime and ask them about "native Brazilians" and enjoy the funny looks you will get.)

The European device for drying out manioc flour. The workers who couldn't handle working in the jungle were assigned to make manioc flour.

Cupuaçu (COO-poo-ah-SOO), the most glorious fruit invented. It's hard to describe what the pulp inside tastes like. I guess it's a little like a very sweet banana, sort of? Help me out, MBM alumni. Anyway, it is found only in the Amazon region. You can't export the seeds, so there is no cupuaçu of any volume anywhere else.

This tour was awesome, definitely a highlight of my trip so far. The tour guide was very informative, and also patient with my slow understanding of Portuguese nowadays. When the tour was done, she put up a big white flag to indicate to the boats that there was a passenger ready to go. I was the only visitor the whole time I was there, so it was just me. In about 15 minutes, a boat showed up. It was empty, except for the driver and attendant. They took me straight back to the Marina with no stops. It was early in the afternoon, so most people were probably not done for the day and heading back yet. The point is that this was a private boat for me, ala Where the Wild Things Are.

I could get used to this.

Arriving at the marina, it was about 2:00 and I was hungry. There are lots of little shops along the road that ends at the marina. There is also a small outdoor restaurant. I approached and ordered. The choices were beef, beef, chicken, fish, fish, or fish. They talked me into a popular regional fish, tucunaré. I'm on the banks of the world's largest river; I have to have fish sometime. It took a while, but when it came, wow:

Now that's what I call almoço. Left to right: macarrão (noodles), salada de alface e batata (green salad with potatoes), arroz (rice), feijão (beans), limão (lime), e tucunaré (tasty fish).

This was just like meals that church members would feed us for lunch when I was a missionary. When they would serve fish, they would cook a huge one for the whole family and the missionaries, instead of individual small fish like you see on my plate. Otherwise, it was just the same and brought back a lot of memories. I added a 600 mL (20 oz) guaraná soda, and the total was R$10 (about $6). Let's see, $6 for a full home-cooked delicious meal, or $10.80 for McDonald's.

I think this was a family-run restaurant. I asked the man about getting to the bus stop (remember, I hitched a ride to get there). He said to wait a while and there would be a free bus to take me to the bus stop. I waited a long time and then, when he wasn't looking, I decided to walk. I had my map and knew it couldn't be more than half an hour. About three minutes into my walk, I met a group of ladies and asked if they knew where a bus stop was. "Right here," they said (in Portuguese). But this was to catch the free bus that my lunch host recommended. They said if I were in a hurry, I should start the half-hour walk. If half an hour is a hurry, I figured I'd better start. Sure enough, two minutes after I left, I saw the bus coming, so I ran back and got laughed at a little. They were very nice and explained how it worked. Soon I found my way back to the city center.

In U.S. public transit, you're not supposed to eat or drink anything. That is also true in Brazil on the actual bus. But in a bus station, you can eat and drink, and there are a multitude of vendors to help you do so. I loved the smell of the cupuaçu at the museum so much that I decided to seek out a cupuaçu picolé. Picolé is like a popsicle but better because it's made from actual fruit pulp. It's like a fruit pudding pop. They only make them from local fruits, so I think the only one you would encounter in the U.S. is banana.

Picolé de cupuaçu. Mmm.

After cooling off and drying off briefly in my room, I went to the Palacete Provincial. It has been a lot of things over the years, but today it houses five different museums. I spent a couple of hours there and it was very enjoyable and free of charge. The most interesting of the museums was the one for the Amazonas military police (Polícia Militar), where I learned a lot about the history of the region. I'm told that all the docents speak enough English to pass a test before starting their job, so you can probably see this without much trouble. They don't allow photos, but here is a photo of the entrance:

Entrance to the Palacete Provincial

I left when they closed at 7:00. Walking back to the hotel, I went through yet another attractive square. This one was next to the Palacete Provincial, and the palace and square were both restored at the same time in the last 10 years.

Fountain in Praça Heliodoro Balbi

Final photo of the day (I can't begin to explain this):

Punched-up Mickey Mouse fun bus

I think the character hanging on for dear life was supposed to be Mickey Mouse, but he looked more like the Travelodge mascot, which Tracy once described as a punched-up Mickey Mouse.


I had a great day! The people of Manaus are friendly, patient, and generous, and it is a wonderful city to visit. I can imagine that it might not be that inviting if you don't speak Portuguese or you don't want to experience part of the developing world. Plus you can probably see all there is to see within a few days. But I sure enjoyed this day.

Tomorrow I plan to go to church in a couple of different wards and possibly see some people I knew when I lived here. Then I'll have time to kill before my flight. I won't likely be able to blog much if at all, but I'll write it up and then post it on Monday. It will likely be much briefer than today's entry. Thanks for reading!