Some Facts about the Amazon Basin and the Rio Negro Lodge
Some Facts about the Amazon Basin and the Rio Negro Lodge
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Some Facts about the Amazon Basin and the Rio Negro Lodge:The Amazon Basin is one of the last great wilderness areas left on earth. Any realistic description of it must necessarily utilize many superlatives. It is the largest river basin in the world. The Amazon River flows through the Basin. Over a thousand tributaries, in turn, feed the Amazon River. With its tributaries, the Amazon system drains an area of an amazing 2,375,000 square miles – three quarters the size of the continental United States. It carries one fifth of the world’s fresh water out to sea. Its flow into the Atlantic Ocean is ten times that of the Mississippi River. The Amazon is, also, the largest river in the world. Its biggest tributary, the Rio Negro River, is the fifth largest. The Rio Negro is classified as a “black water” river. The water is actually a very dark brown in color (very much the color of dark tea). It obtains its colorization from the fine organic sediments suspended in it which release dissolved plant compounds, typically, tannins. The Rio Negro joins the main body of the Amazon River (classified as a “white water” river) in Brazil, just upstream of the area’s largest city, Manaus. Manaus is approximately 800 hundred miles upriver (as the parrot flies) from the area where the Amazon River estuary joins the Atlantic Ocean. Up the Rio Negro from Manaus it is another 250, miles, or so, to the small river town of Barcelos. Barcelos is the last inhabited outpost into the rainforest jungle for many hundreds of miles in any direction. It is completely surrounded on all sides by thick, untracked and, many times impenetrable, rain forest jungle. From Barcelos it is still another 60 miles upriver to the Rio Negro Lodge. The Rio Negro Lodge sits on a bluff overlooking the southern shoreline of the river. The lodge, and its immediate environs, is an almost completely self-contained enterprise with regard to its daily food and service needs. It has been carved out of the thick, luxuriant jungle growth that makes up the area. Surrounding the lodge is a compound that contains a small village for its service staff with associated farmed areas for its food needs. The river waters up and downstream from the lodge are renowned as a haven for world class Peacock Bass fishing. Fishermen come from all over the world to catch this worthy prey. The sole reason for the Rio Negro Lodge’s existence is to provide such fishermen the means by which they can pursue this worthwhile sport. The entire enterprise is exquisitely designed for this purpose.  Nitro Boarding at Barcelos
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