One of the best things so far about being in the Amazon has been the amazing diversity of local foods available. During our orientation week I tried I don't know how many different juices, many of which came from fruits only available regionally. One yummy fruit which we've had in ice cream and juice form is cupuaçu; we've also had it as a jelly inside of chocolate. Mmm. We've also had watermelon, pineapple, avocado, and other juices here that are available in the U.S.--but they're usually fresh and much better here.
Then there's açai, which I've had several times with my homestay family. The way it's consumed here is not at all like in the U.S. Instead of drinking it as a sweet juice it's eaten, as a thick, cold soupy dish. It has a bitter, almost grassy taste and is often eaten with farinha, another amazing local food. The coconut water that I've had a few times has also been different than what I've had in the U.S. I usually can't stand the taste of coconuts, in any form, but the coconut water here (which people drink from cold coconuts purchased from any number of street vendors) tastes mostly like water but also a little bit like watermelon. I also really like the mangoes here (but not usually at home), and they and the bananas are much smaller but more full of flavor than in the U.S.
A local dish that I tried just the other day was tacacá. It's essentially a soup made from the broth of a small yellow fruit (tucupi) with a leafy green (called jambu, it leaves your mouth feeling tingly) and shrimp (which I abstained from). Other interesting things about local food: fast food (i.e. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Subway) is super expensive and considered a luxury; people eat everything they order at restaurants with forks and knives (including sandwiches, burgers, and pizza); people here love to put ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise on just about anything; peanut butter is (unfortunately) not very popular and actually pretty expensive; breakfast is usually light (bread and butter or cheese, or crackers and maybe fruit) and lunch is the largest, most important meal of the day.
But in addition to experimenting with food, we've (since yesterday) been in Manaus. Located 800 miles upriver from Belém, Manaus was first heavily settled at the end of the 1800s during the rubber boom in Brazil. It was the money from this trade that paid for an opera house to be built in France and assembled here. It was restored in the 1970s and is now the Teatro Amazonas--we went there tonight for a free music festival.
Manaus fell on hard times after the first decade of the 1990s, and after WWII the Brazilian government set it up as a free trade zone within the country. Pretty much what that meant was that industries could set up shop here, assembly things manufactured in other states, and not have to pay many taxes. So the population grew starting in the 1970s and it now has about 2 million people (in a state, Amazonas--the largest in Brazil--with about 4-5 million people).So today we visited the Permaculture Institute of Amazonia, a local NGO working to develop agricultural alternatives to slash and burn, industrial monoculture, and other agriculture techniques. It was an awesome visit, and I even got to buy some honey produced by the bees that they keep there (which, unlike European or African bees, don't sting)!
We're spending the next few days in and around Manaus, and on Friday we set sail down the Amazon for the Trombetas River!
