September 9th

I woke up this morning early to see the sunrise. Compared to the first day, it was awesome. The sun came up over the hills of forest and you could see the mist on the tops of the trees. My eye hurt really bad and was also very bloodshot. I must have gotten bug spray in it or something. After the sunset, I went back to bed in my hammock. I slept in long pants and long sleeves and went to bed very hot and sticky. Throughout the night I kept waking up with chills because the wind from the moving boat was chilly.
When I woke up after getting up to see the sunset, we were docked at another small beach. We all gathered up on the top deck and had breakfast. The same as the first day: eggs, fruit, and bread. We have tree climbing in the jungle, visiting a local village and also sleeping in the jungle at night on today's agenda.
We split the group into two groups of six to keep the numbers for tree climbing manageable. One would go tree climbing before lunch while the other went to visit the village and then switch for the afternoon. I was in the morning tree climbing group. We stayed in long pants and sleeves because we would be walking through the jungle. We loaded up in the small boats and took off. After a short ride, we slowly maneuvered ourselves through a marsh and docked. Two of the guides had went out early to set up the tree. It was just a short hike into the jungle.
The tree was very tall, 60-70ft. Ropes were strung to the top branches and back down. We all got set up with harnesses and they gave us a demonstration and instruction of what we would need to do. There was a special clamp that would slide up the rope but not down and also a small loop of rope, and with these we would climb to the top. The loop of rope attched to your chest and down around the foot. You would sit in the harness, bend the knee that was in the rope, and slide the special clamp up the rope. You would then stand up and push yourself up. Apparently I climbed the fastest, though it wure didn't seem like it because it was so tiring. The top of the tree could only hold 3 people at a time. The view from the top of the tree was very nice. Though nature shows make the canopy of the rainforest out to be some awesome place where you see so many cool things, well honestly it was just the tops of a bunch of trees, nothing special in this spot. We had a small shower while we were climbing but we didn't get wet at all because of how thick the tops of the trees were. After we all completed our climb and repelled back down, we returned to the boat for lunch.
The village group had returned before us and was taking a swim to rinse off. We joined them while the crew made lunch. This spot was deeper than our last swimming spot so we were able to climb to the top of the boat and jump off the roof. It was a lot of fun. Nobody got bit by any piranhas.
After lunch my group went over to the village. It was small and very simple. It was home to 117 people. They are wired with electricity but rarely use it. This village makes a famous flour, that is shipped back to the main city, Manaus, and sold in markets. This flour is the villages main source of income. They also do farming for themselves. The school is funded by the government in Manaus and has a few computers but no internet. The kids were all painting during our visit. It was very interesting to see how simply people could live, and prefer to live, during an age where most people would be lost without things such as TV and the internet. We returned back to the boat for dinner.
We had steak and sausage for dinner and then went back into the jungle for our camping overnight. To be easy, the guides had set up the hammocks at the same spot as tree climbing. The strung them all fairly close together and put a huge tarp overhead. We all stayed up for awhile talking and playing games but finally went to bed. The mosquitoes were not bad at all because we were not near any water.