Acaí is a small fruit well known here, in Amazonia.

And also loved by local people.

The amazonas electric eel approached the Acaí tree. Then, a heavy discharge into de base of the tree, had some Acaí fruit, only the mature ones, departing the tree into the water.

Also Acaí is appreciated by other animals !

When I was told that, I was astonished !

As usual, I took off later than anticipated. The city was busy and it took a long time to reach Flores airport, where my beautiful RV was in the middle of plenty of brasilian ladies, the Petrel amphibian aircraft.

But for him, the fun and samba was over!

It took some time to open the path into outside of the hangar, has it was at the very rear of it. Now, the Petrels are alone. The spanish guy had to leave and see the world, together with its pilot.

We are becoming a team. We know each other better, and also know our fears.

I have to tell you that my RV is being very kind with me and doesn´t complain too much  when I cross straight huge clouds that soon will be thunderstorms.

Thunderstorms close to the equator are big and tall ! They reach the stratosphere and as you know, stratosphere is much thicker here than at the Poles. So we are talking about clouds that reach 50000 ft, base starting of course at very low level.

 A big thank you, Cte Messías !

So, after take off, I had to disregard the spiral climb over the Manaus Lidar station. Lidars, to provide good information, have to have no clouds over it.

Even though it took a long time to get the clearance from Manaus Controllers for the climbing spiral  the previous days, there was no choice to try. So, a pity but not a big one. I was able to gather nice data all over Amazonia, so I think that the results will be quite interesting

There is also another station called ATTO, Amazonia Tall Tower Observatory. It is like a huge antenna, rising from the forest to 325 meters (1000 ft). That station is plenty of scientific devices.

Pilots should be aware of it: it could be unexpected and you know that those antennas attracts every flying object (Murphy Law).

Fortunately, it is situated in a military restricted area !

The key is that scientists are studying the amazonas forest balance:

Is Amazonas a true lung for the world?

Or..does it produce more CO2 than oxygen?

Interesting study indeed!

So, flying far away of that ATTO, at some 7500 ft, I have washed the plane many times, almost 2/3 of the trip, as if I were a big aerosol particle !

From times to times, some ¨windows¨ underneath allowed to see a really dense forest with nothing else than trees.

It was dense indeed…and crash landing in the middle of nowhere, would have been a big experience.

I knew that the road from Manaus into Boavista was left of my path.

Small rivers crossed also my track, and drained left.

So the game would have been to walk north or south, reach one of those small rivers, and navigate in the dinghy downstream and contact villagers.

No way to walk long time across the forest !

Photos were nonsense. Glare was high and I was high. I thought about a small exposition I visited with Cte Messías at Manaus. There were some paintings from Amazonia artists, and also a historic photo camera collection.

As you know, lens have ¨f¨steps. When full open, the lens allow more light in. A very good lens is F 1,2.

…they had a Kodak lens that was 0,96 ( i think) . A true technical marvel.

I loved it !

Crossing the Jauaperi river, forest started to be less dense and soon, almost disappeared. I was able to see the action of the humans beings, the burned areas, the civilisation advancing through the canopy.

Anyway, those small scattered homes makes me think about that people, living so far away from our world.  It is hard to understand. It is just..survival.

High speed descent, after fighting some 20 kts headwinds, had me at 1000 ft. It was hot down there ! Those 18 degrees Celsius at 7500 were nice!

EC XLL, Boavista tower, I have you in sight: cleared to land runway 08, wind from 060/ 12 kts