In fact, there is nothing in the upper reaches of the river. After paddling for a while, there is suddenly no road ahead. It is all thick tree trunks. There is nothing in the upper reaches of the river. The water is all seeping out from the rain forest. Everywhere here is
The trunks of the trees are wet, and from time to time there are water droplets dripping from the top of the head. The water droplets dripping from thousands of plants are the source of this stream. After the rainy season, it will rain every day.
By then, the sky will be the source of the river.
"Give me the harpoon and I'll help you look after it. You can also catch some fish for fun. Aren't you bringing a fishing net?" Anaya took the harpoon from Hong Tao and pointed to the one in the cabin.
A fishing net used for catching fish.
"We're here? Is it here?" Hong Tao felt very suddenly. In his imagination, those tropical fish called water elves must live in a place with clear water, but this is just a swamp in the rain forest.
There were fallen leaves and branches everywhere in the water, and the mud below was unknown how thick it was.
"This is it. The small fish you mentioned can only survive in the shallow water here. There are many hiding places here, and even the big fish can't swim there, otherwise they will all be eaten by the big fish." Anaya pointed to the fish in front of her.
There was a canoe, and the two fathers and sons on the boat had already unfolded a net of about one square meter and were placing it in the water.
"Lao Hong! Lao Hong, there are really tropical fish! Look under those leaves!" The sturgeon was carrying a camera into the water to take pictures.
"Hey! It's really fun! There are quite a few, all traffic lights, fat man! Pass me the net!" Hong Tao looked in the direction of the camera lens, and sure enough he found a pair of leaves under a pair of leaves floating on the water.
There are a bunch of small fry, but most of them have bright red and blue-green stripes on their bodies, and they have fluorescent effects when they swim.
"Hahaha, come up! Get a bucket!" Hong Tao slowly stretched the net along the bottom of the water, and then suddenly lifted it up, and almost all the small fish were caught in one net.
"Anaya, what do you call this kind of fish?" After putting the fish in the bucket, the three people lay on the edge of the bucket and looked at the dozens of small fish that were only 2 centimeters in size in the bucket.
"Cardinal fish! Only the male fish can be sold for money, and the colorless female fish must be put back." Anaya directly answered the sturgeon's question without even turning her head.
"This is the cardinal fish? Why this name?" Hong Tao did not expect that this small fish would have such a high-end and classy name.
"I don't know. I guess the red color on them resembles the red robes worn by bishops, right?" Anaya obviously didn't do much research on these tropical fish, so he was also making wild guesses.
"How much can each of these things cost?" Hong Tao became interested in the value of these tropical fish. The price of each of these fish in China is several yuan, and if they are not raised well, they will die easily, or their colors will become less bright.
.
"...#...%, this year's purchase price is 1 pfennig." Anaya shouted to the father and son in front of him who were fishing for tropical fish. Then after getting an answer, he turned back to answer Hong Tao's question.
.
"1 pfennig!? Evil capitalism!" When Hong Tao heard this price, he couldn't help but complain about those black-hearted purchasers. The pfennig is the subsidiary currency of the Brazilian real, and 1 real is equal to 100 pfennig.
, in 2008, 1 real was equal to more than 2 yuan, which means the price of a tropical fish was less than 3 cents in yuan.
Now Hong Tao understands why these fishermen are so poor. They can catch almost 3,000 cardinal fish in one day, which is 30 reais. And these fish cannot be caught in one place. They have to travel to many places.
Oil money takes up more than half of the income, and fishing for this kind of fish can only be done during the three months of the dry season, and it becomes even more difficult to catch during the rainy season.
Hong Tao and the others thought that fishing for tropical fish was such an interesting thing. But when they arrived at the scene, they found that there was no fun at all. It was just like fishing for fish and insects in small rivers in China. They used a big net to fish in the shallow water. Then they took the leaves,
The branches and other small miscellaneous fish were picked out, and the remaining dozen or so cardinal fish were carefully placed in the bucket to be raised, and the cycle continued.
This type of cardinal fish is the easiest to catch because of its small size, relatively slow swimming speed, and likes to get together in groups. The remaining tropical fish usually gather 2 or 3 together, swim fast, and are more difficult to catch.
You can't catch dozens of fish in a day. Although the price is higher than that of Cardinal fish, the output is too small.
After barely making it through noon, Hong Tao and the others found it boring to stay, so they discussed with Anaya that they might as well go back instead of wasting time here. After bidding farewell to the lucky fishing father and son, Hong Tao and the others
Paddling the speedboat, under the leadership of Anaya, we returned to the place where the boat was parked, said goodbye to the fisherman's wife, and then started the boat and returned alone.
Originally, Ananya wanted to get part of the 100 reais back from the fisherman family, but Hong Tao stopped him. The 100 reais was placed in the hands of Hong Tao and the others. It was not much money. It was too much.
It will not affect their lives, but in the hands of that fishing family, it is several days' worth of income. Even if it is a good deed, at least this family will be much friendlier to Chinese people when they meet in the future.
After returning to Barcelos, Anaya took Hong Tao and the other two people ashore and walked around this small town. Very few people here spoke English, the streets were dilapidated, and most of the houses were made of wooden boards.
, the only tall buildings that can be seen are churches, and there are quite a few of them. Hong Tao probably counted. There must be at least 20 churches in this small town of less than 20,000 people. There is nothing for the people here to do except for
Apart from fishing, they can only place their ideals on God.
Although there are several hotels for tourists to live in the small town, the conditions are very average. Even the power supply cannot be guaranteed, let alone the Ministry of Health. After looking at the rooms in the two hotels, Hong Tao and the others agreed that they are better than
Living in a hotel is better than sleeping on Ananya's boat. At least you don't have to worry about little creatures like lice and bed bugs visiting you, and there are no mosquitoes here.
After getting Anaya's consent, everyone had a meal of fried fish and fried banana slices at the best restaurant on the Barcelos pier, and then got back on the boat and sailed before it was completely dark.
Leaving the dock, we found a bay with relatively calm water, dropped anchor and hung up a hammock to sleep.
"Ananya, what kind of fish is the fried fish we eat at night?" Hong Tao couldn't sleep in his hammock, so he started asking questions to Ananya next to him.
"Does the fish-like meat taste a bit like beef? Foreign tourists who have eaten this kind of meat before said so." It seems that this is not the first time Anaya has heard this question.
"What kind of fish is Xiangyu?" Hong Tao heard this name for the first time.
"Well, it's big...the scales on its body are very beautiful, but its meat is not very tasty, so it can only be eaten fried." Anaya couldn't describe what the elephant fish looked like, but just roughly gestured with his hands.
Check out its size.
"Sturgeon, throw that book over." Hong Tao saw the length of Anaya's gesture, and his interest immediately returned.
"That's it!" Hong Tao helped Anaya use the flashlight, flipped through dozens of pages of the atlas, and finally found the elephant fish.
"Arapaima! Fatty! Sturgeon! Who cares first? Come and have a look. There is this kind of fish here. Have you seen it?" Hong Tao took the map in Anaya's hand and looked at it, and immediately became uneasy.
, called Fatty Bu and Sturgeon down from the hammock, brought them together and looked at the picture of this fish together with the flashlight.
"It sounds familiar, holy shit! It's 2.5 meters long! More than 200 kilograms!!! Lao Hong, hurry up and ask, can you catch it?" Fatty Bu looked at the introduction under the picture and became uneasy.
"You can catch it, but it's usually not that big. It's about 1 meter long!" Ananya didn't quite agree with the data in the picture. He probably had never seen an elephant fish that was over 2 meters long.
"That's alright. Is it easy to fish?" Hong Tao thought that a fish length of more than 1 meter would be good.
"We usually catch them with nets. The fishing is not good. They don't have a fixed living area and always swim around in deep water. We can only try our luck." Anaya did not dare to take care of everything this time.
It seems that this kind of elephant fish is really not easy to catch.
"It doesn't matter, tell me, what kind of bait should I use to catch this kind of fish?" Hong Tao is not afraid of trying his luck the most.
"Just use bigger fish. They mainly eat fish and don't have any specific bait. Let's go to the Indian tribe's village tomorrow and ask the fishermen in the village to see if they have any good ideas.
No." Anaya made a suggestion.
"Okay, no problem, go to bed! Get up early tomorrow!" Hong Tao then remembered that he had to go to an Indian village. He was full of confidence in these people who lived in the rainforest all year round. Just like the Maasai people in Africa, they had lived in a fixed place for a long time.
In such an environment, one will always develop amazing abilities.
As long as he has a strong goal in his mind, Hong Tao usually wakes up at around 4 o'clock. This is a skill he has developed by fishing by the water all year round. As soon as it gets dark the next day, he jumps out of the hammock and fishes one by one.
Everyone woke up, washed briefly, and immediately set off for the Indian tribe Ananya mentioned.
The Indian tribe Anaya was talking about is located in a tributary of the middle reaches of the Negro River. Their village is about a mile away from the river. There is also a simple small dock built with wood on the river.
There are several canoes docked.
Ananya's boat also stopped at the pier, and then everyone tied up their sleeves and trouser legs again, put on their hats, and applied insect repellent. Anaya opened the way in front, and Hong Tao and three others followed him along the way.
Following a path that has been trampled for a long time, we entered the rainforest on the shore. (To be continued...)
ps: The new science fiction book "Skyrim Reincarnation" has been signed. Please add it to your collection, click and recommend it, and give it a thumbs up!!!
