Reductions in import taxes across the country eroded Manaus's price advantage and sent the shoppers elsewhere. Now foreign tourists are starting to make up the numbers. Some 35,000 travellers, mainly Americans, Spaniards and Italians, visited the region in 1992. They are being joined by the Japanese, targets of a promotional push by the Amazon Tourist Board and attracted by the fishing. For most visitors Manaus, which pours its sewage untreated straight into the Rio Negro, is worth a stopover only for stocking up on supplies for the jungle beyond.
Most visitors come for the wildlife, which becomes more impressive the further upriver they go.
Local boys ferry travellers through piranah-infested waters, or stalk alligators lurking in the river's marshes after dark. Pink freshwater dolphins chase the cargo boats on their long hauls between the Amazon's major towns. For botanists the Amazon basin is a land of wonders. On each jungle trip they encounter dozens of plants that only the Indians recognise. Small wonder that they and local environmentalists balk at the prospect of hordes of tourists let loose on an ecosystem as rich and complex as this, especially given the extent of the damage it has already undergone.