Riverboats tied up at a floating dock on the Rio Negro.

Loading soft drinks and manioc flour.

The municipal market, on the waterfront.

The seasonal range of the Negro is considerable.

Low water, obviously.

A branch of the Igarape dos Educandos, one of several streams that enter the Negro.

Settlement encroaches on one of these seasonally flooded ravines.

Downtown: the Public Market, 1882.

The customs house, the "alfondega."

The icon of Manaus, its opera house, built during the rubber boom Brazil enjoyed before the indigenous rubber tree was taken to Southeast Asia by the British, who established monocultural plantations with which Brazil could not compete.

The central shopping area.

A very smart furniture store.

Early morning at a downtown street market.

On the east side of town, Manaus has a duty-free industrial district. Established in 1967, by 1990 the zone had attracted 300 plants employing 80,000 people. The number hasn't changed much since, despite worries about the impact of lower tariffs. In 2004, the Manaus Industrial Park (PIM), operated by the Manaus Free Trade Zone (Suframa) produced $10 billion worth of products, of which $1.3 billion were exported, mostly to the United States. Among the 300 companies operating in the zone were Nokia, Minolta, LG, Sony, Xerox, Samsung, Panasonic, and Kodak--and that's just electronics. The chief exports were cell phones, color TVs, and motorcycles. Motorcycles? On the list of manufacturing companies, along with Honda and Yamaha, was Harley-Davidson.

Farther outside town, the equatorial rainforest has been cleared for pastures that have become little short of internationally notorious amidst rising concerns about biodiversity and climate change.

Out in this countryside, social institutions like this school are strained; ecological concerns come a distant second to economic ones.

Roadside stop: a girl whacks the top off a coconut. The "water" sells for about a dime.

Yarded logs from the surrounding forest.

Ferry lineup to cross the Amazon. In the distance, on the left, may be seen the confluence of the Amazon and Negro, marked by a line separating the dark waters of the Negro from the lighter ones of the Amazon.