Snacks

The eaten: we pass on the road out of Manaus a sign on the road offering turtle meat, which we're informed is expensive and tasty (and illegal surely? although the sign promises its trade is "under license"). There's not much you can't trade in Manuaus, I suspect, now or then.

The eaters: from the illegal to the ill eagles (sorry), or rather the vultures which circle everywhere. Their sense of smell is amazing, we're told. In a way the waste-strewn city and the vultures have their own special ecosystem: the birds flicker above civilisation's offal, spiralling flecks like embers rising from a giant pyre.