Plaza Hotel Manaus

... as praias,a simpatia do povo, o excesso de drogas ao dispôr dos transeuntes, o silicone, a cerveja de qualidade e os batalhões de polícia e exército espalhados por toda a nação, fazem-nos acreditar que tudo aquilo que nos foi dito sobre a América Latina na escola, era na verdade uma descrição da Colômbia e nada mais que isso! Se bem que na altura a prof não disse nada do silicone, mas eu já estava disconfiado faz uns aninhos. Aquela Playboy que a minha mãe encontrou no meu quarto ...

... day. Mr Gerry who was in charge of the lodge nursed me back to health and said that I could have an extra day there for free so I didn’t miss out on anything as long as I had time to spare… time I have plenty of, so that was good. As nice as Gerry is, he had a slight obsession with wanting to put water into my ear to re-hydrate me as I could not keep it down if I drank it. After politely refusing a couple of times I really had to ...

... a ticket out of the destination country. I wasn´t able to book anything satisfactory at the airport so I had to cancel my flight (hopefully I´ll get my money back) and reasses my position. I finally decided on catching the morning flight to the border at Tabatinga, where I should be able to cross over to Colombia. The ticket cost me almost 1000 reais!

... for the first time, and to meet all these people that do this form of traveling so often. i only spent a night here in manaus, and the city is chaotic, but beautiful at the same time. you can tell the city once had tons of money due to the rubber boom that happened here years ago, and now it has turned into a huge city, filled with thousands of markets. <br><br>ok well i will write more later, i have to go catch my boat before it takes off. <br><br>byeee

... cafeteria after dinner. Three days and pounds of spaghetti later, we arrived in Tabatinga, Brazil. A quick taxi took us across the border to Columbia whose ciity of Leticia had nicer hotels. From here, we planned to catch a flight the next day farther upriver to Iquitos, Peru and fromthere fly to Lima. We were happy to be off our beans, rice and spaghetti diet but sad to know, or think (see next blog entry), that our Amazon experience would soon end.<br><br><br><br>

... breakfast, and then lounged around for quite some time. Later in the day, we buggered off in a canoe, again, and went exploring in the swamps. We didn't really spot anything, asides from the ubiquitous Macaws, but it was fun, none the less. We decided we would spend our last night sleeping out in the jungle, so we packed up all of our gear, and took a boat 20 minutes down the coast. We parked at a local man's house, and <br><br>hiked 2, or 3, km in to the bush, along a ...

... befalls our camp site once again. However, we do scramble through the large droplets of rain to cut down some wide fern branches by which to cover our fire, for which we need to finish cooking our lunch -- boiled chicken and rice. I should explain that we didn´t accidentally find a stray chicken scurrying about in the rain forest, but our boat had a large styrofoam cooler with several chickens, eggs, and other cooking ingredients. Yet the fire was ...

... Adriana and Leo, came and joined us after their English class, and we headed home via some local dance where the performerswere dressed up as Indians (native Indans not from India). We thought of going out , but as we were all very tired we decided to go out for dinner, after showers, as Manaus is incredibly hot and humid place, you need to take at least 1 shower per day. That night , we tried some more Amazonian food, all fish based, vatapi, bobo camarao - not bad ...

... way from Trinidad to Manaus, the travel time had nearly doubled. But patience conquers everything. And in Manecoré everybody slept like babies, because we had plenty of space. But people started to board the boat in the morning. There came people, and more people. More people. More people. And even more people.The space filled up and now every possible hooks for hammocks were already in use. But the crowd didn't stop coming. They started laying their hammocks criss-cross over ...