Brazil- Part One

Manaus, Amazonia

We docked in Manaus, Brazil on January 31. I was so relieved to finally be on land again, but immediately Manaus struck me as pretty grose. Later in the day, my opinion proved to be extremely accurate… more to come about that though. I had pre-purchased an Amazon/ Rio trip through SAS so my entire time in Brazil had already been planned out for me, which was pretty nice actually. The first day was spent cruising on a ferry boat to see the Meeting of the Waters where the Rio Negro and the Amazon rivers meet. Immediately I noticed that life was different along the Amazon- the people as well as their way of life. For example, there are floating gas stations and pretty much all travel is done along the river. After a short ride our ferry docked at an Amazonian village which had many floating houses, as well as a floating restaurant with amazing food. Before eating we climbed into small canoes and travelled through the rainforest observing the scenery and wildlife such as iguana, beautiful butterflies, birds, and best of all I saw my first of many monkey. Later in the day we walked along a wooden bridge through part of the rainforest to see the Victoria Regis lillypads. Oddly enough, I was really excited about these because of my fascination with lilies. They were huge and we even saw cayman (Brazilian alligators) swimming around with them.

After these spottings I was officially sick from the heat, overpowering smell of diesel fuel and just ready for a shower on the ship. To my dismay this did not come soon enough, but after taking some Excedrin migraine I decided I couldn’t waste the little time I had in Manaus left before my flight departed that night for Rio. I headed out with a group of 10 people from my Amazon group walking, rather running, in the short hour we had to explore the city. The wretched smell of Manaus disgusted me; it smelled of fish, trash and the sewage water that literally ran through street. I don’t mean to complain, but it was just a lot to get used to, but I’m sure a lot of the future countries we visit will be even worse…India per say! Anyways, we saw the Opera house, lots of French architecture and tons of crappy food/ touristy vendors. It began to thunder so we ran back to the ship for some final packing before our red-eye flight to Rio de Janeiro at 11 p.m.