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Yesterday we arrived in Manaus. One of only a handful of cities in the world that can only be reached by boat or plane. Our second and final day in Sau Paulo was spent getting our tickets to get here (hitching a ride on the flight to Bogota) with ourselves shuttling between the Portugeuse speaking travel agents and our English speaking hostel receptionist with scraps of paper on which the TA had written instructions that our HR could interpret for us. Very long winded but it got the job done. To celebrate our ticket buying success we went to a sel service canteen on Praca de Republica that served good Brazilian food by the kilo. This is where the local office workers go for their lunch breaks. The quality of the grub was excellent and they even had an indoor barbecue on which they cooked slabs of meat. For me a beef and pepper dish being a particular favourite.
So after that it was on the bus to the airport.
We arrived at about 7pm local time. An hour and a half after we had been meant to. The first thing that strikes you as you land is the high humidity and the smell of warm rain on warmer concrete. Its intense. It feels as if you could almost reach out and grab the air its so thick. But the turtles in the ponds outside the airport seemed to like it. The little critters where all out on the water banks basking in what must be fantastic weather for turtles.
So here we are. This morning we are trying to get tickets for a boat ride to Tefe. The boat ride will take two days and will cruise up the Rio Negro until it reaches the Amazon. Accomodation is a hammock strung up on deck, catering will be a rice and bean mush and the onboard entertainment will be card games, book reading, practicing Portuguese and watching the Amazon Rainforest slowly slide by.
Since we have some time to kill we are going to visit some of the many natural history museums Manaus has.
Chris
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