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Well i´ve been fairly incomunicado in the Jungle. Changed my plans a little bit so didnt end up going to Manaus after all. went into the jungle further up the river at Santarem after my 3 days on the boat sleeping in a hammock. In fact, last night was the first night sleeping in a bed! But back is pretty much done for! So i went straight to this little town called Alter do Chão which is like a beach town in the amazon with a white sandy beach and even a banana boat. Stayed for a few days, went dolphin watching and met a couple f guys who i think i mentioned before. Jono and Robinson from England and France. That was really cool cos Ive spent all this last week or so with them.
After that we caught a bus into the FLONA national forest which is a protected part of the rainforst where only indiginous communities are allowed to live. After 3 hours of bottom-numbing misery at the back of the bus (with a tragically abused live piglet in a sack) we got of the bus in this sanding square with a few shacks and miraculously got taken in by a family who let us string our hammocks up in a little shack on stilts right near the beach. There were 6 children and even a coupl eof kittens to keep me amused. there were 2 cats as well who had almost identical personalities to domino and bubbles. i think they´ve been reincarnated and are happily living in the amazon.
they took us for walks in the forest, showing us medicinal trees and tarantulas and sloths! there wasnt that much wildlife as its apparently really hard to actually see much as the amazon rainforest is so dense (which is why im off to the pantanal tonight!) but it was reall yinteresting. i have no idea how they know which tree sap does what for which bit of the but they say it with quite a lot of conviction! we also had a canoe ride through the drowned forest (where the forest gets submerged by all the rain in rainy season and becomes like a lake with trees sticking out of it everywhere.) we went in the evening and saw kingfishers and the sun go down and it was amazing. then we had alittle dip in the river where the guide said itwas good for banhar (bathing!) although we washed in the river every day and it seemed pretty clean. didnt get bitten by an anaconda.
we met an argentinian guy so i got to talk a but of spanish but he was a bit weird. my portuguese is coming along actually! i can understand quite a lot now and managed to conduct a whole conversation in the laundrette this morning. my international sign language is still being massively over-used though so it could be that im just a good mime artist.
hmm ok so in the night we went crocodile hunting! i felt a bit like steve erwin but i was quite a lot more scared .anyway, we didnt bloody see any. i though i saw a pair of eyes but i think they were a tree.
next day we spent the whole day with the family making Manioc which is this potato like plant that they squish all the water out of and heat and make into a kind of flour that they make loads of stuff out of. i dont really like it but after seeing the effort it takes to make i tried to eat it a bit more. we went crocodile hunting that night too but still no joy. the guide did catch a fish in his hand though and suddenly leaned into the water and came up with a turtle! i though it was amazing until he put it under his seat, rubbed his belly and grinned ´dinner!´. poor little turtle.
we went to a rubber factory and saw how the make bags and things out of the latex the get from the trees and the next day visited a load of non-touristy communities who had a much harder life. we picked a pineapple from the wild,went swimming in the torrential downpour and ate the pineapple in the river, twas the best thing i have ever eaten ever!
eventually we dragged ourselves back to Alter do Chao and met this really weird cult type thing of Iyawashka drinkers (this tea thing they make from leaves - think bruce parry tried some on his amazonian TV show) who were pretty strange and stayed in a hippy community for a night where everyone hugged each other. it was quite odd. i didnt like it so much. im far to uptight and english haha.
last night we went to a reggae club and met an English teacher who loved British english so he talked to us a lot. but i had to reach for the old ´i have a boyfriend!´line before long. honestly. brazilians!
so today im going to a museum and basically knocking about til my flight at midnight. it was hidesously expensive cos its getting near to carnival but its the only way to get out of the jungle in less than a week so i just had to grit my teeth and get out the credit card!
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