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The flight to Manaus with the budget airline Azul lineas was a world apart from travelling with the likes of Ryan air. We had TV´s in the back of the head rests and got snacks and drinks included for the 3 hour flight, best of all there was no crazy fanfair music to announce that we had arrived at our destination on time, just a peaceful landing :-) We arrived in Manaus at 3am so we agreed that there was no point in paying for accommodation so we slept in the airport, free nights sleep, GREAT. After a lot of shuffling around to get comfortable on the chairs designed to stop you from sleeping in the airport Sal ended up on the floor and I ended up slumped over the luggage trolly. As I began to wake up around 6:30ish I noticed that my mouth was wide open and that the two workers in the juice bar next to us were having a right laugh. I turned to Sally, who still passed out, was looking like she was trying to catch the worlds biggest fly with her mouth, what a sight we must have been!
In Manaus we stayed in Gol Backpackers Hostel. Gol was a small place but really well done up for backpackers with comfortable beds and a common room with 4 tv´s all playing different Olympic events at any 1 time. The Hostel had a great offer on whereby every time your team wins a medel you get a free Capriniah. The only problem was that firstly you had to be in the hostel when the medel was awarded and secondly the GB team always seemed to win medals early in the morning so in the end, even though Team GB had a hugh medal haul we had 0 free drinks!
It was in Gol that we met to friendly Brits called Stuart and Carly. Admitedly I thought they were Scandanavian when I first spotted them because they are both naturally bright blond and rosy cheeked. As soon as stuart spoke I realised my mistake becuase his accent was good old London cockney. We got chatting to Stu and Carly about our plans to travel down the Amazon on a Hammock boat for 6 days to Columbia, as it turned out they had the exact same plans and had a contact who was organising their boat tickets comming to the hostel in 1hour, perfect timing, we didn´t need to do any searching or organising at all, cheers guys :-)
Stuart and Carly introduced us to the Ozzy couple Nick and Nicky, these guys were doing some extensive travel between ski seasons in Canada. That evening the six of us all planned to go to watch a show at the Theatre de Amazona. Me and Sal opted out of the all you can eat pizza restaurant the other guys planned to go to after the show and made some pasta in the hostels outdoor kitchen to save on money. I made enough pasta to fill our food pots so we could also have a cheap lunch the next day, it feels good to finally be using the pots to full effect but it was a kind of torture watching the others eat their way through some of the best looking pizza I have seen in a long time!
The show in the Theatre de Amazonus consisted of 2 performances, the first was one of the strangest things I have ever paid to see. Most of it consisted of a woman screaming in the middle of the stage followed by a lot of falling over with 4 other women. The second show was much more interesting with some impressive visuals and dance, not usually my kind of thing but I actually found it interesting. The best thing about the who experience was the theatre itself, with its ornate decoration and old fashioned flip up seats. All in all it was worth the R$10 (3 pounds 30p) we paid.
The next day Sal and I decided we would go and check out Ponta Negra Beach, a man made beach on the Amazon only a 15 minute bus ride away. The beach was very well made and actually looked natural. I stripped down to my swimmers and jumped into the cocacola coloured water. It was warm but I didn´t stay in too long for the fear of Candiru, an Amazon River dwelling paracitic catfish up to 40cm in length that swims up your Urethra when you pee! Ouch! We had a nice day on the beach and managed to avoid peeing in the river so it was time to head home. We hopped on the same number bus that took us all the way to the beach and should have taken us all the way back to the Historical Centre of the city where our hostel was. Halfway back we were asked to get off the bus an onto a different one, this bus ended up taking us to a very dodgy neigbourhood with no street lights, we were the only 2 left aboard! The bus driver said there were no more busses running but after talking to the bus driver in mixture of very broken Portugues, English and a whole lot of drawings and hand gestures we managed to effectively get a private bus to take us back to the centre and back to Gol, phew!
Next stop 6 days sleeping on a boat in a hammock travelling down the mighty Amazon River, can´t wait.
- comments
Dad Well done Dora sounds like a great start to Amazon adventure