Day 7 – Jungle Othon Palace to Manaus

This morning marked our last at the Jungle Palace and we took the boat back to Manaus. It was good to see a familiar sight as we got off the boat and took our stuff into the hotel. Then we went as a group of about to downtown Manaus, so that we could catch a boat out to the meeting of the waters. This is where the Rio Negro and the Rio Salimoes (?) meet but do not mix. It technically does not form the Amazon River, as then it would only be about 1,000 miles long, when in actuality it is over 4,000 miles long. The waters don’t mix for 3 reasons: temperature differences, speed differences, and ionic compositions. It was cool to see, as one is brown and one is black and they run side by side. We even caught a few dolphins in the brown river (Salimoes) that were dark, so the contrast was great.

As the clouds gathered though and the sun went away, you couldn’t tell so easily which river was which, as they both had different surface textures but no color difference. Amazing what a difference the sun makes.

After this excursion my father, Moreno and I went to a very nice restaurant near downtown and had a very nice lunch. After this, we were dropped off at our hotel, and said goodbye to Moreno. For the afternoon we hit the beach once more, but the bees annoyed me and drove me away. We hung around and did some last minute shopping and packing, anticipating the flight home the next day. We made it an early night and I had spaghetti from the restaurant once more.

Day 8 – Manaus to Miami

The day was spent mostly at the airport and we left Manaus around 1 p.m. and got to Miami at about 6. On the plane ride, we flew over the northern part of South America, which I snapped a picture of. Eventually we flew over Cuba and I got a chance to look down to there too. We checked into the airport hotel once more, and Burger King never sounded so good. It was great to hear English from the customs agent, as Moreno and Prakash spoke it, but apart from that we didn’t run into one native English speaking person (as a first language) on the whole trip. It was far removed from everywhere else I’ve been, where at least you can converse with others, but it was only my father and I, and our guides at times. Even the heat in Miami was tolerable compared to our previous location. Thankfully we had rooms to ourselves (more for his sake than mine), and it had a nice king sized bed and I watched “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” and ate my greasy American food. It rocked.

Day 9 – Miami to Denver

The next morning was early as we checked into United at 5 a.m., and we were in Chicago’s airport several hours later. We arrived in Denver around 11:30 a.m. and it felt great to be home, knowing that the day before I had the opportunity to be in a place that few people get the chance to visit. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity, and it’s surreal to think that I was down there so recently.

You can access the videos I've assembled for Peru and Bolivia (via YouTube) at the following link:


http://youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1E045A63D8ACEC1B


If it doesn't work, as always - let me know.


Brazil posts (from 9/06) to follow in the next couple of days.

A couple of sidenotes:


-The people of Peru seemed (no matter how poor) to have a good quality of life. In most cases they had jobs (tending to land or whatnot), a family life and seemed pretty happy overall. I must say that even in the most impoverished areas and outskirts of cities, the people there work hard and strive to have a good life (as I imagine nearly anyone does)


-I love traveling to various places but have recently come to understand that there is so much to see in the United States that I have yet to even think about laying eyes on. Therefore it is a personal goal to see more of our homeland in the coming years – just to appreciate just how diverse our country is. I think traveling to foreign places is almost always enjoyable, but it’s difficult to truly appreciate them if you don’t know what home offers. It’s all relative, eventually.


-Bolivia is a country with interests here and there, but overall neither one of us was too impressed with it, nor would we recommend going there (unless just to say that one has “been” there).