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The following entries are from our trip to Manaus, Brazil. We traveled there September 12-20, 2006.

Photos can be found at the following links:

Manaus Photos (I)

Manaus Photos (II)

And videos can be accessed via the following link:

Brazil videos - YouTube

Day 1 – Denver to Miami

My father and I stayed in the Miami International Airport Hotel, which honestly felt like another country in itself, as English seemed not to be a primary language for most, and it was a melting pot culture. We decided to take a stroll (or cab ride, rather) down to South Beach and ate some dinner along the restaurants there. I eventually went up the Atlantic Ocean, even though it was dark and felt the surprisingly warm water. We lounged around and got a cab ride from a guy originally from Haiti to South Beach, and on the way back got a driver native to Turkey. Again, there was such a melting pot of diversity. It was pretty cool. We decided to call it a night around 11, even though we didn’t have our flight to Manaus until nearly 7 the next evening. We were both prepared to get a lot of sleep, in case our arrival into Manaus (at 1 a.m., no less) should give us problems. We wanted to be alert.

Day 2 – Miami to Manaus, Brazil.

We hung out at the Hotel bar for almost the entire afternoon, waiting to check in our bags with TAM. We tried to take a small walk around Miami, but anyone that’s been at an airport knows that it’s nearly impossible to leave on foot, unless maybe you’re in San Diego or something. Anyway, the flight down there was relatively quiet, and we arrived around 1 a.m. Getting off the plane you could just feel the humidity and sticky-ness of the air as it clings to your skin. I figured it was going to be a hard demon to fight, as I’m a wuss with heat. We met up with our guide for the city, Prakash, an India native, who took us to the hotel. On the way, he told of one of his colleagues that we’d meet later who was absolutely crazy. He apparently was crazy in the sense of being like the recently deceased Steve Irwin. Prakash made a joke that he always said if this colleague ever got bitten by a poisonous snake, the snake would probably die, not this guy. I laughed at the joke thinking “Yeah, right.” I found out a couple days later just how much the joke was on me.

The weird thing about arriving to Manaus was that the time zone was the same as EST, so it was like being in Miami. But if you look on a map, Brazil is technically in a different time zone, since it’s so many miles East of where Miami is. We got to the hotel which was absolutely stunning with its rich Brazilian woods and cast iron accents, red shingled roofs and stucco-like walls. Our room was pleasantly cool, and I finally collapsed around 2 a.m.

Day 3 – Manaus

Today was our city tour, both with Prakash and by ourselves. In the morning we took it upon ourselves to visit the beach and put our legs into the Rio Negro. It wasn’t too cold, but that wasn’t surprising on a day where the temperature was in the low 30’s C (between 94-100 F). Manaus is situated 3 degrees from the equator, so one can imagine that the temperature is pretty hot, and even reaches up to 118-119 (with 90-100% humidity) in the wet season (late December to late June). After seeing the beautiful sand, existing so close to the Amazon, we took our city tour.

One of the first things that we saw was the Opera House, the first major landmark to be built in Manaus in 1896. The city, at the time was a booming center for rubber extraction. It was at that point one of the richest areas in the world, and so to commemorate it, they imported a theater from many parts of Europe. Portugal, France, England and somewhere else I believe. To say the least, it was stunning, especially to view it and realize that when it was built, it was transported over 2000 miles, then assembled in the middle of the Amazon.

Also on the tour we stopped by a market where fish and fruit were hung and we learned of their interesting (and dangerous) properties. We saw fish that were essentially the same, genetically, but had different colors for camouflage purposes, in both the Rio Negro and Amazon (Rio Salimoes? I forget how to spell it, but there’s the Black River and the Brown River).

We also saw some of the slums of Manaus which were so incredibly poor. Words can’t describe their lifestyle, but a lot of them had satellite dishes (virtually pointed up to the equator), so it’s all relative I suppose. After our tour we went back to our hotel and hung out for the rest of the night. I believe today was the hottest day while we were in Brazil, clocking in at 37 C, which translates to about 104 F. The humidity was in the upper 90’s, if not 100. We ate at the hotel restaurant and I had good spaghetti with meat sauce. I wasn’t sure what the food would bring in the next few days, as the next afternoon we would be heading into the jungle.