Manaus and 3 day Amazon Experience

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Manaus

Known as the gateway into the Amazon and deep into it´s heart we had 2 options with regards to getting there. We could take a river boat which was at least 5 - 7 days upstream which was small crowded smelly but apparentaly an experience or a 1 hour flight. As we where very short on time we had to go for the flight or risk missing out on something later.
After our first full day in Manaus of looking for different types of tours into the jungle we decided we really needed a fun night out. We were advised by some of the locals the only place to go on a Wednesday night was a small club outside of town. When we turned up we were a little less than impressed outside but when we paid and got in the club we found a stage at the back with live music and 3 sets of dancers, a large seating area, dancefloor in the middle and all around the outside were cheap food outlets where again you get great meat and loads of cheap drinks...all of the above made for a fantastic atmosphere of drinking and dancing. We meet aot of the locals and had a great time drinking, dancing and trying to communicate with them. We stayed until 5am and then made our way back to the hostel just intime to collect our bags and take a taxi to start our jungle experience.
We were going on this tour with another couple and 3 girls from England and Ireland. The group was split up and we spent 3 days with the girls, Becca Elen and Una. On the first day we went pirina fishing and caught nothing except for Ua who managed to catch a branch from a tree!!! Thankfully the other group caught about 6 and that was dinner. After dinner at about 10pm we went out of the river again to go night spotting from baby aligator. It was a great expericence and our guide found one and brought it onto the boat for us to hold and take photos. Very cool!
Day 2 of our jungle experience we trekked into the jungle for a few hours and learnt how the locals use certain trees to make shelter and then we even found a few vines we could practise our Tarzan impressions...Stefano actually swung into a tree on his way back which was great. Later that evening we trekked again but this time for our night sleep over in the jungle. We grabbed our hammocks and food and after 1 hour of ftekking we made camp. We cooked our food which was tasty considering and then the worst...it started to shit it down with rain and we had to look for Shelter. Our guide Joseph grabbed Italiano (thats what eveyone calls Stefano) and theey made shelter. We all sqeezed under this shelter for about 3 - 4 hrs before we had to abandon our camp and head back to base...Nature won and we didn´t get to spend the night.
Day 3 - Final Day - We all got up and Joesph taught us how to make wind pipes that the locals use for hunting. The darts have poison from frogs on the tips and our shoot about 30 metres to hunt the prey...very cool

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Photos

The girls...
Becca, Elen and Una