Manaus

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Once again it was another flight! It doesn’t feel like were backpacking any more with all these flights. This was another cheapish one at £160 for a 5 hour flight. Problem was that we had to set off at 4am for our first flight to the capital Brasilia and we finally arrived in Manaus at 4pm after load of delays because of it pissing it down or electrical storms!

As we were coming to land into Manaus we saw the meeting of the 2 rivers that form the mighty Amazon, it looked pretty strange, the brown waters of the Rio Solimoes and the nearly black waters of the Rio Negro merging into one, very weird.

Manaus itself is not a particularly nice place, and reminded us of all the grotty border towns we’ve passed through on our travels, lots of dodgy looking people and scruffy looking shops. We decided not to stay too long, the main purpose people come her is to do a tour of the Amazon. We have done this already in Bolivia and glad we did as the cost difference was ridiculous, in Bolivia we paid £22 for a 3 day tour and saw loads of amazing things, here you pay £120 for the same thing! And with it being the dry season the guide said you probably wouldn’t see half as much.

One thing we did like about Manaus was the Parisian Theatre, which gave the city the name of the Paris of the Tropics. In its hey day of the rubber plantation boom the city had lots of money and the rich men of the city wanted to improve the social scene and built this magnificent theatre. The tour of the theatre was good and there was lots of the inside still with the traditional décor. The theatre was totally out of place and something you wouldn’t expect to see especially when you see the rest of the city!

That was it for Brazil and overall we found it to be really overpriced and by far the most expensive country on our travels so far and this was country number 17! Due to this we very rarely thought we were getting value for money. If we had the time and travelled this country properly as in getting the bus and not flying like we did then it would have cost a hell of a lot more due to the cost of travel.

More importantly was the safety and It was one of the most dangerous countries we travelled in. It was scary the number of travellers we have met that have been robbed here and just thank our lucky stars that we were o.k.

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