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Published: March 27th 2006
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Man1
The ´The Meeting of the Waters´ - where Rio Negro and Rio Solimoes become the Amazon We arrived at Manaus airport at about 1pm. On the way we were lucky enough to see the 'Meeting of the Waters´from the plane window. The 'Meeting of the Waters´ is where the Rio Negro meets the Solimoes and becomes the Amazon. As the Negro and the Solimes are of different density and temperature they do not mix immediately and can be clearly seen running side by side. Manaus is one hour behind Salvador so we changed our watches again, the fourth time we have done so in this country. There is a chapter to come on Brazilian time, watch this space. We were immediately accosted by touts selling jungle tours, we fled sharpish to a taxi rank where we were fortunate to meet a big muckle Geordie lad from Gateshead who was living in Manaus. We shared a cab with him to the centre of town and he recommended a hotel. While in the cab the driver tried to sell us tours from a couple of different companies, at one point he even passed me his mobile with a jungle tour company rep on the end of the line - arrrggghhhhh! We arrived at our hotel where we were again
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One of the busy port markets verbally accosted by the hotel rep, we quickly took refuge in our hotel room.
We rested for a while then took a deep breath before heading out to book our tour. Prices to stay in jungle lodges with beds and toilets were high, so we took the rustic option which was closer to our budget. We also managed to book our boat to Tabatinga (the gateway to Peru) using the jungle tour rep as a translator. We had only been in the city for a couple of hours and we were sorted, unfortunately the tour of the jungle and the boat out of town were not timed well for our visit. We were left with four extra days in Manaus, one before the jungle and three after. Never mind. We headed off to get a Suco/Vitamina and corn then went to bed.
On our first full day we went for a walk of the city. Manaus is a port city on the Amazon in the north of Brazil. With no roads to speak of to the south all access is by air, boat, or via road north to Venezuela. It is a very busy city with more stores
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our branch of Bananas costing a massive 75p than I have ever seen in all my life. The reason for all the stores is the area is a tax free trading area. The Amazonian area is huge and despite attempts by the Brazilian government to use the area to attract wealth there has never been any boom since the end of world war two when rubber was the main product. The area now has Philips, Nokia, Honda and many others all assembling their products in the area. The stores all sell cheap electrical goods, unfortunately we did not need any of these cheap good so all our money was wasted - that is how sales work isn´t it? In addition to these electrical stores there are millions of other stores and markets where it seems people come from miles away (the next city down river is 3 days away) to purchase everything anyone could ever possibly need.
We ate at a kilo restaurant (your food is weighed and you pay fo rit by the kilo) a very good option if you are vegetarian, then went for a beer before bed. We were starting on our jungle tour the next day and it was a case of early
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Colonial Architecture. The Teatro Amazonas building to bed, early to rise. We had a fantastic time in the jungle, lots of adventure and lots of fun; Tas has written a seperate entry.
We returned to Manaus after our jungle trip with three days to go before we left the city. I personally liked the city, but 3 days was more time than we needed it was spent stocking up with provisions for our boat trip. We had heard horror stories about apalling food, no fresh water and disease ridden shared toilets. We had booked a cabin to avoid the shared toilets and now were were on a quest for fruit, water, bread and any other goods that would last the six days (yes 6 days traversing one country) we were afloat. We didn't struggle in our quest as we were in the right place. We got a large 'branch´ of bananas from the banana market, tonnes of fruit, gallons of water and as a treat fresh moist Brazil nuts and fried Plantain. We also got booze and soft drinks incase it all got too much.
Other things we did in Manaus to fill our three days were: visited the cities pretty colonial buildings, found the best Suco bar in town, saw an opticians with a bar in a middle (?), bought some hooky CDs, went to the movies to see Brokeback Mountain (Tas got cold as the air conditioning was set at 19 degrees) and washed our filthy jungle clothes. The CDs we bought were 'Back to the 80s´which turned out to be 70s disco tracks (a fantastic album) and a Beegees album.
We were getting picked up from our hostel at 2pm for our 4pm sailing time. We had once last decent lunch and Suco, then chilled for half a hour. We were both quite anxious - six days is a long time if you are not comfortable.
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