Blogs from Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, South America - page 18

Recently spent 10 days in Santos, Sao Paulo visiting with Fernando's family, meeting his city and exploring. We had a lot of fun. I practiced my Portuguese and learned a lot of new words and phrases. His family is absoloutely amazing and so nice/friendly. They are full of joy, humor and general goodness. During our stay there we took a ferry over to a near city called Guaruja-otherwise known as "The Pearl of the Atlantic." It's famous for surfing and many surfers come around the world to experience its pristine waters. It is a beautiful place. There was a sea of umbrellas and the beach was filled with people bathing in the sun. Bars lined the beach, mixing up tropical drinks. Fishermen lined the shores, waiting patiently for their next catch. Fernando and I had a ... read more

Hello Everyone!!! I am in Manaus, Brazil and arrived here almost two weeks ago. Flying over Manaus was a perfect introduction to the city. As the airplane lowered, looking out the window there was water as far as the eye could see. The Amazon didn't look like a simple river. This body of water is massive and appears to be an ocean. Dispersed in between mini rivers of the larger river were what looked like broccolli heads from above. Lots and lots of broccolli. There was dense jungle everywhere......surrounded by miles and miles of water. Beautimous. As the plane drifted over this place I knew this would be a very special year. Manaus is super duper hot and humid and I'm sticky with sweat all the time. Air conditioning has become my new best friend and ... read more

Flew into Manaus over the Amazon river!! Was awesome the whole thing is huge just cutting its way through miles of dense jungle, you could clearly see the meeting of the two different waters, one a cold tea clear brown and the other a murcky sandy brown, they meet but due to th temperature changes don´t mix??. On arriving at the airport we had to find help because muppet me left my swiss army knife in my day bag and customs pulled me up and it had to be checked in on its own!! so i now had the mission of tracking it down, a guide at the airport found us after overhearing our attempt at portuguese (still very ropey!!), in the end got my knife and the guide happened to be a tourist info worker ... read more

From the Pantanal we took on another long and arduous bus journey south to Foz do Iguazu. Heavily delayed and getting hotter, we were understandably tired after the three buses and taxi to our hotel in Foz. We woke the next morning and headed over to the Argentinian side of the falls - cheaper and nicer than Foz which is basically an average town. After stopping at the border and changing a few buses, we headed out to Hostel Inn, an amazing hostel/resort towards the falls. This was full (note to self: be more organised) so we got ourselves a small little bungalow next door for a couple of nights; we hung out in the Hostel Inn for its table tennis table anyway... After a well deserved good nights sleep, we headed out to visit the ... read more

Just a real quick one, sorry no photos as many computers do not have cd drives. After a brief stopover in Fortaleza and pretty short flight that deviated through Belem we have made it Manaus. Manaus is located halfway up the Amazon, pretty much smack bang between the mouth of the river at Belem (coastline) and Tabatinga, the border city, Brazillian side to Peru.. Today we did a day trip to check out the point where the Amazonas and the Rio Negro meet, which is pretty cool phenomenon as the water from each river is a different colour - yellow & black. We also headed out on little motorised canoes just off the main river to inspect the vegetation and have a chance of seeing some wildlife. We saw macaques, an aligator, maccaws, parrots and a ... read more