Blogs from Brazil, South America - page 644

Massive episode of claustrophobia last night. Woke up on my top bunk with nose about 2 feet from the roof and decided I couldn~t breathe. Yay!!! Midnight walk and back to bed. Huge brekkie of fruit and eggs and then outside to be immediately tracked down by Johnathom (J-man). Spent morning playing gin-rummy, memory and learning Portugese on the ~lido deck~. Starting to enjoy the siestas and lost half the arvo sleeping! Emerged and was abducted by 10 year old Eliane, my digital camera was adopted by a small group of children who took around 100 photos in 90 minutes, flattened the batteries and screamed with delight, looking back at all the pictures of themselves and the boat. Lounged back and watched the sunset, then had a check of all the gringo passports by the military, ... read more

Afternoon everyone - how is everything with you? We seem to spend so much time talking about ourselves, what´s going on in your lives? Hmmm....sounds interesting. Anyway.... Photos will hopefully be making their way onto this site at some point, as prompted by Andy´s Dad. However, I´m afraid he and the rest of you will need to wait until we find an internet cafe that lets us do that and work out how we post the pics. Rest assured there are some good ones. In fact, all of our cameras have taken a real hammering since you last heard from us. Having ummed and ahhed on Sunday night about whether to go to the main Carnaval sight, the Sambodrome, the fact that most of the city seemed at a standstill convinced us to go for it. ... read more

Today was fabulous. Started with the obligatory shopping and purchase of supplies for our boat trip, most of the sites are still closed due to Carnaboi but pattered about anyway. Incredible contrast between slums on river and the commercial areas next to them! The musos and their families, picked us up around 1830 and drove us 20 minutes to the Manaus beach. They were quite wealthy and attended a massive white elite church we had passed on the way to Carnaboi but they were the loveliest people. The poor people use the public beach and the wealthier people pay a tax and are boated to private beaches. We hit the public beach with the musos, went for a walk, sat on the esplanade drinking beer and eating plantan banana) chips and then strolled along the funfair ... read more

Carnival time!! Yesterday we spent the day trying our best to recover from the night before and sorting out tickets to one of the biggest parties in the world, carnival. The good news is we achieved both with incredible success. we are joining our new friends from ireland (met them on the bus to paraty) for the festivities. it all kicks off tonight at 9pm, rio time, and goes till 6 am so we are going to be up for a long time tonight!! last night was a bit crazy. We went down to see a free concert in a square surrounded by some of the most beautiful buildings in rio - teatro municipal, congress, national library, national fine arts measum - and spent our time there hiding under crudley fashioned tarps to avert the rain, ... read more

Manaus had their parade with floats last night, when we were still enroute. Manaus is one of the major towns but does not pander to the tourists with over-the-top parades, so the Carnaboi atmosphere more authentic and it was great fun. Manaus has the Teatros Amazonas, an incredible theatre built by Portugese colonists for their own cultural pleasure and on this particularly fine square is also the African House. An equally fine producer of Hamburgers and Passionfruit juice which became our staple diet for 3 days. It was just SOOOO good! Did some boring banking, wandered about the excellent markets, every type of clothing, food, hammock etc imaginable. Down to Porto Negro, to see more markets and bussed out to the soccer stadium to buy our shirts for Carnaboi!! There are two teams in Carnaboi, red ... read more