Brazil: Part 2 of 3 The Amazon: 1 Manaus

 One of the main objectives of our trip to Brazil was to visit the Amazon.  But in true Ashton fashion no ordinary tourist visit would do.  There are so many ways to experience the Amazon with varying depths of exposure.  Because so much of the Amazon rainforest is contained within a vast waterway system of rivers, lagoons, streams, swamps, you name it, one of the best ways to explore the Amazon is on a boat.  Within this context there are many types of boats with varying degrees of experiences.  I wanted the most authentic, immersive option that went beyond the barrier of what the average tourist might experience.  There are upscale tourist class boats, but they don't see much because these boats are bigger and are often run by an international staff with all the mod cons.  They're also quite comfortable, so I heard.  

To get to the Amazon requires a pretty long flight with a connection in Sao Paolo from Rio, so an entire day of travel just to arrive at the gateway city to the Amazon, Manaus, the capital and largest city of the state of Amazonas.  We flew on Christmas eve arriving to a quiet and sort of eerie feeling Manaus.  It has a storied past that includes an economic boom at ground zero during the height of rubber production in the 1800's.  As a result it benefitted from massive infrastructure upgrades with lots of European imports, notably the above Teatro Amazonas, that have left a mark on this city into the current day.  The opera house was closed for almost a century and now hosts performances from all over the world.  In a post rubber era the city today is supported by manufacturing, its port and of course tourism as the transit hub and launching point into the Amazon rainforest.

When checking into our hotel here I asked about areas to avoid or where we might need to be extra cautious, what I read in advance of our travels raised some flags. The reception pulled out a map and showed me the one and only square we should visit, gratefully next to our hotel, and that anywhere else in the city was not safe. So with one quick spin around the square, which is home to the Teatro Amazonas, that’s Manaus checked off the list. Good thing the city isn’t what we came for. 

The square was exceptionally, if not surprisingly, decked out for Christmas

The very pretty pool at our hotel, which we never used.  The bug situation was already intense, a sign of things to come.

Arriving on Christmas eve, we spent Christmas day relaxing in our hotel recovering from all the travel and preparing both physically and mentally for the voyage ahead, deep into the Amazon.  There were only two restaurants open during our visit, one was at our hotel and one at a neighbouring hotel.  With that we had Christmas eve dinner and Christmas day dinner at the little restaurant in our hotel and Christmas lunch at the hotel next door, there in the heart of the Amazon.  A strange experience, and one we won't soon forget.  

The next morning we packed up our bags and loaded up the taxi to head to the dock to meet our boat.  This is where the less comfortable choice begins to take shape.  We were given an address which I tried to painstakingly mark on Google Maps.  My Google Map sleuthing skills are pretty top shelf using a combo of various verbal cues on any websites with relevant information I can find, photos from reviews to compare to map images and hunting and pecking by hand over fully zoomed-in maps using the satellite view looking for discernible signs or structures that match what I'm looking for.  With all of that and a local taxi driver, we still had trouble finding this place.  Finally down a dusty, very bumpy, and strangely crowded road that hardly seemed fit for passage we found our way to a tiny floating dock.  No clear signage for our vessel, a man who recognised us no doubt from our very "we're not from here" bewilderment and passenger description introduces himself.  And before we know it we're loading all our bags into a small longboat to commence our journey.  The intense heat, and realising there is no escape or hope of escape, the chaos of the scene, already a layer of dust from the dirt road, begins to take over, and I was doing good to get my phone out to capture these departure snaps.  Ready or not, Amazon, here we come!