Having already visited Manaus, I knew it was hot, muggy, and not really full of excitement. We were interviewed on the street one night by a few school girls about why we were here, did we like it, etc. I kept my mouth shut to be nice while Alex, who actually liked the city, gave the girls an A for their assignment. I stayed inside most of the 3 recovery days, but one afternoon was spent visiting The Zoo.
Described in Lonely Planet as containing animals "rescued" from the jungles by the military, most appeared pretty depressed inside their cages. A few roamed wild, but not exactly as the guide made it seem. But, there were tons of monkeys so I was happy...
After the zoo, Nigel and I decided to go (more like attempted) to see the Encontro das Agua, or meeting of the waters. Here the white waters (actually light brown) of one river meet up with the black waters (actually red brown) of another. Supposedly for a few kilometers they run side by side, but our quick water taxi across the Amazon to the town of Careiro prevented our visualization of this "phenomenon".
Careiro was a small town literally built on the shores of the river. A main dock in town offloads trucks heading north to another smaller town by a similar name 150km north. Few stores lined this main road for a quarter mile and for a few minutes we thought that was it until we ventured onto the boardwalks behind the buildings. Kids ran about, a few even tried riding bikes up the planks. (Something I'd never try.) The rest were swimming. A typical hot day, I considered the diseases I might contract by giving into the cool waters and said fuck it. I striped down and canonballed in, hitting the bottom covered in ?riverweed?, it being only 2 meters deep. Houses stood on stilts, a few less fortunate than the others.
We grabbed a few beers, after fulfilling our picture quota and the kids were finally bored with us, while we waited for the free ferry headed back. It took about 10 times as long to get back and we still didn't see the meeting of the waters, but we did catch a nice sunset.
The following day, the Kiwi and I packed the bags and waited for the night bus headed north to Venezuela via Boa Vista. Alex, our British mate had decided to stick around and head into the jungle for a 4 day trek. We wished him luck since he had an uncanny ability to freak out about spiders, moths, butterflies, and whatever else crawls, flies, or lives in the jungle...
Continues Tomorrow...