Day 246 - A small taste of Carnival

Salvador - La Villa Francoise

We explored more of the area around out hotel today, taking a walk further along the beach, and to the nearby fort. The street was a hive of activity, as Carnival officially starts in Salvador tomorrow, so stands were being constructed in preparation.

In the evening we headed back into Pelourinho to see a traditional dance show, we arrived early so we sat in the square drinking caipirinhas as the sun went down.The dance show was OK, it managed to hold our attention for an hour or so, but we've both decided that we probably don't need to see any more traditional dance shows - ever!

We took the bus back to Barra, but progress slowed to a crawl as it came to a huge street party. As we were walking distance from our hotel, we hopped out of the bus and made our way through the crowd, past groups of people dancing, drinking, singing, and just having lots of fun, we had no idea this was going to happen tonight, but it gives us a bit of an idea of what to expect in Rio.

Day 245 - On the buses

Salvador - La Villa Francoise

Our hosts at our hostel gave us a rundown after breakfast on what to see and how to get around Salvador, so today we tackled the local buses, made a little more difficult than usual as we didn't have a map.

We were hoping to stop at the local market first, but although we asked the bus driver to let us know when we arrived, we ended up going too far. A little confused we left the bus, decided to skip the market and we walked the rest of the way to the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim. This was an interesting church - the outside fence was covered with coloured wish ribbons, and inside it had a room where people would leave letters, prayers,  photos and even replicas of body parts as offerings to help the recovery of a loved one from sickness.

We braved the buses again, this time hopping off at the market we had planned to visit earlier, but of course it was closing by this time so we didn't look around. Back on the bus to Mercado Modelo in middle of town, a quick lunch and some souvenir shopping, then onto the elevator to take us up to the historic centre. .

The old town (Pelourinho) had cobblestone streets, churches, squares, and old restored buildings - and this also meant there were lots of tourists and lots of souvenir shops (which of course K couldn't resist). There was also a lot of work going on setting up seating and stages for Salvador's Carnival which was to start on Friday.

We finished the day back in Barra where our hostel was, we walked along the waterfront and had dinner looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Day 244 - Just travelling

Manaus to Salvador - La Villa Francoise

Another day of travelling, Brazil is a large country so flying is the preferred option, of course with flying a lot of time is wasted waiting around at airports. This was a two stage flight, stopping briefly in Brasilia before continuing to Salvador, and we finally arrived at our pousada around 10pm.

Day 243 - Back to civilisation

Manaus - Go Inn

The last day of our jungle trek and another boat trip, this time to visit a local family to see their two room house (which sleeps 9 people), and see how they prepare the locally grown crops for their own use. The family sleep in hammocks in one room while the other room is the kitchen area. We were able to try some of the fruit grown at the house, learn about how cyanide is removed from the manioca root that is part of their staple diet, and also endure the screams of one of our fellow travellers who stepped on an ants nest.

We were due to head back to Manaus after lunch (which included the piranhas we caught yesterday, though the fish were so small and thin that once they were cooked all that was left was skin and bones!), however we were delayed as the dirt road that we travelled on to get there was washed out, which meant a different route back. We boarded a very large boat with an upper deck and chairs for our two hour ride back along the Amazon, before jumping into a van for a while, then another boat ride past the meeting of the waters (as rain poured onto K via the side window) and finally back to our hotel in Manaus.

Overall the weather was much more pleasant in the jungle than in Manaus, as the rain helped to keep the temperature down, and plenty of deet also meant that we survived with only a few insect bites, only time will tell whether our anti malaria meds were worth taking - but they haven't failed us yet in any of our other trips..

Day 242 - Up close with some critters

Somewhere near Manaus - Ararinha Jungle Lodge

Our next day on the Amazon started with a 3 hour jungle trek. We got on well with the others in our group, we all enjoyed learning about how to survive in the Amazon by using the various plants for food, water and medicine - we were able to eat brazil nuts and chicle, and drank from water vines. We found a wasp nest and couple of tarantulas, but we had no luck with snakes, a group the previous day had found a boa constrictor that they had all taken turns in wearing about their neck, K was quite relieved our group couldn't find one!


We arrived back very hot, just before the rain came pouring down. After lunch we headed off down the Amazon again to try our luck at piranha fishing. We hadn't been there long when K caught one, very small but with very mean teeth! After trying quite a few different spots on the river, M also snared one, between the 10 people on our boat we caught 8 fish before we headed back to the lodge for dinner.

After dinner we took the the boats again, this time to hunt for caimans, which are very similar to alligators. Our guide shone his torch into the grass lining the river banks, looking for the telltale reflections of a caiman's eyes. He finally nabbed an 11 month old caiman about a metre long. After learning about it's characteristics we were then all given the opportunity to touch, hold and pose with the poor terrified creature before he was released back into the water.

After our adventures with some of the scarier inhabitants of the Amazon we spent the rest of the evening drinking capirinhas at the jungle lodge while trading stories with the other interesting guests from different parts of the world.

Day 241 - To the not so dark depths of the Amazon

Manaus to somewhere on the Amazon - Ararinha Jungle Hotel

The first day of our Amazon trip started with a tour of the fish market at the port, it was interesting as the fish were so different to anything we are used to and many of them are so huge. From there we caught a small boat, stopping off at The Meeting of the Waters. This is where the Rio Negro and the Amazon meet, but because of differences in temperature, speed and density the rivers appear to travel side by side and don't mix. Although it was pouring rain we managed to see this unusual sight, the darker Rio Negro alongside the sandy coloured Amazon.

After the boat trip we were taken in vans along a muddy road to the next boat, as it had been raining the road was in a pretty bad state. We watched the van in front do a 180 trying to stay on the road, our trip wasn't quite as much fun as our van had more people and the luggage and the weight helped it stay on the road better. The final boat then took us along the Amazon for an hour or so to our jungle lodge, fortunately the rain had stopped by this time.

In the afternoon we boarded the boat again to take a cruise along the Amazon to look for animals, we found a couple of sloths, plus the famous pink dolphins and some not so famous grey dolphins. There was a bit of bird life as well - egrets, hawks, vultures, jacanas, and macaws high above us travelling in pairs.

The area was lightly inhabited, there were houses on stilts built to stay above the flood waters, floating houses, and boats regularly passing by during our search.

Day 240 - Where did all these tourists come from?

Manaus - Go Inn

Our Amazon trip doesn't start until tomorrow, so we spent another day seeing the sights of Manaus.

We started off with a tour of the opera house, when we arrived it was very quiet, but within about 10 minutes three large groups of tourists arrived, a surprise as we'd seen very few around town the day before.

It turned out a cruise ship had just arrived in port, as we learnt from an English couple. The tour was OK, the interior of the opera house was very nice, and though it was quite European in style, the ballroom was painted with jungle scenes (leopards, birds, etc.).

We then walked down to the dock area, spent some time sitting at a lunch place by the very dark looking river (Manaus is situated on the Rio Negro, just a few kilometres upstream from where it joins the Rio Solimoes to form the Amazon), then wandered around the the port area a bit more (though we weren't able to make it onto the cruise ship to have a look around).

Day 239 - To the Amazon

Sao Paulo to Manaus - Go Inn

Our flight for Manaus was due to leave at 4.30am, so after some discussion with the hotel receptionist (who first said we should leave for the airport at 11pm), we eventually decided on a 1.30am pick up. The taxi took us down many dark, deserted streets of Sao Paulo - K was quite relieved to get to the airport. Of course we were way  too early as it only took 40 minutes at that time of the night so we settled in for a long wait at the airport.

The plane was almost empty, and we arrived at Manaus in very foggy conditions. As we met the driver from our Amazon tour company we heard an announcement that the airport was closed for all takeoff and landing - we had just made it in time! We arrived at our hotel at 7.15am, to be told we couldn't check in until 2pm, not fun after being up all night, but luckily they found us a room by 9.45.

After a few hours rest we met with a tour guide from the company we were going into the Amazon with. Quite a strange meeting as it lasted for 40 minutes but we didn't really discuss much - pickup times, brief outline of the itinerary - it could have been over much quicker.

The rest of the day was spent wandering the streets of humid Manaus, for some reason parts of it reminded both of us of India with its many street stalls, loads of people and very poor footpaths. The rain came down very heavily at one stage, but only for a short time, something we may experience when we head to the Amazon.

Some of the old buildings in Manaus were quite grand, reminders of the days of the rubber plantations and the large amount of money it brought Manaus, especially the old opera house which was located in a very nice square just near our hotel. 

Day 238 - The city with no advertising

Sao Paulo - Bela Cintra Flats

Sao Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world with a population of about 20 million but there are two things that are very noticeable when you arrive. Firstly the lack of advertising anywhere as they had decided it had taken over the city so they had it banned it - something European countries could learn from with so many of their beautiful buildings desecrated by huge billboards. The second interesting observation is the amount of helicopters in the sky. Apparently Sao Paulo has the highest amount of helicopters in any city of the world, executives use them like taxis to go between meetings and their homes in the outer suburbs because of the traffic problems and also fear of kidnapping.

We caught the metro to the Latin American Monument, stumbling across an exhibition of a famous Brazilian painter, Candido Portinari. We walked in to the hall to see all these people posing in front of huge ceiling high paintings, and we wondered what the fuss was about. We later learned that they were the paintings done for the entrance hall of the UN General Assembly, only now exhibited in Brazil for the first time.

From there we took the metro to the Sao Bento monastery, and then to the area called Libertade, which was an area heavily populated by Japanese immigrants, then taking it easy for the rest of the day as we had a flight scheduled for very early the next morning.

Day 237 - We missed all of the action!

Curitba to Sao Paulo - Bela Cintra Flats

At breakfast the next morning the TV news and paper was full of the drama and violence that started at the pre-carnival celebration at 9pm last night - that's right we missed it by about half an hour! The police had gone in throwing tear gas grenades into the crowd and there were pictures of them standing over people with guns drawn.

We had a very easy 6 hour bus ride to Sao Paulo. The mountain scenery was very similar to what we had seen on the train the day before, the jungle is so amazingly dense the effort that must have been required all those years ago to build the road and railways must have been incredible. Once again we were struck by the heat in Sao Paulo as we walked around town, and lack of air conditioning in our hotel didn't help!