Many Hours to Manaus

Manaus, located in the Amazon, had posed problems for us even before we had left.  Basically, we had been unable to book an internal flight flying tfrom within Brazil, but we were able to do so from Buenos Aires.  Strangely, enough this flight involved layovers in Sao Paolo on the way there and Rio on the way back, so it was hard to see how the domestic flights were not available but who can decipher the murky world of aviation?  To further confound things, the flight was altered a couple of times, the second time being a much later departure with a 6 hour layover (from 2.00 am) at Sao Paolo airport.  This effectively wiped a day off our trip, but we decided to continue with it.

Manaus is a city of over a million people, so it's not the rubber-trading outlier station that it would have been a hundred years ago but it is, I'm told, still surrounded by jungle in all directions for 1000 miles.

The good thing was that Brazil were playing, so we got to watch that in the town's main square,  

beneath the main theatre, Teatro Amazonas, which must have been a truly remarkable building when it was first built in 1896 - culture in the jungle!

The fans were a lot more raucous than those in Buenos Aires but this could also be because alcohol was allowed here...  There were a lot of horns - I can't say "blowing" because most of them were hand-pumped - hooting.  I have no respect for a hand-pumped horn.  I believe that the amount of noise being made should be proportional to the amount of effort put into making it and hand-pumping seems to bypass this.

Jubilation or sheer relief?

Brazil, as has been the case throughout, were unconvincing and after a Chilean shot cannoned off the crossbar latein extra-time, it remained locked up at 1-1 and onto penalties.  Thankfully, for the locals, Brazil prevailed and the place erupted!

Where we would have left from...

It had been our plan to go on a trip up the black Rio Negro where it meets the brown Rio Solomoes (the upper Amazon) and the two waters run side-by-side without mixing for about 6 kms.  Unfortunately, like everything on this leg, the trips were booked out...

Everybody sleeps

In fact, the next day, Sunday, the town was like a ghost town.  Streets were strangely empty, all the shops were closed.  The few people visible were snoozing...










So, we head back to Buenos Aires - a 2.15 am departure - without seeing all we would have liked.  Meanwhile, a quick look at my weather app tells me that it will be about 8 degrees in Buenos Aires...and that's in the daytime.