Friday 12 September 2014

Transferred to the Tropical Manaus Resort this morning to start our Globus Tour. The complex is amazing, 400,000 square metres including several pools, ponds, a zoo and many sporting areas for tennis, archery, basketball etc. The halls are very long and very wide and the place aeems to keep going! rooms are very large and spacious. After wandering around the complex, we had just headed inside when the skies opened. We had not seen the rain coming and it was a true tropical storm with the 35 c temp dropping quite a bit and the storm ending quite quickly.
Our city tour of Manaus was very interesting. Brazil is made up of 26 states, Manaus being the capital of the largest state, Amazonas. The population of Manaus has grown from 200,000 in the 80's to 2.1 million now due to Amazonas being a tax free area which many large companies have moved to.
We visited a research centre where they work with professors all around the world, studying the Amazon Rain forests, both flora and fauna. They had several manatah's that are very similar to a dugong and we even saw a monkey in the tree.
We then saw the beautiful building of the Opera House, made from materials imported from England, France and Italy. It took 12 years to build.
Our tour finished with a quick walk though the central markets, very similar to Thailand. Hygiene questionable!
We met up with Michelle, a nurse from Melbourne who will also be on the full tour with us. It looks like there will be only 5 of us on the tour of the Amazon River area.