Wednesday 10 September 2014

We had dinner at a very good restaurant last night, Happenings. Probably about a kilometre from our hotel but the walk did us good! There was a sculpture next door that we had fun with by posing Jan! They had famous paintings all around the room but all the heads were cattle. Interesting. We had Steak and fish meals that were all very tasty. Waited forever for dessert and finally asked someone who found out that the waiter, who only spoke very very basic English, had not understood our order. But of course he didn't get anyone else to ask us what we wanted, so we got the bill and left. For some reason we have had trouble sorting out the exchange rate. We got 580 pesos for US $1 but kept dividing pesos by two (and thinking everything was ridicuously cheap) rather than multiplying by two to give us a general idea. Put it down to jet lag!

Oh what a day today! We left the hotel after breakfast at 10:30 for our flight to Manaus via São Paulo with a very very noisy group of Herballife people. I don't ever want to hear about loud Aussies or Americans. These took the cake. They were so loud!
A slight delay of just over an hour had us worried about our connecting flight but we got to São Paulo, through customs, immigration and found our luggage and then hopped on the transit bus to another terminal. What a huge airport! It took almost 30 min to get to the domestic terminal where we checked our bags and went straight to the gate and boarded. They seem to take so long to do anything! We landed at Manaus at 11:30pm and were met by a driver...what a great relief at that time of night.
Went to our hotel the Millenium, only to be told that they had several pipes burst and there were no rooms available. So 2 taxis to take us to our room for the night. Can't believe how small it is. My ensuite is almost bigger than this room. No where for luggage or to turn around. The guys had to go in one at a time to have a look. But it is 1:15am and it is a place to put our heads, after I killed the cockroach so I could have a shower. Oh the joys of travelling!