Monday 15 September / Tuesday 16 September, 2014

Last day in the Amazons so we had a walk through the rainforest to where they are teaching the locals how to propagate and look after orchids. They had over a hundred plants of all sizes. Sadly none were in bloom. A group teaches the locals so that they do not go in the rainforest and just take them to sell and then they don't have any left. By teaching them to look after them and to propagate them, they are teaching the locals about sustainability which is a huge focus in the Amazon area.
We left for the airport at 11 on our last boat trip on the Amazon and headed back to Manaus to catch our plane to Rio de Janiero. On the way you could see how bad the flood had been this year by where it cut the banks of the river. We got to the airport at noon but our plane didn't leave until 4:30 so it was one of those "travel" days that are not enjoyable but all part of the journey. Believe it or not, we had to walk out on the Tarmac and up the stairs to get on the plane!!! Can't remember the last time I did that. It is such a budget airline that we had this small bread roll for dinner (we got into Rio at 9:30) that had a small piece of cheese and 2 small pieces of ham plus an orange juice! But all worth it when we saw the view from our room on the 24th floor of the Sheraton.
It was nearly 11:30 by the time we were checked in at the hotel so it was a very long day.

Tues we had a leisurely breakfast buffet. we watched these people climb up this rope to the top of a huge rock and then jump off the rock into the water! We knew we would never see someone in Australia secure a rope on a rock that would then allow the public to use it to have some fun! After that we headed into the local area of Lebon, which is next to Ipanema and Cococabana Beaches. Rio has 6 million people in the metropolitan area and I think 18 million in the whole city. It is very crowded, traffic and people wise. There are apartment blocks everywhere or houses that are crammed so tightly together. There is construction everywhere as they are getting ready for the Olympics in 2016.
On several of the lamp posts they grow orchids. Many were in bloom and looked so pretty. On the way back to the hotel, the wind was blowing a gale and as we were walking next to the beach, it stung our faces, hands and legs. And of course we had sand everywhere....clothes, hair, ears etc! Yuck!
We met our tour guide and the other 35 travelers in the afternoon. Aussies and Americans make up the majority with other couples from Switzerland and Canada and a lady from New Zealand.
We took an afternoon tour which headed to the cable car to Sugar Loaf mountain. Very overcast but we were glad it wasn't raining! What stunning views of the domestic airport, beaches, lake and city!
Dinner was at a local restaurant and was prawn crepes and a delicious local fish with rice pilaf. No colour to the meal, all white, but very tasty. Baked bananas and ice cream for dessert. Interesting that at the grocery store and at the buffet breakfast they have all these signs near colourful food suggesting having colour on you plate!!!

Sunday 14 September, 2014

Wow! What experiences we keep having! This morning before breakfast we took a "nature walk" through the Amazon Rainforest. We were looking for birds and other creatures but sad to say they were few and far between, but we did see a scarlet Macaw! What a beauty and he even joined us for breakfast in the dining room!!! Just seeing the size of the trees and learning what foods you can eat and which are poison was so interesting. I had never seen a cashew grow before and was really surprised that the nut was on the outside of the flower.
After breakfast was another walk and again no creatures. It is really sad to see a couple of areas that had been slashed and burned as only ficus trees will grow in that area. Regrowth of rainforest trees will never happen. We saw a tree that houses ants. What an interesting specimen! When you pound on the tree, millions of ants come out. If you put your hand on the tree they will cover your hand. Then if you quickly rub them into your hands and arms, it will disguise human smell so other animals will not be able to smell you. Another tree was insecticide so you rub the outside of the tree and then rub over your body. One of the trees has a sap that is used to make chewing gum! So interesting.
We saw the areas where an armadillo had been digging earlier but weren't lucky enough to see him. We also went to a monkey rehabilitation centre and happened to be there at feeding time. Wow do they go ape for the food! I had a Brazil nut in my hand and one of the monkeys came down from the tree and grabbed it out. It was still in its shell and it was amazing that it could chew through the very hard shell.
Another tour was to a local village where we could see them making manioc, which is like a flour. They take the root vegetable that looks like a white sweet potato and grate it. As it seems to have a lot of cyanide in it, it is put in a long thin woven basket and soaked for quite awhile. It is then squeezed dry and cooked on a large frypan, scooping often so as not to burn.
We also saw how rubber was tapped from a tree and then smoked to make the latex. It takes them all night to gather the rubber as they need to wait until night so it will "run". The then pour the latex over a wooden stick that is over a very smokey fire that heats it to turn it into rubber. They get about $1 kg and can make about 24 kg in one full day. It is certainly a lot of work. Rubber is still used for the inside of motorcycle tyres and for the Formula One cars.
When we came back Rob, Michelle and Jan fished for piranhas, Ken swam and I sat under a palm tree enjoying the scenery!
On the path to the lobby, we saw a young sloth climbing up a tree! What a sight to see and so cute!
Before dinner we went for a canoe ride on the Amazon to see the night life. It was pitch black but the guide had a powerful spotlight hooked up to a battery! Saw a few red eyes, which means that Brazilian crocodiles were around but they were gone before we got close. We would paddle into the middle of groups of trees and once I wasn't paying attention when we backed out and I had branches wrap around me. Boy did I let out an almighty scream as I had no idea what it could have been. Michelle said it took 5 years off her life! Sadly we didn't see any wildlife but to be canoeing on the Amazon River through the rainforest is a treat in itself!!!

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.

Saturday 13 September, 2014

Before we started our tour we wandered through the zoo in the resort complex! We saw a jaguar, monkeys galore (some even out of the cages) toucans, capivara and other local animals. The capivara was so cute. The four of them follow each other so well! The first one goes in the hut while the next one in line waits its turn. Then the line moves up and the second one goes in while the next one waits! And continues until they are all in the hut. Then they come out, one by one again and go into the water, one by one! So cute!!! We felt so sorry for the monkeys in the cages as they looked so unhappy. But it was an impressive collection for a hotel! We then met our tour guide Marco, and boarded a ferry boat for a "Meeting of the Waters" cruise. What a wonderful lazy way to spend the day! We followed the River Negro (I imagined so named for its chocolate colour) to where it meets the yellow grey waters of the Rio Solim'es. The two rivers then form the mighty Amazon and run for over 6 km without the two colours mixing, the reason being that the River Negro is more acidic than the Amazon however the Amazon is full of parasites that are quite nasty. The widest part of the Amazon is 19 km and the narrowest is 4 km spanned at this point with a stunning looking bridge. It is 6000 km from where it starts in Peru to its end in the Atlantic Ocean. The river floods quite often, usually about 15 m which it did this year. It still hasn't receded completely.
We had lunch at a local floating restaurant and tasted some delicious local fish. We then tried our hand at piranha fishing with bamboo poles and beef for bait! The idea is to slap the water with the pole to make lots of noise to attract the fish. Alas I was the only one that caught a fish and only a little catfish at that! We wandered down to the river and saw lots of monkeys in the wild. They also had huge water lilies that grow up to 1.8m wide and have thorns on the underside so that fish don't eat the leaves.
On the return trip it really looked like it was going to storm and we saw a few bolts of lightening. Interesting that it stayed on the other side of the river! Marco said only 30% of the rain ever gets to the ground before it has evaporated. It was a quite steamy and humid 32c today and then it dropped about 12c when we passed the rain.
Our guide is a university lecturer and researcher. His knowledge is amazing and he has been telling us of the strategies that the Brazilians are using to keep improving their eco system and learn more about the rainforest to ensure its sustainability.
We were greeted at our Eco lodge (right on the river) with a cocktail. Dont know what was in it but it was ver nice!! The lodge also has lots of nature walks through it which we will explore tomorrow.
After dinner we watched a great movie about the Amazon, from its start in Peru as a tiny waterfall coming out of a crack in the rock to its widest part and then to the mouth. Our guide lent us torches for the walk to our cabins as on one tour that he had someone nearly walked on a snake while they were returning to their cabin.

Thursday 11 September/ Friday 12 September

Thursday we hit some of the shopping centers, mainly to exchange money, buy some SMS cards and a memory card for Jan's camera. Money was the easiest job. Now we are in Brazil with Rials and we divide by 2 here! We tried to get money at the bank but they dont exchange money. They are so tight on security here. To go into the bank you put your keys, phone wallet etc through a drop box, go through the revolving doors that are metal detectors, pick up all your stuff from the drop box, and proceed to do your banking! Armed security everywhere and the security in the shopping centres have bullet proof vests on!!! (Are missing information about threats??)
Very little English is spoken anywhere around here so it was quite difficult to make ourselves understood to buy SMS cards. But one entrepreneurial sales assistant typed into his phone and we conversed with Google Translator! Oh the joys of Modern technology! So about an hour later as it was a very involved process, Jan was sorted as I had forgotten my iPad and didn't want to get the wrong card.We had to sort out the card, go to the "box" to pay, (cashier...don't know how the term box became involved!) register the card, back to the box to pay for credit on the card and then register the payment. This was at the third shopping centre as Jan had an iPad air and needed a smaller card. Mind you it was 32c while we are walking to all the centers!
We came back to the hotel so I could get my iPad and then went to the shopping centre next door and sorted my SMS as the guy spoke a little English. Jan bought her camera card but we need to go back there now as it won't work in her camera. (Update...here when you buy an SD card you get a micro card and regular card and we couldn't figure out what the micro card was for until we took the card back this morning and the sales assistant put the micro card in the regular card! Problem solved!! Camera now can take pictures.
Shock shock...no photos taken yesterday!

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!

Monday Sept 8 2014-Tuesday Sept 9 2014

Only a couple hours more and we will be landing at Santiago Airport, Chile for the start of a months tour through South America. An uneventful flight so far, a little late out of Sydney. We have all dozed off and on, hopefully enough as we arrive in Chile at 11:30am with the day ahead after having left home at 5am!
Wandered around town after we checked in at the Intercontinental Hotel. Interesting facade, all planted! Found out that we can't buy SMS cards for our iPads that will work in all of South America. They will only work in each country so as we will be in Brazil for about two weeks, we will try and get them there. For now it's coffee at Starbucks for the free Internet.. We ventured on the underground to near where we took the Funicular to where we had a fantastic view of most of Santiago, with the snowcapped mountains in the background. A huge city of 7 million people over 19 square kilometers. Everyone wears very dark colours, we haven't seen any bright coloured clothing nor cars for that matter. Very few older people around and doesn't seem very multicultural as we are.
Today (Tuesday) we really had a sleep in...9am before we could even open our eyes!! and we were all asleep by 9pm last night. After buffet breakfast we took the "hop on hop off " bus all around Santiago stopping at a couple places to take in the sights, one of which was the house of the Nobel Prize for literature, Pablo Neruda. Very interesting! Lots of police on horses and many on foot as well. They seem to be everywhere you turn! What a freezing cold day. Temp says 12 but with the cold wind more like zero! And none of dressed for it as yesterday wasn't cold at all (21)!
Tomorrow we will fly to Manaus, Brazil where we were told it is 28C. Our bodies are going to be soooo mixed up!