WORD OF THE DAY: Sleep and Wi-Fi
I am combining my 4 days I spent in Manaus as I really didn’t get up too much, seriously I am embarrassed to tell you I left the hotel once in 4 days and it was to see if I could find a camera in town for one of the girls, otherwise I may have not left the hotel at all. It sounds terrible, but luckily there isn’t that much to see in Manaus and what there was to see we were going to see upon our return from the Amazon next week.
I arrived at 2.30am Monday morning and I just couldn’t sleep. In the 36 hour trip I had slept around 16 hours on the plane and 2.30am Brazil time is 9.30am Ethiopia time, so my clock was slightly out which may have not helped much. I have always told clients to try and adjust to the new time zone of where they are, if you arrive at night, try and go to sleep, if you arrive during the day to try and stay awake till night time. I totally went against all those rules and stayed up till 7am when breakfast was served, so I showered and went to breakfast and then still wasn’t that sleepy, it probably didn’t help that I had speedy Wi-Fi in the room and English speaking TV shows, it’s been a while since I have seen a TV showing something else besides CNN news, so this was a massive surprise. Around lunch time I started to get tired so decided to have a small sleep and then get up for an early dinner. Well I woke at 11.30pm, so I literally slept the day away and now I was awake at midnight and not that sleepy, I wouldn’t think so after being asleep for 12 hours! So I have really stuffed my body clock now and I was up till 5am reading and on the internet where I got a few hours’ sleep before I had to get to breakfast. Breakfast has a small window of 7am-9am and if you don’t get there early the cold meat runs out but there seems to always be plenty of scrambled eggs and a beautiful juice which I think may be passion fruit based.
I thought the group was due in this morning and I remember Mark telling me that when they do get in that it is really early, like at 6am. It was now 8am and no sign of the group so I was thinking that maybe I had my days wrong, so I went back to my room and checked Facebook as I remember Debbie updating her status that they were getting on the ferry, so when I looked at that I was a day out and they weren’t due till Wednesday morning. So I had another day in Manaus on my own and at this point I still had no urge to venture outside. I was in an air-conditioned room, free Wi-Fi and TV. I was in heaven. I was also tired and I went to sleep around 1pm and woke up at midnight bright eyed and busy tailed. Once again I would think so after another 11 hour stint. Maybe this air travel is starting to knock my body around? I have bought this on myself I know. You know when you are sleeping weird patterns as the TV shows are repeating themselves. The Seinfeld show I saw at 10am was being repeated at 2am in the morning. They seemed to be on a cycle between Mad About You, Seinfeld, Will and Grace, America’s Top Model (cycle 6), American Idol showed for 4 hours one morning, Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy and then they would show one programme in English and then the same episode would be repeated later on in Portuguese. I guess they don’t count on people watching TV 24/7 to pick out their programing flaws.
So by this time I haven’t eaten lunch for 2 days and also no dinner for 2 days. Breakfast is my only meal which has consisted of 2 fresh bread rolls with scrambled eggs and processed meat. It doesn’t look that great on paper but it was actually quite tasty. I spoke to Zeme today and it was so good to hear his voice. He has been sending me text messages each day and I haven’t been receiving them which is super annoying. He gets them from my new number but I don’t get his. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH but boy it was a great phone call and it was then it hit me just how much I am missing him. 128 days. That’s not long, that’s not long, that’s not long………
Day 3 in Manaus and the group are definitely due in today. I even checked with reception today that they were expecting them in and he confirmed that he had a booking for them but couldn’t tell me when they were due in. I thought they would have already been here at 8am, but not too worry at least I hadn’t missed the tour and they were still on their way. After breakfast I was back in my room when I got a message from Mark and the ferry they were on was slower than they first anticipated and they weren’t going to make it today and they were hoping for a midnight arrival tomorrow night (Thursday). Thank goodness he even had reception on the ferry to let me know what the hell was going on! So no group and ‘another’ day in Manaus on my lonesome. I did ask Mark what there was to do and he mentioned the Opera House was worth seeing and also the meeting of the water where the Amazon River meets the Negro River which they don’t mix together for over 100km and looks spectacular. He also mentioned that if I was heading into town, Julia asked if I could get some prices for cameras as hers was stolen in Salvador and she was worried that she wouldn’t have time to do it herself with them now being delayed on the ferry. I knew she had a top range Lumix so I knew what she was looking for and this was what I needed to get my arse out of the hotel and into town. This was a blessing in disguise. So at lunch time I got a map for reception, asked about the Meeting of the Waters tour, which the map I got but his English was nonexistent and my Portuguese was nil and my little Amharic that I learned was useless, so I just too the map and armed with directions walked the 10 minutes into town. Centro is made up of two dollar shops located in pedestrian only streets over a city block. There were also street vendors selling food and stalls selling the usual electronic wares of chargers, power boards and adapters. After walking a few of the streets, there were a lot of point and shoot camera’s but not the type that I know Julia would have wanted. After spending an hour looking around I headed back to the hotel and I know now why I had stayed in my aircon room, it was 36C plus 98% humidity. It was a stinker and was very sweaty that is for sure. I passed a corner shop on my way back so I stocked up on some snacks, water and a few bottles of soft drink too. I think I may be having soft drink withdrawals as Zeme and I had been drink a lot of it each day and I had gone nearly 5 days without a drop. That is not good.
Manaus is a city in Brazil, the capital of the state of Amazonas. It is situated at the confluence of the Negro and Solimões rivers. It is the most populous city of Amazonas, according to the statistics of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, and is a popular ecotourist destination. The city was founded in 1669 as the Fort of São José do Rio Negro. It was elevated to a town in 1832 with the name of "Manaus", which means "mother of the gods" in tribute to the indigenous nation of Manaós, and legally transformed into a city on October 24 of 1848 with the name of Cidade da Barra do Rio Negro, Portuguese for "The City of the Margins of Black River". Only on September 4 of 1856 did it revert to its current name. It was known at the beginning of the century, as Heart of the Amazon and City of the Forest. Currently its main economic engine is the Industrial Pool of Manaus.
It is the largest metropolitan area in Northern Brazil and the twelfth in all of Brazil, with 2,006,870 inhabitants. Currently, the city is one of 12 most influential cities of the country. Manaus alone represents 10.89% of the population of the whole of Northern Brazil and 49.9% of the population of the Amazon.
Day 4 and the group are now due to arrive tonight all going to plan. My self-imposed exile in Manaus continues as I try and get my blog up to date while I have the time and the internet access. I have powered through 8 entries in the last few days, so it feels good to be catching my tail as I want to at least have left the African Continent before we check out on Friday. I have also been using this time to update the actual content on my blog, as a lot of it was past tense, updated my tabs and in the end, because I could, changed the colours as well just to give it a bit of a revamp. I have also been using today to get back in touch with Beth and finally finalize my round the world ticket as it is only 5 weeks till I will need to use the first flight component and I still need to book in my Easter Island accommodation and I need to also book in my Barbados accommodation. So with emails going back and forth we got the final itinerary done, got it quoted and I supplied my credit card for the payment. There’s no going back now and with that I emailed al my ‘hosts’ to make sure they were still good to receive me and I have now booked and paid for my ticket home. There was one hitch and that was that Qantas have stopped their LA to New Zealand flights, so my plans to stop in Auckland to see Lisa and Christchurch to see Lynda have now been thrown into disarray. I looked at flights from Brisbane to Christchurch and they were starting at 468AUD for a one way and then I still need to get from Christchurch to Auckland and then Auckland back to Brisbane. The trip is going to cost me an extra 1000AUD!!! I’m going to have to put on my thinking cap and speak to the girls as it will also be hard to motivate myself to leave Brisbane again for 11 days after finally getting home. It is bad news really, but these things happen and I will work something out. I also chatted with Z tonight on Facebook, so we are keeping in contact which is great as I know how difficult it is for him, it is shame that the texting isn’t working as that was our perfect form of communication we were relying on. Damn phone networks.
I spent the afternoon blogging, talking to people on Facebook and I had to tidy up the room as I was going to be getting a roommate at midnight tonight. Well that information changed again with a message from Mark at 1am and they had now lost an engine and were just running on one motor, so they were now due in around 7am just in time for breakfast he hoped. The poor buggers had now been on a basic ferry for 7 nights; 2 days late into Manaus and now they would only have 2 hours to freshen up at the hotel before we headed off to the Amazon for the week-end and 3 nights.
So that was my 4 uneventful days in Manaus. I can well and truly say now that I am well rested, I am only 3 days behind in my blog, I have booked and paid for my round world ticket and I am ready to see some familiar faces, meet some new faces and get back to a few more trips in Rosita. There are 39 days left on tour and even though I am missing Zeme like CRAZY I plan on making the most of my time that I have left on my World Odyssey.
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