At the Gateway of the Amazon and up towards the Gran Sabana

After leaving the Brazilian border town of Tabatinga, Xavi and I spent three days going down the Amazon River on a comparatively comfortable Brazilian cargo ship. It’s not quite the experience of its Peruvian counterpart but the ship is much cleaner and the food is so much better. At this point of the journey, from Tabatinga to Manaus, the Amazon River gets even wider than before and I noticed that the Brazilian villages along the riverbanks have electricity. The Brazilian part of the Amazon indeed seems more developed than the Peruvian part but I do miss the more rustic Peruvian jungle atmosphere and that great sense of being remote. The cargo ship left Tabatinga on a Wednesday morning and eventually arrived in Manaus the following Saturday morning. On the morning of our arrival, most people were distracted as the ship crossed from the Amazon River to the Rio Negro. The meeting of the two rivers is fascinating, as the waters of different colours meet (the Rio Negro is almost black whilst the Amazon is a muddy colour) but don’t mix for about six kilometres due their different temperature, speed and density. 

A village along the Amazon River close to Manaus

Once the ship was close to the city of Manaus, I could see the invasion of the modern world into the jungle - with huge ships sailing along the river, modern settlements along the river banks and a large port. Finally, I saw a number of high-rise buildings in the distance – until the distance diminished and I found myself at one of the main ports of Manaus, very close to those high-rise buildings. From the boat, Manaus looks like a modern metropolis without a soul, but once you get off the ship and start roaming around the city, you realise that there is much more to it than that.

A huge port just outside Manaus

High-rise buildings in the centre of Manaus

The port where the cargo ship stopped

Xavi was enthusiastic to reach Manaus since his girlfriend, Catia, was waiting for us there – having arrived by plane from Switzerland the day before. He went straight to the hostel which Catia had booked whilst I joined a group of young Colombians whom I had met on the ship, on a quest to look for a cheaper hostel. In the process, I began chatting to a Brazilian man from another part of the country, who was selling ice-cream in the streets. He warned me that the centre of the city could be dangerous at night. When hearing that I was on a budget, he recommended me to look for a bed at the local Church homeless centre (warning me that it's pretty dirty). I guess I wasn't that broke yet. The best we eventually found was the Ocara Hostel, a five-minute walk from the Amazon Theatre (Teatro Amazonas), for 30 Reales per dorm bed. The price included a great breakfast so it was excellent value for money considering the Manaus prices for accommodation.

 

The old port building in the centre of Manaus

That afternoon, I met up with Catia and Xavi at their hostel and Catia told me that there was a Brazilian football league game in town in a few hours. The game was to be played at the recently inaugurated Amazon Arena, which was built specifically for the 2014 World Cup. Whilst Manaus doesn’t have a competitive team, two teams from other cities (Botafogo from Rio de Janeiro and Corinthians from Sao Paolo) were playing against each other at the stadium in Manaus in order to justify (and finance) its existence beyond the World Cup. That evening, the three of us went to the stadium and enjoyed a well-played football game, full of skill and excitement. To add to the fun, the passion of the supporters was as entertaining as the football game itself. I’ve been to a number of football games before but I’ve honestly never seen fans live the game with such exhilaration as the Brazilian supporters who surrounded us. I spent stretches of the match just looking at the crazy reactions of the supporters.

 

The World Cup 'Amazon Stadium' in Manaus

The stadium from inside during the league game we watched

The next couple of days were spent roaming around the streets of Manaus, where one can see a large number of colonial buildings, some beautiful and some kitsch – all reminders of the extravagances of the rubber boom that turned what was once a jungle settlement into a prosperous city. The Amazon Theatre is probably the main landmark from the city’s early history. The great tenor, Enrico Caruso, sang here on the opening night – crossing halfway across the world for the event. My late maternal grandfather, Eddie, was a great fan of Caruso so I felt nostalgic when standing in front of the theatre, wondering what Eddie would think if he were here. The Amazon Theatre also features in one of my favourite films, ‘Fitzcarraldo’ – a masterpiece by the German director Werner Herzog. I was lucky to arrive in Manaus during a week-long theatre festival, with two free plays per day at the Amazon Theatre. I eventually saw two plays (in Portuguese - so I didn’t understand much), mainly enjoying the play for children due to its lovely choreography. Despite being rather gaudy, I did like the theatre itself and was happy to just sit down and enjoy the atmosphere.

The Amazon Theatre by night

Watching a play inside the Amazon Theatre

Many visitors use Manaus as a starting point for exploring the jungle. Nevertheless, Xavi and I weren’t really interested in the jungle tours offered here since nothing would be as authentic as the experiences we had just been through in the previous weeks. To get a good feel of the jungle, we would either need to head back to where we came from or head up the Rio Negro for a few more weeks. We preferred to visit the city itself and its museums, many of which are free. There is also a lively market area during the day – the Municipal Market is a historic building based on a similar marketplace in Paris, whilst nearby is the rougher but more entertaining local market. This market area is located next to the Rio Negro, with several boats coming and going right below. 

The colourful buildings in downtown Manaus

Tossing bananas at the market

The boats along the Rio Negro, beneath the market area

On one of the days, Xavi, Catia and I also crossed the Rio Negro to the little village of Carreiro da Varzea on a free car ferry, having the opportunity to once again see the ‘meeting of the waters’ at only the price of a local bus (bus number 713 taken from the terminal in the centre of Manaus near the port - a one hour ride to the Port of Ceasa). Once we reached the other side, it was fun to walk through the little wooden houses built on high wooden pillars in the village of Carreiro and get a glimpse of the local life. One man actually let us play with his pet monkey, whilst little children ran around us, filling the sky with their kites. The monkey took a strange liking to Xavi.

The Amazon River and the Rio Negro meet but don't mix

Playful children in the village of Carreiro da Vareza

Xavi's new friend eats a banana

Dozens of kids fly their kites

Whilst in Manaus, destiny made me cross paths with Torbjørn (Tor) C. Pedersen – a Danish traveller who is attempting to become the first person to travel to every country in the world in the same journey without catching one plane! I met him thanks to Catia, who had randomly started to talk to him. Tor is undertaking this epic travel as a Goodwill Ambassador for the Red Cross and also managed to get some sponsors to help him out. He reckons that the whole journey will take about four years to complete. We chatted about overland travel logistics and the crossing of the ‘Guianas’ (Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana) – which we were both about to attempt very soon (though Tor was not planning on visiting French Guiana since it is not really a country but simply a French colony). There is much to say about Tor’s great adventure and I recommend that you follow his unique travel, written with a lot of good humour, creativity and positivity, at his website:  http://www.onceuponasaga.dk/ and on the facebook page: ‘Once Upon a Saga’. Meeting Tor was very inspiring and it delighted me to discover what a lovely and friendly person he is. Having an outgoing and likeable character is a big bonus when travelling and reaching out to people from different cultures and backgrounds.

On my last evening in Manaus, my girlfriend, Sofia, arrived by plane from Ecuador via-Panama. I could jokingly (or fearfully) predict that the levels of melodrama were going to be radically cranked up by her arrival! Sofia and I planned to travel north to Venezuela together with Catia and Xavi the following evening. On the day of our departure, I showed Sofia around Manaus before saying goodbye to a number of friends I had made at the hostel. A casual remark that a museum guide looked like Scarlett Johansson unleashed the wrath of Sofia and she didn't speak to me for about an hour! We then met Xavi, Catia and Tor at the long distance bus terminal, with buses heading north along the highway leading to Venezuela. We had a 7pm bus to Boa Vista to catch. Boa Vista is the capital of the state of Roraima, only approximately a couple of hours away from the Venezuelan border. The 12-hour bus ride to Boa Vista costs between 80 and 95 Reales, depending on the time of departure of the bus. We were strangely not given the option to go straight to the Venezuelan border on the same bus, which was heading all the way to Caracas and would have obviously also crossed the border. We therefore stopped in Boa Vista the following morning and, soon after, hoped onto another bus from the very same company, heading to the Venezuelan border town of Santa Elena (costing another 25 Reales).

The levels of melodrama shoot up - Sofia arrives! (posting this will get me into big trouble!!)

The savannah landscape in northern Brazil

At the bus terminal in Boa Vista, we said goodbye to Tor, who caught another bus going to the border with Guyana. Once our bus reached the Venezuelan border, it waited until all passengers completed their immigration formalities with both the Brazilian and Venezuelan authorities. Whilst we waited for a long time in the queue at the Brazilian immigration police, both immigration formalities proved to be very straight forward and simple. We arrived in Santa Elena at about 1pm or 2pm and picked up a taxi into town for less than the equivalent of a dollar. This was the first indication of how cheap Venezuela could be for foreign visitors at the moment, in the midst of political turmoil and an economic crisis. Whether it is the worst or best moment to be visiting the country depends on whether you manage to stay out of the path of trouble or not.

At the border between Brazil and Venezuela