Mosque visit

"Work as if you will live for ever; live as if you will die tomorrow."

I took a tour of the Grand Mosque here in Manama, Bahrain today. I have to say, the tour was much more than I had hoped for. The mosque is quite a sight from the outside...much different than the "mosque" we had back at my little base in Afghanistan, where we set aside a small room in a mud brick hovel as a mosque. I had heard the mosque was open to tourists, but not quite believing that I was a little apprehensive upon approach, having always thought mosques were off limits to unbelievers. I went on up into the mosque area though, and was nearly immediately approached by a woman dressed in the black covering that all the local women around here wear, asking me in flawless English if I would like a free tour of the mosque. I said I would; we took off our shoes and off we went.

She was clearly quite a devotee to her job and her religion, and proceeded to give me a very thorough and professional tour of the inside of the mosque. I learned or was reminded of quite a few facts about Islam and mosques...and it's true that most all mosques are closed to non-Muslims. The Grand Mosque seemed more of a showpiece than a real congregation though...the kind of place Muslims might go on special occasions, but not for their daily prayers. Perhaps for that reason it's open to tourists.

In any case, I was struck by the simplicity of the mosque. Though the structure itself, with its massive dome and high minarets is certainly very majestic, inside the mosque is mostly empty. I knew ahead of time that mosques aren't filled with adornments like many churches are, but nevertheless seeing such a grand structure mostly empty but for the admittedly gaudy chandeliers and some Arabic calligraphy (this Arabic calligraphy being straight lines, since their regular letters are curvy and flowing as we would think of calligraphy in English) on the walls was a reminder to me of the focus on Allah that Islam preaches. I've always been appreciative of simplicity and detested needless complexity (I can recall being chastised by my boss in a law firm "continually over-simplifying the issues"...perhaps all of this explains why I'm not a lawyer...?), and I come to appreciate simplicity more and more every day in an increasingly complex world. At any rate, the lack of distraction in the mosque itself encourages its adherents to focus on their prayers. That, and the togetherness the prayer ritual itself engenders (which I was allowed to witness, happening to be there during one of the five daily prayer times), by having the devotees line up with shoulders touching the persons on either side as they go through their prayer ritual, were the aspects of the experience that affected me the most. It's not hard to see Islam's appeal, for the simple authenticity and community inherent in it.

My guide, truly the consummate professional, refrained from outright trying to convert me to Islam, but I would not be surprised if she had people walking out of the mosque after a tour with her considering it. Every explanation made so much sense...women are covered because this helps men see them as equals...men not being distracted this way by the physical aspects of a woman, they can now focus on who she is.... Interestingly, apparently even Islam has found the need to substantiate its authenticity in a "scientific" way, my guide mentioning to me a couple of scientific facts which were revealed to Mohammad and which he would have had no way of knowing in the 7th century that were subsequently placed in the Quran. I also noticed a pamphlet on the scientific basis of Islam in the library on my way out...one of many free pamphlets visitors are encouraged to take with them.

All in all, the mosque visit provided a nice counterbalance to some of the negative impressions/thoughts I have had over the years about Middle Eastern and Afghan culture, much of which I have attributed to the religion that is so interwoven with it.

Getting lost

I was bored on Friday night and needed to get out of the hotel, so I figured I would start driving and see where I ended up. Bahrain is not that big of a place, so one really can't get too far off the beaten path or really get "lost" since there are so many signs around to point you back to Manama or the airport or some other area I could find on my pocket map. My general plan was to head south since I had not seen the lower 80% of the island at all.

I figured there wasn't much down there in the south, but all the same I was a little surprised by the emptiness of it. For some reason, I kind of pictured Bahrain as a small, but crowded country. Not so, small it may be, but it has plenty of wide open space in the southern 2/3 of the country. I distractedly noticed the pock-marked landscape while driving (Did I mention that this country, even out in the "hinterland" is very well lit by electric lights everywhere?). I didn't pay much attention to them at the time, being more concerned with watching the road and keeping some idea of my general whereabouts, but learned today at the Bahrain National Museum that those little hills are actually thousands upon thousands of burial mounds...people having inhabited this place for at least 7000 years.

The southern half of the island is very empty and industrial. I passed a military air base and some refineries as I drove down a beautiful smooth highway with virtually no cars on either side. The highway went nearly to the southern tip of the island. From what I could tell nothing much was down there, other than some resort housing on man-made islands. The development or lack thereof in the south didn't really seem to justify such a nice road, but maybe the road comes before development. At any rate, I headed back to Manama without having seen much on the way down. On the way back, I managed to take a few detours into little neighborhoods, with streets barely wide enough for my small car. It was not the most comfortable feeling - driving down those streets at night, not knowing the way out of the maze, and wishing I had a co-pilot with me, but it all worked out fine. Situations like that where I'm making every effort to avoid other human beings and being as inconspicuous (if that's possible for someone like me, even at night and in a car) as possible, really make me think what a shame it is that there's such distrust among people. My job keeps me well informed as to threat levels in various places, so I'm fully cognizant of what can happen (though Bahrain is very safe), and I guess that knowledge, while keeping you on your toes, also makes it tougher to trust anyone, especially at night in an unknown place. And so you end up making every effort to avoid everyone. Too bad really.

I made it back to the hotel around 1 am after being gone a couple of hours. The next day I got up and headed over to the Bahrain National Museum, which was interesting for the digital overhead imagery of the entire country of Bahrain painted on the floor of the main room. Not being sure where I had really gone the night before, I was able to walk along my route and figure out where I had been, which for someone like me that loves maps and exploration seemed serendipitous. The museum itself was certainly worth a visit, though not a long one.

After leaving, I tried to get directions to a gas station, which failed as usual. I am utterly unable to receive directions from people in foreign countries. In Latin America I thought this was due to a deficiency in my Spanish, but even when the person speaks passable English, I just can't seem to upload directions properly. No one gives you street names though...it's just turn here, turn there...doesn't work for me. I need directions laid out for me in a linear fashion - descriptions each step of the way. You don't get that often in other cultures it seems. Not sure if this is due to some different way of conceptualizing things on their part or something simpler, but at any rate, when I'm overseas I never get where I'm going by following my interpretation of the directions I just received.

And so I ended up just asking him to point me in the direction and give me a rough distance...forget about how to get there...just give me a direction and distance. This didn't work that well, and I ended up driving around for quite awhile before I found a gas station; by the time I found one I really was scared I was going to run out of gas...the gas light having been on since I got to the southern part of the island the night before. I'll mention that gas stations in Bahrain are few and far between, and the one station that I knew of was closed due to the pumps being broken. When have you ever been to a gas station in the States where all the pumps were broken? Thankfully, at least the gas was cheap...under $1 a gallon.

Intersections

It took me nearly an hour to drive home from work here in Manama last night. It's a trip that usually takes me 10 minutes. The chaos was partly caused by a road being closed, and exacerbated by people continually blocking intersections. In fact, blocking intersections is very common here. It's not uncommon at all for a car to sit blocking an intersection, holding up lanes of traffic from the other side, while a policeman or two sit impassively on the corner observing it all, yet doing nothing. The police just can't be bothered to do anything to help the situation. As I sat in traffic observing all of this, I got to thinking about Bahrain and its culture. Here you have a country that imports most of its labor from South Asia and the Philippines, to the point where non-nationals outnumber nationals.

Taking that thought a little further, we Americans are nothing more than imported labor as well. Driving or walking around, no one here really pays me any mind. I'm just another imported worker from abroad. What's my role? I'm here to help prevent this country and some of the other Gulf States from being overrun by the Persian hordes. When we think of Iran, many of us might think that only the US, Israel, and a few European countries take the Iranian threat seriously. Not so - the Gulf States, to include Bahrain, are quite wary of Iran as well, and I have no doubt that fact helps explain our presence here. The United States might not export a lot of tangible things these days other than agricultural goods, but we still do export our culture, and more relevant to my situation, war. (We'll call it 'security'.)

So if you're Bahrain, at the national level the decision has been made that allowing in all these foreigners is desirable, since with their presence you don't have to do those jobs yourself. As for the jobs you do have to fill with citizens, such as police officers (presumably), if the people filling those positions aren't able to take the initiative and make much of a positive contribution, you'll just live with the results and chalk up the resulting inefficiencies to culture.

Inshallah.

Bahrain

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I luckily got the opportunity to come over here to Bahrain. I wasn't supposed to be on the list of those that came over, but it worked out for me, which I was glad for since I'm always happy to see a new place, wherever it may be. With the trip only being about three weeks, I can more or less consider this "deployment" a Middle Eastern vacation as much as anything else, since I'm well accommodated out in town and will have a few days off to see what sights there are.

Bahrain has a fairly large US military presence...one that seems to be growing. The headquarters for the Navy's Fifth Fleet is here, and the Marines have a couple of units here as well. The country itself is primarily located on one big island, the northeastern part of which is dominated by the city Manama, the capital, where we live and work. The whole country has maybe 1,000,000 folks and occupies some 620 sq km, making it about 3.5 times the size of Washington DC.

I have to say it's a little odd walking around freely in a Middle Eastern country. This is the first time I've really been "out" in the Middle East despite all the time I've spent in this region. I'm getting used to it, and the ever-present English on the signs makes getting around easy. Most of the workers that you might interact with in gas stations, stores, hotels, or restaurants are foreigners who speak English, often Indians and Filipinos. Like Dubai, Bahrain does not have enough local workers to support its economy, so it brings them in from abroad in large numbers - of those million people that live here about half are non-nationals. The strength of the Bahraini economy (supposedly the "freest" in terms of government regulation, taxes, etc. in the Middle East) has resulted in quite a few skyscrapers in downtown Bahrain and malls are pretty common. The buildings and roads are not much different from what one would see in an American city, though I'd be hard pressed to remember a place that had more construction cranes working on buildings in various stages of development. I can't believe that a market exists for all these buildings at this time, but when/if another economic boom hits the world I'm sure they will be ready for it. Walking through the souk (market) today we saw all the same fake goods you could expect to see in markets around the world. The watches are "Genuine good fakes!" according to one of the stall owners we spoke to briefly today.

The liberal attitude that prevails here results in a lot Arabs (often Saudis crossing the causeway that connects Bahrain to the mainland) coming to Bahrain on the weekends to explore the vices. We checked out a few bars last night and found them to be largely devoid of females, but everyone seemed friendly enough. I wanted to check out the clubs but none of my friends were interested. The majority of the folks out in the bars are dressed Western-style, but you'll see the odd traditional dress. The local women are more often than not covered up more or less completely in their black robes, though the foreign women dress how they want. Interesting to see such different styles side by side for both the men and women, but they co-exist peacefully enough it appears.

The little base where we work is quite nice. Much like the oddness I feel of being in public in a Middle Eastern country, the base has some strange aspects to it as well that I'm still getting used to. The base almost feels like a college campus since there are few roads and you walk everywhere on little tree-lined boulevards. You must park outside, walk through the security checkpoint and then head for your building. It just doesn't feel anything like a military base, but everything is very convenient and I have no complaints at all.

As for the driving, the cars are pretty similar to what we see back home. Not surprisingly, you'll see more small cars and compacts here than anything else, and few SUVs or trucks, but the cars by and large are the same makes and models we have back home. The driving is pretty tame and police do pull people over. The roads are wide and well cared for, so nothing is really interesting about the driving other than the traffic lights, which show yellow before green to give drivers a heads-up. I like that system - it kind of feels like a race with lights like that...gives you that countdown almost. They've got the lights set with a pretty good cushion of time between red on one side and green on the other - a fact that the drivers seem to be well aware of, since they will run red-lights blatantly. And they do let their women drive here. When a car is stopped on a merge ramp holding up traffic trying to get onto the road, don't be surprised to see a black-cloaked figure behind the wheel. Got to be tough to merge when one is wearing a mask with a small slit to look out of.

We drove out along the causeway today until we got to the entry point for Saudi Arabia, at which point we had no choice but to turn around. What we could see of Saudi in the distance just looked empty and brown as you might expect. I'll mention here that they are planning to build one that goes the opposite direction to Qatar, by the way, which will be the longest bridge in the world when/if it gets completed.

I think that's about all I've got for now. I'll be here another 10 days or so.

Brazil wrap up

Of the 25 days or so I was traveling, I spent about 18 of those days in Brazil. Brazil was the "objective" of the trip from the beginning, since I had never been there and had spent a couple of months studying the language in preparation.

One of the high points was definitely the food. To keep my costs down, I tended to eat a large buffet breakfast (usually included with the hotel), a light lunch, and then a very large and often expensive dinner. (Did I just say something about keeping costs down...? that mantra did not apply to dinner.) The churrascarias (Brazilian steakhouses) were great. A big slab of red meat (often with a fried egg when I'm ordering), with potatoes, rice, bread, and a Brahma is about as a good a dinner as I can imagine.

When we think of things being sold by the kilo, as Americans we probably don't think of food, but rather of other South American homegrown and produced products and exports. Well, if I was not eating dinner at a churrascaria, then I was eating at a restaurant selling buffet food by the kilo. At first I thought there must be some way to game the program when they are selling by the kilo in order to come out full on the cheap, but after a bit of thought I concluded that the weight of food is pretty well correlated with its caloric content. All the kilo restaurants I went to served a wide variety of food, and it was all tasty. Sushi, all different kinds of meats, salad bars, pastas, pizza, desserts, whatever...they had it, and it was good.

I did not find those restaurants to be inexpensive though, for the most part, but then I did not find much of anything to be inexpensive in Brazil. Without any knowledge about relative international currency valuations, I am forced to conclude that the Brazilian real is overvalued. The fact that the real has nearly doubled in value relative to the US dollar just since 2004 might lead one to believe that the real is overvalued...and if that does not do it, then the prices should. A gallon of gas was around $6, a Hyundai Tucson about 50K, my average dinner out around $25, 2.5-star hotels were running me about $85 in Brasilia, $10 for a movie , and clothing and consumer goods...well, I will just saw some high prices like $150 brand polos and 2.5K for laptops. Airline tickets were affordable though...not much more than the buses really, and certainly much cheaper per mile traveled than buses, which were not really cheap for the nicer, air-conditioned ones that I took.

A wide variety of fruits are available in S. America, and Brazil is no exception. I mostly stuck to the mango and pineapple (seems hard to get good mango Stateside...) but many other fruits were available, though their names elude me. The one berry that I have not forgotten is the guarana, which is a stimulating little berry from the Amazon region that the Brazilians drink by the can in soda form. The two varieties of guarana soda were Kuat (made by Coca-Cola) and Antarctica. I preferred the Antarctica, but both were good and both would give you the pickup you wanted. I am not sure why the guarana soda has not been imported to the States (though guarana extract is used in energy drinks).

Brazil is certainly the most modern of the S. American nations. Highways, clean and efficient public transport, lots of international banks, modern airports and hotels, clean food, educated, friendly, and polite people. Brazil is not the United States, but they have some things in common for sure. The size of the two countries and the richness of their lands are the two most obvious things in common, but other commonalities exist: Brazil has lots of shopping centers in the bigger cities, the people eat lots of meat and large portions, and the people themselves are from all over. (For example, Sao Paolo has the world's largest community of Japanese outside Japan and nearly half the population has mixed white/black heritage). It is not hard to imagine Brazil's stature on the world scale continuing to increase...they have a good thing going on down there.

Girls. Can't ignore that subject if we're talking about Brazil. They are cute. No question. The girls come in all varieties, but the common denominator is their nice backsides. If we accept the theory that the girls in Brazil accentuate the parts of their bodies that they think will appeal to the local men, then Brazilian men must value the rear end the way American guys like breasts...or perhaps more likely, the girls are just naturally a little more robust in size...but then it's a little ridiculous to generalize about populations as large and diverse as Brazil's and the US's. Personally, well...never mind what I personally like - let's just say the girls are attractive, with especially round and enticing bodies on them. Any further commentary on that subject I will keep to myself for now.

As for security, I didn't have any issues, but I tended to stay in fairly nice parts of town and was not out late often, if ever. The only time during the entire trip I drank a significant amount and was out late was in Paraty, but in small towns you can get away with being out and about and not in full command of your faculties. I tried to blend in as best I could, but it's not at all easy for me and I often felt a little exposed. I tried to dress in as non-descript a manner as possible (I would say that if black is the absence of color, then I am the 'black' of style.), which comes naturally for me and seemed to work well enough.

What my trip to Brazil certainly did more than anything else was give me a desire to go back. I liked Brazil a bit more than Colombia, simply for the incredible things available to see and do, though Colombia was about half the price of Brazil and I could communicate much better, so the two rate about even for me as far as which I go back and see more of. You know, for some reason, I kind of had it in my mind that I was going to "do" Brazil during this trip...but clearly a country as large and culturally rich as Brazil can't be explored in a few weeks. I did not get to the northeast of the country at all...and the NE is considered by some to be the "real" Brazil, with its African influenced culture. I also did not get to see the south, which has much more of a European influence than other parts Brazil, and has much to offer. I will get to those places in due time though. I have no doubt of that.

Trip Map

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Traveling alone

All in all, a great trip. Traveling alone always leads to a bit of anxiety as the trip is kicking off, but in the end it always proves to be the way to go if you are interested in meeting people from all over the place, as I am. Being on your own simply forces you to talk to people and make the effort to meet people. When you are with someone else, you just wouldn't do that as much. And I was lucky...I met good people every step of the way, starting with the old man on the flight to Medellin that introduced me to his friend's daughter, who then took me out drinking with her friends the next day. At the next stop in Leticia I met the two British girls on the walk from airport to the town. I met a number of interesting folks on the boat ride down the Amazon, had an amazing coincidental encounter with someone on Brasilia, had some friends visit in Rio, spent a couple nights with a friend of a friend in Rio, crashed an Intrepid tour group for a night out in Paraty, and then met a great person in SP. Where you go is important no doubt, but the reason I like traveling in South America so much is that I can actually communicate with the people...in their language, albeit in a rudimentary way in Brazil, but I will improve on that for the next time down there...and there will be a next time....

"Conociendo el mundo a traves de las personas"

Return Trip

I nearly had some issues with the return trip, having hoped a friend would take me to the airport, but that did not end up working out, so I had to pay the $55 cab fare to get to the airport outside of Sao Paolo. It was a long way out there. Apparently the excellent SP metro will reach the Guarulhos Airport by 2014, which will certainly make things much easier and cheaper on everyone using the airport. The cab driver was entertaining though, and spoke in a way that I could understand 90% of what he was saying. He mentioned that SP passed NYC last year for the world's biggest flotilla of taxis - 35,000 of them.

At any rate, I arrived one hour before the first of three SP to Miami flights. The early one had the most seats open, and with me on a standby ticket I wanted to enhance my chances in every way possible. Luckily, I was able to pass the 100+ people standing in line, get checked in quickly (having almost no luggage really helps sometimes), get through security, get to the gate, and have them give me a seat...in business class, which on a flight like this is really first class.

The business class seat allowed me to recline fully flat...but I still didn't sleep at all on the 9-hour flight. I'm not really sure why, as it was comfortable enough - guess I did not feel like sleeping. The flight and connecting flight were uneventful and I got back to Tampa and checked into a hotel by midday.

Flying back tonight

My flight back is tonight from Sao Paolo to Miami and then on to Tampa. Well, at least I hope it is tonight. I am flying on a standby ticket, so hopefully I will get on...if not, I will have to pay for a flight leaving early tomorrow morning since I have to be at work Tuesday morning.

As for Sao Paolo, it has been good. If I were going to live in this country, this is where I would live, as it is generally safe and clean (depending where you are of course), has a nice climate thanks to the elevation, and simply dominates Brazil financially, economically, and culturally. It may not be on the ocean, but the beaches are not far. It is indeed a huge city and confusing to navigate for someone unfamiliar, but most areas I have seen seem safe enough, and the people I have met have been friendly. SP has loads and loads of shopping centers and plenty of museums, of which I have checked out a couple (the museums and the "shoppings" as they are called in local parlance, and believe me, words ending in 'ing have no place in the Portuguese language...so you can take that wherever you want when considering American cultural influence...)

We will see what happens at the airport tonight.

Sao Paolo city

The trip over here to SP today was pretty easy. 5.5 hour bus ride from Paraty, followed by a quick trip on the metro, which was modern, easy to use, clean, and full of folks giving up their seats for old people and women with children. I was really quite impressed from the get-go with the general atmosphere and the people of this city. As for SP itself, it certainly is massive (and populous...SP is the biggest city, in terms of population of the city proper, I have ever visited), but nice fresh air with the city sitting on a plateau a couple thousand feet up amidst gently rolling hills. I saw very little on a little walk I took to and around Parque Ibirapuera, which I guess you might call SP´s version of Central Park, but the rows and clumps of tall buildings can be seen from far away...and there are many such clumps. If Rio is San Francisco on steroids with Miami's climate, then Sao Paolo is Los Angeles with the climate and sprawl but with NYC's tall buildings. I would not want to try to learn my way around this place, though the streets are indeed laid out on grids...many, many such grids pointed every which direction. Driving in Rio did not phase me a bit. Driving in Sao Paolo is out of the question, not for the other drivers, as Brazilian driving is really quite civilized, but simply for the fact that the city is a giant maze.

Sao Paolo

Tomorrow I am off to Sao Paolo. The six-hour bus ride should get me there around 3. I had felt a bit intimidated by the city before, but now I am excited to get there and see what it looks like (though I am glad I didn´t start my trip there...having a little more background with the language and culture before arriving I think will help).

I think some of my apprehensiveness toward visiting SP is residual from years of listen to the great Brazilian metal band, Sepultura. To give you an idea, Sepultura had songs and albums titled ¨Chaos AD¨, ¨Murder¨, ¨Dead Embryonic Cells¨, and ¨Beneath the Remains¨, so as you might imagine, some of the things they were talking about were a little morbid...and the city of Sao Paolo was mentioned in some of those songs. I remember one song in particular dealing with the Carandiru prison massacre of 1992. Carandiru has since been closed, but it was located in Sao Paolo. At any rate, the city is supposedly much safer now than it was in the 1990s when Sepultura was putting out their best stuff and I was listening.

It has been awhile since I have been to one of the world´s truly great cities for the first time (with the exception of Rio the other day), so I am pretty pumped about it. Being a business-oriented town, the nicer hotels have deals on the weekends, so I took advantage and booked a nice place. I have always known this about myself, but this trip has helped me verbalize it to myself...whether it´s a 4-star hotel (like where I spent 3 days in Rio) or a shared dormitory (like where I am now), what matters to me is value. I´m happy if I perceive myself to be getting a good deal, regardless of what the accommodation is actually like. The value is what matters.

Paraty bay trip

Paraty turned out to be a nice little town and good place to get away from the larger cities. I took a boat trip out to visit a couple of secluded beaches, one of which was complete with an amazing little cottage that looked like it must have been dropped out of the sky into that place, since the beach back up to steep hills covered in jungle with no roads or trails leading up. The only way in or out was by boat.

And so I spent the afternoon swimming around little coves and talking with the 8 or so other travelers on the boat. The boat could have easily held 100 people, so you can imagine that we are in the low season. The water this time of year was just the right temperature, although the air temp could have been better. It was a little chilly at about 70 degrees all day with no sun and intermittent rain. All in all though, it was well worth doing. Would be a great thing to do with a girlfriend.

As for other activities in the town, I went out to dinner last night with a group of Argentines that I was introduced to from a guy I met on the bus ride over here. Can't say I found them to be very friendly or inclusive, but I'm accustomed to that from people from Argentina. One interesting thing did happen though.... I had the hiccups for a few minutes, when one of the girls I was eating with said something to the effect of, "Ok, that's enough; we need to get rid of those hiccups." She then proceeded to take my hand in her hands and briefly caress my forearm up to my elbow. For those brief seconds she was touching me, I was staring at her with what must have been a quizzical look on my face, thinking maybe I had misinterpreted some Spanish somewhere along the line. At any rate, she quickly stopped, said that I should be all better now, and then looked at me with an expectant look on her face. And sure enough, no more hiccups. Not sure how that works, but I for one have never been one to underestimate the power of a woman's touch, so I guess I'm not too surprised she somehow produced in me a physiological change enough to rid me of the hiccups.

Paraty

Finally left Rio today and took a 5 hour bus ride over here to Paraty, which lies conveniently halfway between Rio and Sao Paolo (since my next and final stop is Sao Paolo). It turned out to be a good day to spend on a bus since it rained all day. And I was lucky enough to have a young guy from Argentina sit next to me on the bus, so we talked about quite a few things and he helped me get set up here in a hostel with some people he knows. We are going to head out for dinner in a little while.

At any rate, Paraty is a clean little historic town, which seems to be besieged with backpackers who have come here to find refuge from the chaos and expense of Rio and Sao Paolo (if anyone actually goes to SP other than to fly in or out...seems like most other backpackers want nothing to do with SP, but I, for one, am looking forward to seeing it). Besides finding comfort in a place full of other backpackers, people come here mainly to do outdoor activities like see waterfalls, take boat trips to the many islands nearby, hike, ride horses, and visit the beaches, which apparently are great. I came here on the recommendation of my friend Viktor, who I met on the boat to Manaus, and like what I see so far, although my earlier on my recon walk around town my bare lower legs were feeling something I did not think I would feel again on this trip...mosquitoes. I will only be here till Friday morning, which I think will be enough.

I will probably try to take a boat trip to the islands tomorrow if the weather is nice. If not, well, I will probably try to do that anyway.

Brazilian Portuguese

I spent 6 weeks or so before coming down here studying Portuguese. By studying, I mean I listened to lessons on podcasts for a 20 minutes a day a few days a week when I had time. But those lessons gave me a basic understanding of the pronunciation, and coupled with the fact that I speak Spanish pretty well for a gringo, enable me to get around pretty well since much of the vocab in Spanish and Portuguese is the same. I do not have any trouble communicating what I want to people here, using the Portuguese I know and defaulting to Spanish when I do not know (the people understand Spanish pretty well). The trouble is understanding what they come back to me with. When the r´s are pronounced like h´s (sometimes), the d´s like j´s, the t´s like ch´s (sometimes), m´s on the end of words are not pronounced at all really, but cause you to elongate the preceding vowel with a nasally noise, and the j´s like zhay, it can get tough sometimes. Buying a plane ticket at a travel agency on the airline Webjet, I was a little confused when the young lady, while presumably referring to my flight, said something to the effect of vabe ZHAY shay. After I asked her to repeat herself a couple of times I finally figured out she was saying Webjet. Do not get me wrong, the language sounds fantastic (especially when spoken with that kind of flair from a young woman), but the richness of sound does not make for easy comprehension or imitation. And no, even the travel agency people do not always speak English. You can find some English around, but not a lot. Brazilian schools seem to do about as well at actually teaching students to communicate in foreign languages as schools in the US do.

Car rental Rio

I could not help myself but to rent a car. They say not to do it, but really, the traffic in Rio and the driving are not that bad compared to what I have seen elsewhere, so I got a car on Sunday and drove myself and my friends around the area. Sunday turned out to be the perfect day to rent a car since the roads were fairly empty, though it is a little tougher to get around the beach areas since the main roads are partically closed and turned into areas to walk, sell things, rollerblade, etc. The people in the beach area are very sporty for sure, as there are soccer games every night on the beach, a good number of surfers, and plenty of runners and bike riders.

The drivers obey the laws pretty well around Rio. I was a little surprised by that, but it is really quite civilized, though there is a certain amount of creating your own lane that goes on when the lanes are not marked well (or even if they are), and no one really signals to change lanes, but then I drive kind of like that anyway so I am not bothered by it. The cars are smaller than what we are used to, but not tiny. For a cheap flex-fuel car running on the cheapest of the many different types of gas avaiable, it ran me about US$6 a gallon to put fuel in it. When taking people to the airport very early in the morning I took full advantage of the law allowing drivers to run red-lights after 10pm...something to do about avoiding car-jacking and all. Haha, but I really have not felt unsafe anywhere I have been around the city. Granted, I did not get off at the exit when I saw Cidade de Deus (a famous favela) and have generally stayed in the nicest areas, but so far everything has been orderly and safe. Even the bus station that I visited today to get information for my trip tomorrow was not too bad.

We tried to drive up Corcovado to see the Christ Redeemer statue, but were prevented from getting to the top by the police, despite my best efforts at playing the dumb tourist who is on his last day in town and always wanted to see it, etc. As it turned out, the guy that told me the road to the top was closed for private cars was right. The large amounts of rain that have hit the area have taken their toll on that particular road, so the only way to the top is by authorized bus, which of course costs about US$30 to take up there with entry fee included. Since the statue is under repair right now from a lightning strike (ironic...?) and covered in scaffolding, I did not mind too much that we would not make it up to the top.

Still in Rio

I guess this makes my sixth day here in town. Not often I stay somewhere this long, but then this is a great place and I do not fly home for several more days so why not? Six days has been enough time to get to know the city pretty well. I will leave here tomorrow to go to a little beach town called Paraty for a couple of days before going to Sao Paolo for a couple of days and then flying home.

I have been staying in various places around Copacabana the whole time. One night in a three star hotel, three nights in a 4-star, and now two nights in a crappy hostel, so I have experienced a little of everything when it comes to accommodation around this area...kind of like one of the first phrases I learned in Portuguese eating dinner on the boat on the Amazon...um pouco de todo...a little of everything. Copacabana is a bit cheaper and more affordable than Ipanema Beach, so that is why I have been staying here. It is not quite as nice, but both areas are fine for me.

As for touristic stuff...did the National History Museum today, which was pretty good with a large collections of cannons and old carriages. The museum was notable for the level of security inside...with the museum being mostly empty, I had a security guard watching me fairly intently every step of the way while I was there, which was a little disconcerting. My favorite exhibit was probably the painting of one of the last monarchs, whose face on the painting had been scratched up by a sword by some republican hoping for a...republic. What did I learn historically about Brazil...? A few pieces of information: the first capital of Brazil was Salvodar, followed by Rio, and now Brasilia, Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery (1888 or thereabouts), 40% of all slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere went to Brazil, and Brazil separated peacefully from Portugal when a Portuguese prince living there decided to do so.

I also took the trolley ride up into Santa Theresa neighborhood, which was really cool. I wasn't able to get off and explore the neighborhood, but the ride itself is fun, going up and down the hill, with all the tourists having such a good time, and people hanging off the sides nearly getting taken out by trees as we pass them.

Both Copacabana and Ipanema are great, though the waves are much more powerful than I thought. But I really do not mind it too much. They have not been too crowded any of the times I have been, though there are many vendors around to bother you. Well, me they bother, other people not so much. I met a friend yesterday and we rode bikes yesterday around both beaches and over to Sugarloaf mountain, which we then climbed up to the shorter peak, which I did not realize you could do, having paid the R$44 to take the cable car up the first time I visited a few days ago.

Rio de Janeiro

Rio is like San Francisco on steroids, with Miami`s climate

The above was how a friend described this place to me. And having had a brief look at it today, I have to say I like what I see so far. The flight in gave me a great panoramic view of the city since we landed at the domestic flights airport, which is right there in town. The plane overflew the city from the north, flew right between Sugarloaf and Cristo Redentor mountains, over Copacabana, made a turn over the bay and then right in to the airport.

More later

Brasilia

I managed to get a nice deal on a great hotel on Sunday in Brasilia...Brasilia being much busier during the week than on the weekends. Cheap accommodation is really not to be found though...you are only going to get a ¨deal¨ if you are willing to spend a fair amount and stay somewhere nice. When I decided to stay Monday night I was told the price would be double, so I promptly moved out into a place that was not nearly as nice, but cost the same price R$130 (about $75).

As for Brasilia itself...the area of tourist interest (the Esplanada where the government ministries, cathedral, theater, etc. are located) is made up of very wide boulevards separated by vast open spaces with few trees to provide respite from the sun which shone every day I was there. Walking around the area during the day, on sidewalks devoid of shade, which were placed immediately next to the road full of cars screaming by, is not the most peaceful place to enjoy the ¨modern¨ architecture of the buildings and scultures about. As for the design of the buildings themselves and the layout of the city, I suppose it is all interesting as a study of what someone (namely, the designer of all this, Oscar Niemeyer) 60 years ago thought the future would look like, but it is not a lot of fun to actually be there and be on foot. The Esplanada itself has the many different government ministry buildings, which are all identical looking towers of non-descript design. Nearby are the more interesting buildings like the theater, cathedral, and branches of government. Some of those buildings do have a space-age look to them...but only if you think of the 60´s as the space age.

The city was designed for cars...or you might say it was designed for its 50th anniversary party, because the huge open spaces between the boulevards on the Esplanada proved to be the perfect place to put thousands of young people celebrating the anniversary. The 50 anniversary was celebrated by seemingly every young person anywhere near Brasilia, as walking around the area in the early evening during the fiesta I saw hordes of young people, but very few older folks, with the exception of the omnipresent security and medical forces on hand. Being around that many potential, well, assailants, did not make me overly comfortable since my physical appearance limits my ability to blend in, but staying amongst the crowds and close the the police posts worked out well for me. Several different concers were being put on at different stages around the area, and the shows were pretty entertaining, though it was a little hard to enjoy myself when I was spending most of my attention on watching my back and getting out of the way when a group of young people would come running toward me (which I was told later was because they had likely ripped a bag away from someone). I cannot say I saw another person out there that I could clearly identify as being not from S. America.

At any rate, the cleanup must have been fun, as the day-long party had already left enough garbage by early evening in some areas to nearly completely cover the ground...it was almost as if a landfill had had a volcanic eruption nearby. In the end, Brasilia was notable mostly for the strangeness of it and its unfriendliness to people on foot, though I do not regret going there at all, as it was enjoyable simply for the uniqueness of it.

Dom Bosco encounter

"You came in with the breeze
On Sunday Morning" No Doubt "Sunday Morning"

I had only planned to stay an afternoon in Brasilia before heading out on the night but to Belo Horizante...but it did not end up working out that way...

I basically wanted to do Brasilia the same way I did Managua a few years ago...spend an afternoon there, maybe hire a cab to drive me around for awhile, and then get out of town right away since neither city has many tourist attractions...much of Managua´s tourist attractions, if there ever were any, being destroyed by the 1972 earthquake, and Brasilia, well, I suppose it has never really had any...the city being artificially designed and ´opened for business´ exactly 50 years ago yesterday. I just wanted to see Brasilia to see it I guess you might say.

Anyway, I arrived on a Sunday and the town was completely dead. Well, let me explain a bit about the city. Brasilia was designed primarily by a single individual, Oscar Niemeyer, to be the capital of Brazil. The design was done in the 1950`s and construction completed in 1960. The idea was to put the capital in Brazil`s vast interior as a way of hopefully opening up the heartland of this country, since most people live near the coast. Rio had been the previous capital. The city is not the first in history to have been designed to be the capital of a large nation (DC and Canberra come to mind), but it is unique in how it was layed out. From overhead the city looks like an airplane, or so they say. The body or axis of the plane is the `Esplanada` where the governments buildings, bus stations, and things of interest to tourists are located. The `wings` of the plane are the residential sections, north and south. The city is divided up into sectors...banks are in one place, hotels in others (near the banks), residential in other zones, government buildings in another area, etc. I will also mention now that the city is very difficult to get around in on foot. Not only are things spread out, but the city is divided up by lots of little highway-type roads, with on and off ramps, and the city generally lacks sidewalks.

So at any rate, it was Sunday and not surprisingly, the town center where I found myself after getting off the $1 bus ride from the airport was deserted except for the obligatory rough-looking inviduals. When it comes to safety, less means less. Less people, less safety...though I have generally found Brazil to have quite a lot of security around. At any rate, I lugged by bag around for a little while, stopping at the Santuario Dom Bosco, a church whose interior is bathed in blue light streaming through the large stained glass windows along the walls.

While I was at the Sanctuary a woman walked in...the same woman I had sat next to at the airport bus stop a couple of hours before and spoken to briefly in a confused broken conversation with many hand gestures. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her, but getting over my initial shock (and doubts...I can be a little paranoid about my personal security, but I ended up quickly deciding this was a legitimate coincidence...and it had been me that approached and talked to her at the airport, not the other way around) I waved her on over and we sat and chatted for awhile. She had come to the Sanctuary to pray for her mother who was having surgery the next day at the hospital across the way.

The young woman told me about Brasilia´s 50th anniversary party coming up in a couple of days, and so...well, whatever my motivations were for staying, the fact is I decided I would go ahead and stay around in Brasilia. And besides, I took the trouble to fly to Brasilia, may as well spend some time there...it is not like I will ever come back most likely. And the idea of traveling on an overnight bus to see Belo Horizante (a town I had no real reason to go to anyway) was not all that appealing to begin with so it was an easy decision. Being in Brasilia a couple of days might give me a better chance at finding a cheap flight straight to Rio, taking the bus completely out of the equation (better).

Hammocks

I bought my hammock for 30 reals in Tabatinga, which was probably not the best price, but the lady was so nice and enthusiastic that I decided not to really bargain with her. And the hammock turned out to be a pretty good one compared to some of what I saw, although the orange dye did come off a bit, staining my clothes (came off later in the wash though). At any rate, after spending 5 of 7 days sleeping in hammocks, I learned a couple of things. For one, make sure you get a hammock big enough for you. Being a little bigger than normal, I got a good size hammock and that worked well. Second, hang it as flat as you can. If you can string out the ends far away and not leave much, if any, slack in the ropes connected the hammock to whatever it is hanging on, so much the better. The flatter it is, the flatter you sleep. And lastly, sleeping diagonally, if you can, across the hammock will flatten it and help you sleep. Lastly, if you are sleeping next to other people, as I was, it's probably best to get your hammock above theirs if possible. Being higher not only makes the hammock lie flatter, but also helps you stay out of their way when they are moving in and out of the area.

All in all, I actually slept fairly well most of those nights, and very well during naps.

Manaus

Most of my fellow travelers and I managed to find a pretty decent hotel for the price about a km from the port in Manaus up by the Amazon Theater. By this point, we had become a pretty tight group and we not in any hurry to say goodbye to each other. I will mention that two of these traverlers were 18-year olds from London travelling together, which is something I cannot imagine having done at that age...but then these two had been traveling with their respective families all of their lives.

Manaus was a little dirty and grungy, but not that bad. It was a Saturday and most of the town was occupied with shopping at the many stores and sidewalk kiosks. Prices in Brazil, by the way, are high. While I realize the real has appreciated ridiculously against the dollar since 2006, I am really not sure how Brazilians afford to live here. I paid the equivalent of $4.50 for a what amounted to a small milkshake at one of the ice cream shops that sold ice cream by weight (much like many of the restaurant buffets that charge by kilo). I have to conclude the real is overvalued, but then currency valuations are not my field.

I did take a brief tour to the Amazon Theater, which was interesting for the artwork on the cupola. I had hoped to actually be able to attend a show of some kind since it was Saturday, but the next show was not until the following week. A show not being an option, I opted instead for a final night out with my fellow backpackers (who had decided to do on the following day what most people who come to Manaus do, take a jungle trip), where we all got our fill of caiprinha, Brazil's most notable alcoholic beverage. I did not care too much for it, but some of the others did, so drink them we did. The next morning it was an early awakening for an early three-hour flight down to see Brazil capital, Brasilia.

Tabatinga to Manaus, conclusion

At one point around 8pm one night we came to an abrupt halt, which did not seem to be normal behavior for a ship. We quickly found out we were stuck. I asked the bartender how long we would be stuck for, and he shrugged as if to say, “who knows”. He didn’t seem too worried about it, so we sat back and watched as the boat handlers attempted to shake her free somehow. The most surprising part of the episode came when they shined the spotlight on the shore and the forest was only a hundred meters or so away on either side. Being accustomed to seeing the boat in the middle of a very large river, it was strange to be in such a tight channel and see the forest right there in front of us in the dark. At any rate, after about 20 minutes they shook her free somehow, and off we went.

After about 66 hours on board we arrived in Manaus, right on time at 6 am. All in all, a very pleasant trip down the river, made even better by the great company of the other travelers. The only negative for the whole three days came at the very end, when one of my fellow travelers awoke to find his netbook gone. He had a four digit lock that connected into the computer, but somehow the thief had managed to open it in the night and abscond with it. We quickly got together to try to figure out a way to retrieve it before everyone disembarked, but there was really no way, and we had no good suspects as it really could have been any one of 50 people nearby. Using that laptop in front of the other travelers during the journey was probably not the best idea, but then, you buy things to use them, not to be owned by them and watch them every moment of every day. I have had enough things stolen from me over the years that I tend to let my worry over my things bother me a little more than a probably should, which is something that I mitigate by not bringing much of anything of value with me on trips, although this trip (and especially this blog) would be better if I had my laptop with me, as wi-fi is fairly ubiquitous these days, even down here.

Tabatinga to Manaus, part 2

The boat itself was a little smaller than I had expected...under 50 meters end to end, with three decks; the were passengers crowded in on the lower two decks, the top deck being reserved for the bar area, with plenty of open space to stand around up there and watch the river go by. I would guess that the boat had roughly 200 passengers on board at its max, though that number would diminish over time as more passengers got off than got on after the first couple of stops just after Tabatinga. With the help of his GPS, the French-Canadian figured out that the boat was making about 26km/hour on average. Given the current of the Rio Solimoes (the Amazon proper does not actually start until Manaus) at about 5km/hour, the boat goes roughly 20km/hour. Not too bad, but would not want to be on board when she’s going upriver.

The boat staff kept things pretty clean, and the bathrooms and showers proved to be enough for everyone. Even the food was pretty good, with a good balance of vegetables, meats, and grains. We were served three meals a day. The cooks would blow a whistle and everyone would line up outside the dining room to eat. Roughly 20 persons would enter at a time to eat, eating in the style of a family with plates of food being passed around to each other. The meals proved to be a good time, and the whole eating experience generated a nice feeling of camaraderie among everyone. I can only imagine what the local travelers were thinking as we (the eight backpackers) practiced bad Portuguese amongst ourselves and sometimes with the local travelers (always with Viktor’s help).

My time on board was spent napping, reading, planning the rest of my trip, conversing with the other backpackers and some of the other Spanish or English speaking travelers, and drinking, playing cards upstairs at the bar, and just looking at the beautiful scenery. The first couple of days had intermittent rain, but the last day was just perfect with huge billowing clouds towering over the thin green line of rain forest along the banks of the muddy brown river. With such uniform flat ground and such a clear day, we were able to take in the huge horizon with the big river and bigger sky, with the layers and layers of clouds visible for many miles outward. The river itself varied in width from several kilometers to several hundred meters I would reckon. When the river got narrow, this was often the result of us passing by one of the great many islands, large and small in the river. At different points where the river would link back in to another part of the river after we passed a large island, the immensity of the river would really strike you. It almost seemed more like an inland lake than any kind of a river.

We did not see much other boat traffic out on the river, and saw no wildlife to speak of on the river itself…and by the way, mosquitoes were thankfully not a problem, though at night playing cards under the lights we would occasionally get ambushed by moths, crickets and other insects.

Tabatinga to Manaus, part 1

I had read and heard good things about the boat ride down the Rio Solimões from Tabatinga to Manaus, and I was not disappointed in the end. The first day started with a ride on the back of a motorbike over to Tabatinga from Leticia. Easy enough. Upon getting there I began looking for other English speaking travelers, as I was not looking forward to spending the boat ride not being able to communicate with anyone else, and had considered just paying the much higher price for a private cabin if there were not going to be other backpackers sleeping on the deck (in hammocks) to help watch our stuff.

I paid the 170 reals (about $100) for my ticket for the three day trip, and then quickly located a number of other travelers: two English couples, and three other individuals traveling alone. The other lone travelers were a 23 year-old French Canadian engineering student, a 25 year-old Israeli recently done with his military obligation, and a 40 year-old Hungarian who had lived, worked, and married in England and Brazil and spoke five languages, including Portuguese, which would be handy for all of us.

We had to go through a good bit of security in order to get on the boat, though most of it seemed to be for show, though you'd think they would take it seriously given the huge amount of cocaine that comes into Brazil from Colombia, the majority of which must come in by river. The drug sniffing dog appeared to be a little…well, unprofessional would be the word I suppose. The effort was there, but most of his effort was used running around happily amongst the bags, not so much in actually stopping to smell anything. At any rate, we all passed that test and others (the Israeli had his entire backpack dumped and searched and the pat down I received was by far the most physical attention I have gotten in awhile) and we were allowed on board. Once on board, I strung up my hammock with the three other lone travelers, the four of us trying not to let anyone get between us by not leaving too much space between our hammocks, while also not crowding ourselves too much. It took me a little while to get my knots the way I wanted, but surprisingly they ended up holding for all three days. (I’m an adherent to the ‘if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot’ philosophy of knot tying.)

The boat departed around the advertised time of noon, and off we went. At first we were not too crowded on the deck and I was looking forward to a pleasant trip with plenty of space. However, the boat quickly made a couple of stops and the deck became full of hammocks strung all over the place. People began stringing their hammocks between ours, which was the moment when Viktor the Hungarian became very useful and I began learning some Portuguese as he asked and then directed them to put their hammocks elsewhere, at least on the outside of our group of four. We still ended up with hammocks all over, but we were able to keep together, and by stringing some hammocks higher than others we were able to keep some space between us, though only just enough.

Day trip Puerto Narin

Since the boat trip from Tabatinga was leaving a day later than I had hoped, I ended up with an extra day in Leticia, which I used to take a rather expensive day trip. I didn't sound like it was going to be anything too exciting, but I needed something to do so I did it. The main attraction of the trip was a visit to the little river town of Puerto Narin, about 75 km up the river from Leticia. We would also make stops in a native village and look for pink dolphins in the river.

The tour group had about 20 tourists, all of whom spoke Spanish as a first language. In some areas down here, you still don't see a lot of English-speaking tourists, and thus many tours do not come with English-speaking guides. Which is cause or effect I do not know. At any rate, if you are staying on the "gringo trail" you will see plenty of English-speaking backpackers, but you will not really see any other type of traveler. I am trying to kind of straddle the worlds of the backpacker and the traveler who is willing to spend a little more and do more nice things. For that reason, I brought clothes that can be worn in any circumstance and not look too out of place (or draw too much attention for that matter), like standards slacks and shirts with collars. This day trip was definitely for the more high-end traveler, as all the other guests were staying at the two nicest hotels in town.

We headed off in a fast boat and paused briefly in the middle of the river where the borders of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru meet. Our first stop was at a kind of jungle lodge along the banks of the river, where we saw some pretty large trees, which were amazing to some, but not so amazing compared to the mighty Sequoias. We received some lectures and commentary about ecotourism and so forth, but most of us were too distracted by the heat and mosquitoes to pay the guides much mind. Like any river, we learned that the level of the Amazon River varies greatly from season to season and can vary by as much as 10 to 15 meters, April being a time when the river is fairly high and getting higher.

Our next stop was at a village called Macedonia, which is inhabited strictly by native people. A dance was performed by the old women of the tribe, which served to embarrass me quite a bit, though the other travelers seemed to get a kick out of it. Something about a group of older women dressing up in native clothes (of the type I am sure they do not wear all the time, if ever, except for tourists), walking around, chanting, banging on drums and making a bunch of noise - all for the viewing pleasure of a bunch of people who have nothing in common with them...I don't know...it just bothered me. I resented my own presence there and the fact of people being made out to be an exhibit. I often feel the same way when I am a tourist walking around amongst poverty, although I have never felt that way when I have worked on poor countries. It kind of felt like being in a zoo...not to compare the native people to animals, but my connection with them was about as much as I would have with an animal in a zoo. I did greatly enjoy a conversation I had with a young man as he drew a temporary tattoo on my right arm. We talked briefly about his military service with the Colombian military (natives not being required to serve like other Colombian youth) and life in the village. He had a lot of positive things to say about his time with the nearby Jungle Battalion.

We finally got out to Puerto Narin about 2pm. Puerto Narin is known for being a quaint little town, where the people make an environmentally sound existence by not having hardly any motor vehicles, turning off the power at night, and picking up and sorting their garbage. I am not sure if all of this was done to attract tourists or if they have been behaving this way for awhile out of necessity, but whatever the case may be, the town was indeed probably the cleanest I have seen in Latin America, and the view from the tower they'd constructed was quite striking.

Our return down the river was spent looking for pink dolphins (yes, they are pink, and they are one of 8 species of dolphin that lives in fresh water), which we finally found as we were nearing Leticia. We were able to get close enough to them to be able to hear them exhale as they returned to the surface. After 30 minutes of moving around to get the best views of the dolphins, we headed back home, and I headed back to my hotel for a dip in the pool.

Tabatinga

Finally, I made it to Brazil today, though I did not stay there long and write this entry from Colombia. Leticia, Colombia and Tabatinga, Brazil are basically twin cities straddling the border. No customs or passport control exists at the border itself. If one wants to leave Colombia, simply walk over to the airport and get an exit stamp and then get your entry stamp at the police station in Tabatinga within 24 hours. If you want to head back to Leticia to stay the night, by all means do so...can´t imagine anyone would ask for your passport to see when you were stamped out. And so this is what I did...walked to the airport for my exit and stamp and then hired a woman on a motorbike to run me over to to Tabatinga for my entry stamp. I´d been a little nervous about entry into Brazil as apparently sometimes a yellow fever certificate is required for entry from Colombia and Peru, but they didn´t bother me about it. I´m not sure what I would have done if they had, as the certificate is supposed to be dated 10 days prior it´s use. At any rate, after a few questions answered in my very very bad Portuguese/Spanish mix I got my entry stamp and got back on the back of the little moto to be head off to the port to find when the next boat to Manaus was leaving.

My driver had no clue where the port was, and let me off at the first water we saw. After managing to get a vague direction and distance of the port facility with the larger boats, we were off again. Four more times asking directions and we were there. I´d been told there was a Tuesday boat this week, but it was not to be so...the next boat does not leave until Wednesday, so I´ll hang another day in Leticia, which is not what I wanted but oh well. Apparently, the boats are every Wednesday and Saturday, with some Tuesdays mixed in. They say we´ll be there very early Saturday moring after a trip of some 65 hours. Hopefully, that turns out to be the case, as I think I will get everything out of floating down the river in a hammock that I´m gonna get within the couple days. 25 reals ($13) for a decent hammock and we were back in Leticia in about an hour for a 15,000 Colombian Pesos ($8) taxi fare. Conveniently for these two towns and those moving back and forth between them like me, reals and COP are more or less equal if you get rid of some zeroes on the COP and more or less mutually accepted.

As for first impressions of Brazil...it´s tough to say after an hour on the back of a motorbike, but the people I talked to over there in Spanish and with the few phrases of Portuguese I have mastered seemed friendly enough. Motorbike riders and passengers have to have helmets in both Leticia and Tabatinga (which was a bit of a surprise), and I will mention that the motorbike is by far the most common means of transport here, but the Brazilian side has its motor-taxi drivers wear marked vests as well. The passport control as the police station was certainly more official and professional that what I encountered at the airport in Leticia. Tabatinga is certainly a rougher looking town than Leticia, much more spread out and pedestrian-unfriendly, but I knew coming in that Tabatinga was not much to see. Quite a heavy military presence exists in both towns, which I find to be comforting.

Selva

The flight down to Leticia on the border with Brazil was easy enough. Upon arrival I learned that there was in fact a boat going down the Amazon to Manaus the following day, which was exactly what I wanted and had planned for. However, Leticia seemed like a nice enough place, and I didn´t really want to go through it without stopping...and so I decided to stay for a couple of days and do a jungle tour. I´d been thinking about a jungle tour, leaving from Manaus, anyway - seemed to make more sense to do the tour in Colombia where I would have a much easier time understanding the langauge.

Against my better judgment, I strongly considered buying a tour from a guy off the street. He was Peruvian, and I suppose I have a soft spot in my heart for Peruvians, and seemed trustworthy enough. But after some consultation with a couple of English girls I ran into, I decided to go ahead and go with an agency. We decided to do two days and two nights in the jungle nearby, just outside Leticia.

The following morning we got up reasonably early and were sent on a taxi outside of town to meet up with our guides, a native couple. The woman was quite a bit older than the man, so at first I wasn´t quite sure of their relationship until I asked. They turned out to be married with a child, but only recently married, as she´d had 10 other children with other men.

They gave me a pair of nearly knee-high rubber boots to wear. The boots were a couple of sized too big, but nevertheless turned out to be the perfect thing for sloshing around in the jungle. The rubber boots made me thankful I didn´t bring my military issue "jungle boots", which would have been useless in the jungle after they got waterlogged within minutes. The girls I was with insisted on wearing their hiking boots and not paying the $1/day rental for the rubber boots - a decision I am sure they came to regret, as they had to repeatedly take them off and put them back on to get through flooded trails.

Not surprisingly, the native woman was extremely strong and capable. We found a basket along the trail, which caused her to immediately take off the modern-style backpack she´d been using to lug our food and stuff around in, throw the backpack in the basket and then place the basket strap on her forehead to carry the basket...carrying all the weight on that strap with her neck supporting all of it. When I tried it later, I learned it´s not too bad so long as you lean into it...makes it tougher to enjoy the scenery as you´re bound to be looking into the ground with your head pointed at the earth, but the technique works.

Two days in the jungle and we didn´t really get a lot of rain, which I was thankful for, though some of the "leaves" in the jungle are about 10 feet long and would make perfect umbrellas and shelters. Lots of different shades of green exist in the jungle, some of which seemed to almost shine in the absence of light. We didn´t see a lot of animals either, which was very disappointing to the girls, though not so much to me. I figure the animals worth seeing are going to be tough to see, and knowing I am not putting that much effort into getting a glimpse, I´m not disappointed when I don´t get one. At any rate, we did see quite a few tarantulas, some crickets as big as your hand, butterflies big and small, some pretty interesting looking beetles, a few monkeys, frogs of all sizes, and various insects, including one that was so thin as to appear construced by needles.

More impressive than what we saw were the sounds: the woodpecker pounding away, the gentle rustle of a bat as it swoops by you in the night, the different birdcalls, and the constant cacophony of the insects.

The form of wildlife we had the most contact with was undoubtedly the mosquito. Thanks to those little guys, I would say I´ve made my blood donation for the year. They are indeed ever-present in the jungle, though not so bad when you´re moving. I am not sure why I bought insect repellant; I never have found that stuff to be very useful, and this time was no different. The best option was to keep well covered by clothing. It may be a bit hotter that way, but so long as the clothing is somewhat loose fitting, you can still get a little air inside to cool you down, and the mosquitoes have less surface to extract their ration.

We slept two nights out in the jungle - one night in "la selva selva" in the words of our hosts. In other words, really in the jungle, in a little hut we helped construct out of small trees chopped down with the machete, ropes, vines, and plastic sheeting for a roof. Both nights we were in hammocks, which I was a little apprehensive of since as I have gotten older I have gotten more particular with my sleeping environment. I didn´t really have any problems sleeping on either night though, at least not after spent 20 minutes or so killing the mosquitoes that had somehow infiltrated through my net.

The second night we slept in the "maloca" that the native couple and some family members inhabit. The maloca was basically a circular house of radius 10 meters or thereabouts, with a high roof of perhaps 15 meters, shaped more or less like a cone, missing have the roof on once side. The malocas are apparently traditional homes, though the other habitations we saw in the area were like modern buildings with right angles. We shared the maloca with Hermalinda and Galiano, as well as one of Hermalinda´s daughters (14 years old, recently married, and pregnant) and her husband. The maloca was built next to a fast moving stream, but luckily there was a little lagoon where we could get in to escape the heat and mosquitoes without having to worry about being carried downstream. It's amazing how much tougher it is to stay afloat in water that fresh and pure with no salt in it at all.

As for the native couple, Hermalinda and Galiano, they were from two different native tribes in the region. They both spoke their native language as well as Spanish. They did not speak each other`s language, and only one of Hermalinda´s children spoke the traditional language, so one could almost say that Spanish is their first language since it is pretty much all they use. Being able to communicate with native peoples´ in their more or less `native` language was cool, though my ability to understand Galiano was lacking at times, not least of all when his mouth was full of coca leaf powder, which was something he used with regularity. I had to turn down the opportunity to use the coca powder, which was concocted by drying coca leaf, mashing it up, and mixing it with ash to dilute it. It undoubtedly provides a bit of a stimulant, much like what I saw the natives chewing in Peru. I never did get the story on why the men in this region chose to take it in powder form and go through all the effort of preparing it, rather than just chewing the leaves like is down in Peru and Bolivia. I did allow Galiano to use his blowpipe to blow a little tobacco up my nostrils straight into my brain, though I can´t profess to have gotten much out of that other than a few sneezes.

Hermanlinda had chosen to stay living in the jungle, rather than move to the city, and make her living by serving as a tour guide from time to time when the work was available, which did not appear to be often as many of the activities we did seem to have been invented and done on the fly. At any rate, props for staying in the jungles as jungle-living in the jungle is certainly not easy. We had some good moments swimming/bathing in the stream, fishing, and relaxing...but the ever-present humidity and mosquitoes make it much less idyllic than it might otherwise be. It was a great experience though.