On The Waterfront

From Rio to Manaus by plane, and we're immediately chaperoned into a cab by Armstrong ("Yes, like Neil. I was born in 1969...") who gives us his card ("What you wanna do in Manaus? I can arrange!") and waves us off.

The Ocara

When we arrive at the Ocara hostel, a frazzled Fabio has been up for almost three days, nursemaiding a party of drunken, tattooed Corinthian football fans who had blown in from Sao Paulo for a match.

Badges... !? A souvenir, courtesy of the boys from Sao Paulo

They were canny really, just daft. Shades of our Toon Army European adventures, but a couple of notches up the testosterone meter, and a taste of what Engerland can expect next month, in this very town! Should be interesting...

Shabby Road

At first glance, Manaus is a sprawling, busy, traffic-filled port town with smelly, running sewers.

On closer inspection it is a sprawling, busy, traffic-filled port town with smelly, running sewers and an impressive neo-classical opera house built on a pretty town square, complete with church and colonial fountain.

Toward the water front is a maze of shops and stalls selling the usual clothes, electronics, homeware, mobile phones, etc, then there are proper fish, meat and fresh produce market halls.

On the water are the cruise boats, the reason we are here, and one of which will be our home for six days as we journey up the Amazon to Tabatinga, before crossing to Columbia. First, we must wait four days before anchors aweigh...

Most people, including Fabio, aren't giving the World Cup much of a chance here.

Bad politics, poverty and corruption are a constant grumble with every Brazilian we've spent time with. A lot of money has been spent on stadia, little on lasting infrastructure.

Despite the abundance of yellow and green paraphernalia on sale, people aren't in the carnival atmosphere just yet. Sounds familiar.

It's coming...

An influx of overheated foreign football fans into an already excitable country, known to have an undercurrent of danger and lots of cheap lager (hopefully lubricating the tricky language barrier in a friendly direction)... well, that's what the locals are worried about. I think it'll be brilliant and can't wait for it to begin, 'though I'll be safely in Columbia or Bolivia by then.


Fabio was a nice Brazilian guy, overworking himself to provide a nice hostel for us all. Articulate, opinionated and good fun, he'd spent 10 years living in London, experiencing Bermondsey ("Polish guy stabbed"), Stepney Green ("heroin addicts") and Blackhorse Road ("Mark Duggan shot") and wishes he was back there. He really must dislike South America.

Normal service.

Travelling out of town by chaotic bus, we passed shambling shanties built along dirty canals, crisscrossed by littered, greasy rivers and busy motorways, before reaching the beautiful Bosque Cienca nature reserve.

We saw manatees, giant otters, crocodiles, giant turtles, lamprey and another (White-billed? Must check...) toucan.

Orphans.

The turtle's heed

Disused tennis court...?

Many of the animals, such as the orphaned manatees and dis-lodged otters, would be reintroduced to the wild.

On court.

And a big fella, too...

While I know some people disagree with these animal 'prisons', the conditions were good and at least they had the promise of a ticket to a better life, unlike some of the people whose homes we passed.

Kim, with turtles' heed behind

Later, Kim and I had a couple of drinks out in town, said hello to the local working girls and heard some street music while watching a mad dancer or two, which was fun, but we were glad when we finally got the boat out of Manaus.

Bar Caldeira, where the action wasn't

Another hostel, another possible stowaway cat. This is Morena (Brunette in Portuguese), an expensive-looking (Burmese?) street cat..