Manaus

After our wonderful trip to the Amazon, we were back in Manaus. We crashed at a hotel near the Teatros Amazonas (the best thing going for Manaus). We joined forces for the evening with a gentleman, Bryan (from Seattle), that we met while at the Uakari lodge. We were able to haggle a good taxi price to the hotel and we all chowed down an enormous pizza.

The following morning, we took a tour of the Teatros Amazonas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Theatre). It was absolutely beautiful and was built during the rubber boom during the late 1800's. Many of the europeans living in Manaus at the time wanted a place to be entertained therefore, they built the theater. Everything used to construct the theater, except for the wood, was imported from Europe. Even though the wood was actually from the Amazon, it was exported to Europe for carving and cutting and then shipped back for construction. Crazy!! We were also fortunate enough to take a tour while they were practicing an Opera. It was fun to see the rehearsal. Once a year, they sponser an Opera festival. Unfortunately, we weren't in town when they performed.

We hit the port area and docks in the afternoon. It was pretty nice to watch the people getting on and off the river boats. The docks we saw are able to change up to 14 meters with the change of the water level between the wet and dry seasons.

We then headed out to the National Institute of Amazonian Research. It was founded to hel research the Amazonian Region and it's ecology, zoology, and botany. We thought it would be a little more interesting, instead, it appeared it was under some major reconstruction work. We did get to see some manatees, a river otter, a bunch of turtles, and some caimen. We were even provided a tour guide. She was about ten years old and recited everything off about the exhibits. She did very well, and spoke it all in Portugeuse. So, really, we have no idea what she said, but we nodded our heads a lot.

That evening, we headed back to the airport to sleep and await our 3:00 a.m. departure. I have never seen and airport so busy between the hours of 11:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. I didn't sleep at all. Kevin pulled out his pad, once again, and slept just a bit more than I did. OUr plane was about an hour late by the time we left. Which, was a problem since we only had 40 minutes to catch our connecting flight. We were assured that the plane would wait for us in Brasilia. Sure enough, it waited for us, even though we arrived at the time our second plane was supposed to depart. Somehow, we made it to Rio, ON TIME. We're really not sure how that happened, but were very glad that we didn't make Adriany (our Rio hostess) have to wait for us!