Dois Passagem Para Manaus

So the adventue has begun. Elizabeth and I left Guyana on a flight from Chedi Jagen International airport on wednesday, July 28th. With a last wave goodbye to the country that has taught us so much and been our home for the past two years we boarded the plane and arrived in Boa Vista. With a little help from a friendly Brazilian we checked into our "quaint" hotel room. After some much needed rest Wednesday, Thursday morning we went out to explore.


(Eliz enjoying our room)

Using our Lonley Planit Guide book we managed to ask in very bad Portugese "Onde fica onibus qual que Manaus" Where is the bus that goes to Manaus? We got sent on a walk with the belief that the bus station would be right up the road. After a ten minute walk and no bus station in sight we asked for directions. The people we asked spoke no English and told us to come with them, luckily he was a taxi driver and gave us a free ride to the very far away bus station. I am so glad we didn't walk all that way in the Brazilian heat.




(stopped for a beer along the way)


(on our way)

Once we got to the bus station again with the bad Portugese " Dois Passagem Para Manaua" "Two tickets to Manaus" but good enough, we got our tickets and later that night we boarded the bus and right ontime at 6:00pm the bus left. The bus ride was scheduled to last about 12 hours. Everything was going quite well untill around 8:00am alredy 14 hours on the bus but an easy 14 hours if that is possible. The bus stopped and with some confusion because everyone was speaking very quickly in Portugese we realize that the bus has broken down. Everyone got out of the bus and all our luggage was taken off the bus and set on the side of the road...now we wait and surprisingly enough another bus comes along but only has room for 4, a third bus stops "Women with children first" they say, well since we don´t have children we didn´t make it on that one, and then ten minutes later another bus.... no spots available... but sure enough not much more than an hour after we stopped a bus came by and had room for everyone and once again we were on our way.




On the bus that picked us up there was a someone who spoke very good English and he helped us to get a taxi to the hotel we wanted. Manaus is a very big city with a population the size of the entire country of Guyana. This is a town for me (Elizabeth) sandwiches everywhere, any kind you can imagine and in every restarant. The people here are incredibly nice, and let us practice our very limited and probably poorly pronounced Portuguese on them. They smile and sometimes laugh in response but luckily we always managed to get through. Sophie turned 27 while we were here, we went out on Saturday night, the night before her Birthday and had a blast. The club scene in Brazil is definitely something to experience. We ran into a few Project Trust Volunteers who had been here for about 3 weeks and also met some fun locals. The Brazilians here love to dance and have a good time. We are getting ready to board our ship to Puerto Velho later this afternoon, and we are excited for the next adventure but going to miss this city. Good memories. Til next time. Ciao!