In the Middle of the Amazon

I’m in the middle of the Amazon!  Well, along with two million other people in the capital of the region: Manaus.  Not only this, but I arrived on time and with all of my luggage.  Just to recap – I’ve now flown Boston to Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta to Bogota to Sao Paolo to Manaus.  I have been very busy these last few days so I have some catching up to do with the writing, so I’ll try to do that over the next couple of entries.

Tamar, my Manaus-ian friend from graduate school, is getting married here on the 26^th of December, which was all the reason I needed to take my first trip to Brazil.  Tamar is the kind of person who, in the midst of wedding planning meetings, would shoot off and pick you up at the airport.  This an analogy with considerable factual grounding.  She and her sister Nina brought me to their house, a lovely place in the northern suburbs, where I met her mother as well and had a tasty lunch.  She arranged a ride for me to my hotel which was interesting in that the driver spoke no English and I just about no Portuguese.  It was a little tricky to find, but ultimately we ended up in a situation where I was convinced it was half a block up the road and he was not, but I had no way of saying, "I'm pretty sure it's half a block that way."  Fortunately the word for "wait" is just about the same in Spanish, so I ran up the road, verified the hostel location, and all was right in world.

The hostel is pretty typical.  Somewhat musty but spacious rooms, thinly separated by my fan is loud enough to compensate for that.  My clock tells me it is 87.5 degrees in my room.  That feels about right, but with the fan going I don't mind.  The guy working the front desk is buried in the computer, largely disinterested in the goings on.  Several people are lounging in the heat watching Brazilian TV or reading books on assorted couches in a lobby area.  There is a nice open area on the roof where one could sit and look at parts of the city.  Tomorrow I'll be stocking up on a bit of food to do some of my own cooking in the kitchen here.

Last night I switched three time zones in a five hour flight to Sao Paolo where I had to wait four hours to fly three-ish hours back (and two time zones) to Manaus (think flying New York to Chicago via San Francisco) so overall I did not get a lot of sleep.  I'm going to try to make up for that now.