Ola!

Brazil was an experience.

Buses were key to the trip - both as the mode of transportation to get to and from Brazil, but also as an adventure in the city trying to get around. In total, we spend over 50 hours on buses including three nights! Only a couple of breakdowns and one big mud puddle that made the Wildcat Trail look like a highway. In Brazil, they like their buses chilled to freezer temperature which for a Canadian living in a tropical country for too long is way too cold to function.

Boa Vista, capital of Roraima province, was a stepping stone on our way to Manaus, capital of Brazil's largest province, Amazonas. Highlights would be a buffet restaurant with make your own sundaes and air conditioned bookstore that allowed us to purchase a Portugese-English dictionary and hang out for several hours, learning words and checking emails. [Note: they were called Nobel librarie which was too perfect - I missed my Grandma's Nobel family reunion that weekend, but long lost distance relatives created a bookstore chain that took care of me]

Manaus. To see it, you would never believe you were in a city in the Amazon Rainforest. All the hustle and bustle, tall buildings and modern stores of a North American city with areas of European charm. Our hostel was close to the famous operahouse Teatro Amazonas an d it was our favourite place to be, either inside on tour or listening to a free concert by a so-so American choir... or at night, basking in its light, drinking Heineken, eating specialty desserts, listening to live Spanish music... or in day, sitting on a bench in its square, enjoying the sights, writing postcards.

The theatre was completed in 1896. It took twenty years to build with material being brought in from Europe and shipped down the Amazon River. Even the wooden setas were made of Amazon rainforest tree wood that was shipped to Europe to be processed and brought back. It is magnificent. Beautiful paintings on the ceilings and walls, detailed wood floors in the ballroom, stunning light fixtures. A true gem. An interesting history lesson on the money and process, plus some pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Theatre

The Amazon River starts in Peru and is made up of a series of rivers, and is divided into several parts like the Upper Amazon (history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River#Origins_of_the_river). Two such rivers that make up the Amazon are the Rio Negro and Rio Solimões. They join at a place called Meeting of the Waters - the incredible place where two distinct bodies of water meet, but don't mix. One is black, slow, small, cold and high mineral content while the other is brown, fast, large, warm and high sediment content. It's like mixing water and oil only not to that extreme, but you can see the distinct line where they meet. At the harbour before seeing this incredible phenomenon, we saw a fish with lungs and gills!!

Took some time before our bus left Manaus to hang out at... a mall! with... a movie theatre! Watched "Get Smart" in English with Portugese subtitles in air conditioned goodness with all our bags spread out around us.

Fruits were delicious. The pizza was good. The Heineken was cheap. We loved Brazil!

Before we left Lethem, a beautiful double rainbow showed itself by the mountains. Red dirt roads, green green fields, grey mountains, blue skies, bright rainbow - quite sight!!

Let's just say that we survived the bus ride back to Georgetown... twenty hours later... barely... and I can't wait to go back to Brazil!!