April 16 – Going to Manaus

We were in a lovely hotel last night but it was a major miss in terms of location.  If we were staying for the day it would have been fine.  As it was, it was an hour away from the airport so we had to be up a little after 5:00 for our ride.

On the way we did pass what looked to be a bicycle rally of some sort.  We started seeing random cyclists along the right side of the freeway, and the numbers grew and grew.  At one point there was a cluster of several hundred…then the numbers started getting fewer and fewer.  But it seemed to go on for miles.  There were still a few scattered ones by the time we turned off for the airport.

Harold helped us with our check-in.  One interesting item…as we walked up to security the lady there directed us to the right while there was a small line to the left.  As it happens, us old people get to go through the security line for pregnant ladies, people in wheelchairs, people with canes, etc.  We are officially “Old”.  Same thing when boarding the plane.  There was a separate line for those with boarding “issues” to board first. 

Brunch on our first fight.

We flew to Sao Paulo and did a quick (and very long) dash to catch our next plane.  Got there in time but the connection was a bit tight. 

The last part of the flight there were a lot of large rivers that we were flying over.  And there were large areas of water that didn’t appear to be rivers but more like standing lakes.  

Then, we hit a really big river.  This was finally the Amazon River...or so we thought.  It was likely the very large Rio Negro that flows into the Amazon near Manaus. 

Photos of Manaus from the air.

We were picked up and driven to our hotel.  It didn’t look like there was much close to see so we stayed in the hotel and had dinner at the restaurant there.  Mary worked the entire free time trying to catch up on photos and the blog.  There has been so much to see and there is a really large volume of photos to go through on some days. 

Just after we went to bed a thunderstorm hit.  It only lasted maybe an hour, but it was rather noisy and dumped lots of rain.  We are officially in a rainforest.