We laid in late while it pissed down with rain outside. We had the sweet coffee and cream cracker breakfast supplied by the Rio Branco Hotel, while watching cartoons on television. The kids from the hotel sat mesmerised in front of the TV screen.
Mike moved into a single room and lit up a jasmine joss stick, courtesy of the Hare Krishnas, to get rid of the damp smell. I dumped my bags in his new room and finally managed to retrieve my sheet sleeping bag and T-shirt from the over-zealous laundry who had scooped them up with our dirty sheets.
Mike told me that his venture into South America was to help recover from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a horrible accident at his college in America. Apparently too many students packed into the elevator for a photograph and the excess weight caused the elevator car to drop. A student tried to jump out as it unexpectedly went down and was scissored in half, blood spraying and legs dropping into the car and all over the other students.
We then walked down to the city centre where we browsed around some of the foreign import shops which stocked American sweets, foodstuffs and toiletries. We took lunch in the vegetarian restaurant on Avenida 7 de Setembro, which was excellent as usual.
I dropped a note in at the British Consulate telling them that I had got my visa for Venezuela and thanking them for their help in this. Back at the hotel I met Richard, a Welshman who was also taking the same flight to Boa Vista, and we walked down to the bus stop together. Mike came along to see us off.
I cost 35Cz Cruzados for a trip on a battered green bus which took a while to get to the airport. Manaus International Airport – Eduardo Gomes (IATA: MAO, ICAO: SBEG) is the airport serving Manaus, Brazil. It is named after Brazilian politician and military figure Air Marshal Eduardo Gomes (1896–1981). Opened in 1976, the International Airport of Manaus is the most important in the state of Amazonas and is one of the busiest in Brazil. It has the strategic function of integrating the huge Amazon region with the rest of the country and the cities within it.
As Manaus is a Duty-Free Zone we had to pass through Customs. We had to push a button on a randomised machine. If a red light came on you were searched but a green light allowed you to proceed unmolested.
In the air-conditioned Departure Lounge I chatted to Richard and drank Guaraná which contains high levels of caffeine, as much as four times that of coffee beans, as well as other psychoactive stimulants (including saponins and tannins) associated with improved cognitive performance. And numerous research papers explore its potential in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, as an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antidepressant, intestinal regulator and even an aphrodisiac.
We boarded the plane at 16:30 hrs. and had a snack and a beer whilst flying through pregnant rain clouds over an endless vista of trees spreading in all directions. The jungle was dissected occasionally by a winding river or dirt road.
Trees gave way to green plains and swampy lakes as we began our descent into Boa Vista. It was 30ºC and humid and the flat landscape made the sky with it’s cloud sculptures look huge. We left the airport and decided to walk towards the centre of town and were soon picked up by a pickup truck which ran us into the centre.
We initially walked the wrong way along Rua Benjamin Constant because of a mistake on the South America on a Shoestring guidebook map of the town. We didn’t realise that the road was numbered starting from number 1 on each side of the huge central roundabout.
This meant that we went to 591W (west) and found nothing before trudging across town to 591E (east) where we found the Lua Nova Hotel by the Venezuelan Consulate. It was full up but we were now sweating profusely so we stayed for a beer and talked to some Danish people, the first of several groups of people we met who described the Venezuelan Consul as an arsehole!
Many people were having problems getting a visa and were having to stay longer than expected in Boa Vista. The Danes, three boys and a girl, told us that they were sleeping on the floor out back so we asked if we could too.
We were told “yes”, so we ordered a meal and a succession of beers. We were joined by a gold-mining diver who operated the huge “vacuum cleaners” that sucked up alluvial gravel which was gold bearing.
We conversed simply with sign-language and simple Portuguese as the empty beer bottles lined up. He was a friendly fellow but only contributed 100 Cz Cruzados to our bill, mumbling something about being a bit short at the moment.
We brushed the cobwebs and bugs off of some damp polystyrene sheets to make insulating mats to sleep on on the restaurant floor. The front gates were closed but several card schools (playing cards) that were in session continued all night long.
I awoke to dash to the bog (toilet) a couple of times with the shits (diarrhoea) and a tiny black kitten snuggled up on my pillow against my neck.
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