I got up early, showered and splashed through puddles to the 504 bus stop. At the Venezuelan Consulate I was told to return to the city centre and deposit 1,743.40 Cruzados ($10 US dollars at the current rate of exchange) in the Venezuelan Consulate bank account at the Banco de Brasil and then return with the receipt.
This I did and was told to return, yet again, at 15:00 hrs. to pick up my passport! I went back to the Rio Branco Hotel where the cleaner was servicing our room. I sat downstairs and chatted with the other travellers.
Back in my room I discovered that the cleaner had taken my YHA sheet sleeping bag away with the dirty linen. I had fun trying to explain this to the hotel staff who couldn’t speak any English or me any Portuguese. They told me that it would come back from the laundry later.
I dodged the rain running to a nearby restaurant for lunch and then met Ken, an Australian who wanted a visa for Venezuela, to return to the Venezuelan Consulate. At last I was able to collect my passport complete with a 60-day visa.
We went back on the 504 bus. I knew every inch of the route now! Next, I went to change up some money, with a bit of difficulty locating the entrance to the W. Ayoub Office, camouflaged as it is within the narrow jewellery store.
The next stop was the VARIG office where I bought a ticket for a flight from Manaus to Boa Vista for tomorrow at 16:45 hrs. This set me back 11,748.00 Cruzados. I walked back munching cashew nuts, bought a new watch strap and met a German girl who was looking for a book to read on her trip to Benjamin Constant by boat.
The town of Benjamin Constant is located by the confluence of the Javary River and the Amazon, close to the border with Peru. However, there are no customs or immigration facilities in Benjamin Constant, and entry and exit formalities take place at Tabatinga on the opposite bank of the Amazon. There are no roads into Benjamin Constant and the only access is by river boat. By fast boat it is about 31 hours from Manaus (about 7 days by slow boat).
I had started reading “Sea of Death” by a Brazilian author. It is a Brazilian modernist novel written by Jorge Amado. Amado wrote the novel in response to his first arrest for "being a communist". The novel follows the lives of poor fishermen around Bahia, and their relationship with the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, especially the sea goddess Iemanjá.
I found it a bit boring, so I gave it to the German girl and I was delighted when she insisted on giving me $5 US dollars for it. Mike came back after visiting the INPA Research Centre and we read and wrote while listening to the radio.
I started reading “The Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac. The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The basis for the novel's semi-fictional accounts are events occurring years after the events of On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac's introduction to Buddhism in the mid-1950s.
We went out for our evening meal and met the other gringos from our hotel at the bar on the corner. Together we all went to the good fish restaurant at 497 Joaquim Nabuco. We had a good meal and chatted over Antarctica beers.
A German girl related her miserable experience of trekking in Peru, nearly perishing with exposure. An English lad told of his exploits on a trip which started as a London to Nairobi cycling trip. They got passage on a yacht from Africa to Brazil and these two blokes were continuing their epic cycle in South America.
I agreed to take some photographic films back to London for them as their last ones had been lost in the post. Beers led to caipurinhas and by the end of the night (midnight) I was well merry!
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