Jan 23
Today we finally arrived in Manaus, Brazil after around three days of heading up the Amazon River. The trip up the Amazon was pretty amazing. The water was so different than the ocean; flat, brown and in some places the river seemed only a couple of hundred feet wide. Unfortunately, I was kinda busy with classes, work, planning our first Christian service (more on that later) etc… and so didn’t have too much time to just hang out on the decks (which are covered with bugs) but the good news is that we are headed out the exact same way towards the end of the week and I plan on spending some time relaxing on the decks then.
We arrived in port around 6 or 7 this morning. I was up pretty early to meet some friends for breakfast and plan our day. The heat and humidity has been noticeable, but honestly my summers on the Eastern Shore have seemed to prepare me well. Our group of 11 left the ship around 9am and headed off to the city without an English map or any real idea what we would find.
Sidetrack: One of my favorite things to do is to get completely lost in a foreign location and just see where I end up. One of my gripes with “Americans” and their idea of tourism is that it doesn’t leave any room or time to truly explore and discover. If you'’re safe, smart and travel with a group of people I highly recommend leaving early in the morning, wandering, finding adventure and enjoying the life and vibrancies that a new location offers.
Our rough plan was to find one of the historic churches, the opera house and the fish market. As soon as we stepped off the pier, I felt very much like a foreigner, mainly because everyone spoke Portuguese (which none of my friends or I can speak) and no one, literally no one we met, spoke English well enough to get any bit of useful information from. Except for a few of the less touristy countries in the Caribbean that I had traveled too, I had never experienced what it was like to not be able to communicate with people. With that being said, we went to a modern mall later in the day that had a McDonalds and a Subway, and Taylor Swift was playing on the radio in our taxi. I guess you can never really get too far from home.
We wandered around the streets right next to the pier for a while and found this big, historic Catholic Church. We found one of the church greeters (or whatever the Catholic equivalent is) and after pointing to my watch, using the miniscule amount of Spanish I knew, and using lots of hand motions, I found out (at least I think) that the next service was at 11am and so we decided to wander on and maybe come back later. We found a bank where some of us withdrew the Brazilian currency, “reales” is close to the phonetic spelling, and then made it to a big street market next to the bank. We walked around there for about an hour and then ended up at the opera house. The opera house was really impressive from the outside so we took lots of pictures and walked around the perimeter. We, or at least I, was under the impression that the opera house would be closed on Sundays, so we didn’t try to go inside but instead found another historic Catholic Church and went inside there. At this point it was already 11am, and we were a mile or so from the other church, but this church didn’t have a service until noon. Anyways, we took some pictures of the church and of the fountain square outside. We noticed that there were a lot of people that seemed to be going in and out of the opera house, and so we decided to go to the door. Next thing we knew, we were seated in the upper balcony of this magnificently ornate, world famous opera house. We managed to randomly time our entrance to coincide with the opening of a symphony orchestra, which was apparently putting on a free concert (at least we didn’t pay). We stayed for about an hour and listened to the awesome classical music. I had never heard an orchestra of that caliber and was really blown away by both the beauty of the opera house and the sound that came from the performers.
After leaving the opera house, we walk toward the general direction of the waterfront hoping to find the fish market for some lunch. After a few hours of walking, wandering and trying to communicate with the locals, we found out that the fish market was closed for renovations due to the Olympics. At this point we were close enough to the ship, hot and sufficiently hungry and thirsty enough to re-board and grab lunch. After lunch and a quick 20-minute powernap, we were back in the city. We found a taxi and asked to go to the mall, on the recommendation of one of the interport students who was from Manaus. Somehow, we were able to negotiate fares, and a pickup time with our driver who spoke zero English. I’m actually really impressed that we were able to do it. We were at the mall, which was about 20mins from the dock, for around two hours. Minus the language difference, the mall was exactly like any other upscale shopping mall in the United States. It was definitely interesting seeing the more impoverished side of Manaus in the morning by the dock, and then the affluent side of Manaus in the evening at the mall.
Overall it was a really fun day. One thing that really was interesting was the smells of the city. Every 10-15ft the smells would vary from the richness of a fish fry, the nastiness of a dead animal, the sweetness of fresh fruits, and then the pleasant olfactory reminders that a lot of people pee and poop on the sidewalk. Tomorrow, I leave early for four days of a service project in a village somewhere in the jungle. I wont be able to blog any then, in fact im pretty sure there wont be electricity, but I am incredibly excited and cant wait to interact with the villagers and help construct some buildings for the community.
As they say in Portuguese, Ciao!
-Ben
Today we finally arrived in Manaus, Brazil after around three days of heading up the Amazon River. The trip up the Amazon was pretty amazing. The water was so different than the ocean; flat, brown and in some places the river seemed only a couple of hundred feet wide. Unfortunately, I was kinda busy with classes, work, planning our first Christian service (more on that later) etc… and so didn’t have too much time to just hang out on the decks (which are covered with bugs) but the good news is that we are headed out the exact same way towards the end of the week and I plan on spending some time relaxing on the decks then.
We arrived in port around 6 or 7 this morning. I was up pretty early to meet some friends for breakfast and plan our day. The heat and humidity has been noticeable, but honestly my summers on the Eastern Shore have seemed to prepare me well. Our group of 11 left the ship around 9am and headed off to the city without an English map or any real idea what we would find.
Sidetrack: One of my favorite things to do is to get completely lost in a foreign location and just see where I end up. One of my gripes with “Americans” and their idea of tourism is that it doesn’t leave any room or time to truly explore and discover. If you'’re safe, smart and travel with a group of people I highly recommend leaving early in the morning, wandering, finding adventure and enjoying the life and vibrancies that a new location offers.
Our rough plan was to find one of the historic churches, the opera house and the fish market. As soon as we stepped off the pier, I felt very much like a foreigner, mainly because everyone spoke Portuguese (which none of my friends or I can speak) and no one, literally no one we met, spoke English well enough to get any bit of useful information from. Except for a few of the less touristy countries in the Caribbean that I had traveled too, I had never experienced what it was like to not be able to communicate with people. With that being said, we went to a modern mall later in the day that had a McDonalds and a Subway, and Taylor Swift was playing on the radio in our taxi. I guess you can never really get too far from home.
We wandered around the streets right next to the pier for a while and found this big, historic Catholic Church. We found one of the church greeters (or whatever the Catholic equivalent is) and after pointing to my watch, using the miniscule amount of Spanish I knew, and using lots of hand motions, I found out (at least I think) that the next service was at 11am and so we decided to wander on and maybe come back later. We found a bank where some of us withdrew the Brazilian currency, “reales” is close to the phonetic spelling, and then made it to a big street market next to the bank. We walked around there for about an hour and then ended up at the opera house. The opera house was really impressive from the outside so we took lots of pictures and walked around the perimeter. We, or at least I, was under the impression that the opera house would be closed on Sundays, so we didn’t try to go inside but instead found another historic Catholic Church and went inside there. At this point it was already 11am, and we were a mile or so from the other church, but this church didn’t have a service until noon. Anyways, we took some pictures of the church and of the fountain square outside. We noticed that there were a lot of people that seemed to be going in and out of the opera house, and so we decided to go to the door. Next thing we knew, we were seated in the upper balcony of this magnificently ornate, world famous opera house. We managed to randomly time our entrance to coincide with the opening of a symphony orchestra, which was apparently putting on a free concert (at least we didn’t pay). We stayed for about an hour and listened to the awesome classical music. I had never heard an orchestra of that caliber and was really blown away by both the beauty of the opera house and the sound that came from the performers.
After leaving the opera house, we walk toward the general direction of the waterfront hoping to find the fish market for some lunch. After a few hours of walking, wandering and trying to communicate with the locals, we found out that the fish market was closed for renovations due to the Olympics. At this point we were close enough to the ship, hot and sufficiently hungry and thirsty enough to re-board and grab lunch. After lunch and a quick 20-minute powernap, we were back in the city. We found a taxi and asked to go to the mall, on the recommendation of one of the interport students who was from Manaus. Somehow, we were able to negotiate fares, and a pickup time with our driver who spoke zero English. I’m actually really impressed that we were able to do it. We were at the mall, which was about 20mins from the dock, for around two hours. Minus the language difference, the mall was exactly like any other upscale shopping mall in the United States. It was definitely interesting seeing the more impoverished side of Manaus in the morning by the dock, and then the affluent side of Manaus in the evening at the mall.
Overall it was a really fun day. One thing that really was interesting was the smells of the city. Every 10-15ft the smells would vary from the richness of a fish fry, the nastiness of a dead animal, the sweetness of fresh fruits, and then the pleasant olfactory reminders that a lot of people pee and poop on the sidewalk. Tomorrow, I leave early for four days of a service project in a village somewhere in the jungle. I wont be able to blog any then, in fact im pretty sure there wont be electricity, but I am incredibly excited and cant wait to interact with the villagers and help construct some buildings for the community.
As they say in Portuguese, Ciao!
-Ben
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