Mosquitos and fishies and alligators...oh my! (And today's adventures)

The trip that I did last night was called something like jungle adventure and alligator spotting. It started at 8PM when we got into this boat which kind of looked like one of those river tour boats if you know what those look like (Pictures of them will be posted....eventually!)...and we traveled back out of the Negro River and back into the Amazon river where we got to this floating restaurant/tour place/alligator catching side job place....and we got into these really tiny motorized canoes. You sit two to a seat and there were 10 people to a boat. The boat was so tiny that the seats we were sitting on were probably about water level. About 30 seconds after we got into the boat a fish jumped out of the water and smacked a girl in the face and it landed in the bottom of the boat. We all freaked out and the boat was tipping and we thought it was a pirana so we were super scared!!! Then we went into these little side places off the river in the marsh and heard all these scary mosquito'y sounds....I called it The Sound of Malaria! The tour guide shined a flashlight over the marsh to look for gators. When he saw a baby one he scooped it out of the water. We got to hold it and touch it....I personally didnt hold it because I'm a weenie but it felt super scaly and hard and it was really cool!!! We didn't see any big alligators....which was probably a good thing since we were sitting so close to the water! The motor got caught in some weeds as we were backing out of the marsh and it sounded pretty bad. It was sputtering quite a bit. We finally made it out and went back to the floating restaurant and then took the big river boat back to the port. It was pretty awesome! There were lots of skeeters but it was quite a jungle adventure and neat to see that part of the Amazon that was less inhabited.

 

Today's goal was to sleep in a little so that we would be well rested for the day. This equatorial heat wipes you out fast! Our next goal was to find internet and a good restaurant. Both of those kind of failed. We ended up going to the same pizza place that we were at yesterday mostly because we trusted the restaurant and they were really nice there. It was really interesting trying to decide on pizza for four people plus the menu being in portugese and the added challenge of dealing with a girl that is vegetarian...we ended up getting the house pizza which I think was pepperoni, onion, green pepper, and possibly ham? Not really sure if it was ham or not but it was delicious! A coke (in a bottle!!!!!) hit the spot too. After that it was time to try and find internet. There was a cyber cafe across the street. So we walked inside and it was very dismal and yucky. We thought we would be able to use our own computers but they didnt have wifi so you had to use theirs. And then they wouldn't take my 50 Real bill. When I tried to give it to him the guy just laughed and shook his head and said no. Wouldnt you think they would take any money that you gave them??? I was confused...so my friend Hannah spotted me and I got a whole 15 minutes of internet time (I wanted 30 minutes but the guy behind the counter didnt get that message....) The whole computer was in portugese and the keyboard typed funky letters so that took another five minutes to figure out how to navigate to facebook. There was no where to put an SD card in the computer so there are STILL no pictures posted anywhere! I didnt really realize this would be quite so challenging!

 

As some of you know, I'm trying to find a flag in each country. I found one for Brazil today so now I dont have to search everywhere for one!

 

One random observation I have about Brazil is that the little stands I was talking about in my previous post....about 40% of them sell bras and underwear. I personally wouldnt buy bras and underwear from a street vendor but I guess that's the thing to do here in Manaus....

 

We're meeting up again at 5:30 to decide what's in store for tonight. It's really nice to come back to the ship for a little while. It feels like a safe haven where you dont have to constantly be aware of who is around you and if they're going to steal your stuff!

 

Only two and a half more days in Brazil and then our adventure across the Atlantic begins! (I'm really not looking forward to nine days of classes....)