Manaus

We arrived at Manaus early in the morning and went straight to Fernandos and Tatianas (our hosts) place. They have a nice family house about 20 minutes by bus from the center. It was nice to be couchsurfing again, we've tried a few times in Bolivia and Peru, but somehow it never worked (to be honest we also didn't try too hard as the prices where not as high as here, especially in Bolivia).

Although Manaus lies in the middle of the jungle, it's in fact quite a big city with more than 2 million inhabitant who luckily decided to live in newly build apartment blocks outside of the city center. That way the old town has been conserved although it is a little bit run down like many city centers in Brazil. The new middleclass prefers to go shopping in the newly build shoppingcenters close to their apartment blocks where you get american fastfood and air-con, therefor only the lower classes go shopping in the city centers.

But we had a good time there. For the first time since forever we went out for some beers to a bar with life music, together with the frendch guy and an argentinian girl we met on the boat and it was good fun.

We also visited the cutural center of indigenous people of the amazon which was quite interesting, much better than expected, as it doesn't show up in any of the tourist guides and for free. we even had an english speaking personal guide.

Afterwards we went to Bosque a Ciencia, a garden-park-zoo-nature reserve-thing in Manaus. There we saw more gorgeous manatees, but also turtles, caimans and electric eels.

We really liked Manaus despite the freaking hot weather which forced you to shower at least three times a day, but the people were  very friendly, it was quite safe for a brazilian city and a lot of nature in and around the city.

We then took our last boat from Manaus to Belem, another four and a half days on a boat, one of these days spent on a spot in Santarem where the boat drove back and forth between the two ports. I didn't really understand why that was necesary, but at least we had the chance to take a short walk though town and find out that it is not really worth staying, at least not in Santarem directly.

This last boat was unfortunately not as good as the one before. Although we had even more space, it was very fast and therefor very windy, forcing me to use my thick winter sleeping bag at night. And while the food on the other boats might not have been great quality, at least it was for free. On this boat quality was about the same but you had to pay (12 R for lunch or dinner, not a lot but also not cheap). Anyways, I was happy when we arrived, it was a very nice trip, but after a while you do get sick of doing nothing the whole day and sleeping in a hammock.