Não Estamos Sós

Day 32 - 30 de Junho: Manaus

Woke up this Sunday morning, got dressed, and with a quick bite on the go, my family and I were off to the church. As it turned out, today ended up to be a day full of church activity. We started off in their hall for a quick bible study, although I wasn't completely awake yet so my Portuguese translating ability was at zero. However, I woke up pretty fast once everyone gathered in the main church for Sunday service. The intense air-con here really does the trick (like jumping into a cold swimming pool). The pastor did a big talk at this one, and I definitely noticed improvement in my understanding since the past week. I could understand a lot of the words and many sentences. I've noticed as well that preachers end up saying the same thing many times, which makes it easier to grasp. Soon though, I discovered the main reason why I was asked to come along to this one. Every day of the music workshop, we'd have choir practice to sing two songs: Não estamos sòs and Preparação. Turns out, we were going to sing these songs for the audience. I'm glad there were so many people up there with me - takes off the pressure of having to sound good. We had an amazing soloist accompany us though. She was one of the teachers at the workshop and had an incredible voice! In the end, we did very well. After the service, I even received a certificate of completion of this music workshop! Before leaving, we talked to an english speaker from Kansas who moved here with his large family and learned Portuguese. He spoke the language well and people understood him, but the portuguese just didn't seem to belong with this american accent. Anyway, he was going to drop by the house later on to visit more and exchange reais for american dollars with Jeffson. Next, we walked into a classroom here, where they did a quick Sunday school lesson. This guy spoke really fast, so all I could really understand were the bible verses in front of me - though with them, I was able to piece together the message pretty well.  On the way home, we picked up "fast food" for lunch. It was hard to call it fast food though, being flame grilled chicken that they were grilling on the street. Definitely a tier above McDs quality. We had lunch, then soon after, I had a nice long nap. It wasn't much longer after I woke up that the americans showed up. I talked to them more about my trip and why I was here. They thought it was neat and wished me all the best. In the evening, we went back to the church for another service - this family really goes all out church here. I kind of like it though, since it's some of the best portuguese comprehension practice I get all week. Their music is also really good too! Afterwards, we set up for their traditional evening meal which follows every evening service. I ate and talked to a guy from Argentina/Costa Rica that could speak very good english. It was his dream to travel to Canada, so I told him all about it. He has friends in Vancouver and Montreal and has even street viewed some of the places I talked about. Another really nice guy - you get that feeling from almost everyone here in Manaus.  We finished off the night by watching some tv - the sports highlights from the victorious fifa game today (on brazilian espn). We also watched Brazilian "minute to win it", hosted by a guy who I'm calling "Brazilian Bob Barker", since i've seen him in a few game shows already down here and somewhat reminds me of him. Anyway, tomorrow we'll be taking some people to the jungle, but just his staff will do this tour. Jeffson and I will just drop them off, then we go to another big family birthday party which I guess can double as my Canada Day celebrations! 

Some of my music today

Like a sore thumb

Day 31 - 29 de Junho: Manaus, Brazil

Set my alarm to wake up at 8:30 as usual, however I probably could have slept another half hour. Forgot that it was saturday, so the family usually sleeps in. No problem though, I can always study up on the language. Can't call home or anything at that hour since 8:30 here is 5:30am back home. At around 9, we had breakfast; bread (of course), fresh pineapple and tapioca pancakes for lack of a better description. Everything has been really tasty here - i'm thankful that there's no worry about going hungry here. We left fairly soon after - jeffson and I went to order the rest of the artwork for his ice cream store. We had to go to his friend's bridal shop to visit a guy who could change the format of the files containing the artwork, since it wouldn't open on his supplier's computer. It took a little while, but it was fine since there was water, air conditioning and sports on tv. Although, when the France vs Brazil volleyball game ended, the next program on happened to be Spongebob Squarepants - and yes, it is just as annoying in portuguese, lol. After the time spend out, we came back home just briefly to pick up my host mom. We then set out to their store - today we were going to paint it. We stopped by a shop for some paintbrushes, then a diner for some lunch (another self serve, pay by weight place) then finally came to the store. The store was initially a bright blue colour, however, when we had finished, it was a brilliant red on the outside, with red and white on the inside walls. We joked that perhaps there was a slight Canadian influence involved here. Either way, it was going to stand out on the street.  It's been neat in South America - all the buildings have been much more vibrant colours that we's use back home. It gives a street that would probably look very dismal, some life. It was also pretty funny to see all the looks I got from people as they walked by. In a city where in the tourist off-season, there's probably less than a handful of white people in the whole city! So, a pasty white guy like me, working shirtless on the street with paintbrush in had probably would be the equivalent of seeing a monkey running the box office at a cineplex. Lol, maybe i'll be a bit more tanned by the time i'm back home. We came home afterwards, but again briefly - just enough time to shower and scarf down a couple pieces of bread. We had to go to the church for the Jeffson's band practice, which would precede the final day of the music class. In theory, we had to name the notes on a sheet of paper, which again was a piece of cake for me since i did so many years of piano. Then we had choir practice. My family was very amused at my singing in the portuguese but I can't say I did their choir any favours. After the practice, we were talking with a couple of people who could speak very good english. I told stories of snowy days back home (nobody here has ever seen snow before and most having experienced temperatures below 12 degrees!) They thought it would be cool (haha, this pun doesn't get old), but they probably couldn't last too long outside. Hopefully tomorrow I get to bed a bit earlier so I have time to put more detail into this. It's 12:20am here and time for bed! 

But first pictures, starting with my additions to my VW collection:

Our paint job today - the blue to the right was the initial colour. Now its totally canadian, eh?

Car Spotting

Day 30 - 28 de Junho: Manaus

Wow, here's a milestone - 1 month since I started this journey. Things have become so familiar here, that the comforts of home may seem kind of foreign when I return... although, I'm sure it won't take long to readjust. Today started out like any other day, with café de manhã. That's another thing that's amazing; it's been one whole month since i've eaten a normal bowl of cereal with milk. This is something that I would eat every single day, as soon as I woke up. I'm glad I'm not having it everyday actually, because I much prefer to eat like the locals when I travel. Today turned out to be a day with a lot of driving - basically another city tour. It started with a few stops to deal with the artwork for their new ice cream parlour. Then, the plan was to visit the shops of the city centre. However, construction was blocking the way from our direction so we had to postpone it. Instead, he drove me over Manaus' new bridge which spanned a narrow section of the Amazon River. Keep in mind that this "narrow" section was 3.5kms long! I've been told that in some places, the river gets up to 10kms in width! And you'd believe it, looking out over the vast body of water. It's hard to call it river when we have narrower straights and inlets back home. The ride over was definitely a cool sight. Afterwards, we picked up the girls from school and headed home for lunch - pasta with meat sauce. After enjoying that, we had a quick rest before setting out again - this time making it to the city centre. It was a neat place; every street filled to capacity with stores that sold just about everything. There was a major indoor market too, but Jeffson said that it's chaos inside and that we were best off outside of it. This wasn't really a tourist-shopping area - all the stores were for the locals, so the real purpose here was picking up more supplies for the store conversion. We got paint and ice cream cups, and tomorrow we'll probably go to the store to paint it. On the way back, we saw an ice cream parlour that looked very similar to what he wanted for his, so he got his picture taken in front of it by me. Traffic was pretty thick heading home. As it's sort of my thing, I started spotting all the different VWs as we drove by. They literally have a VW for everything: flatbeds, semis, pickup trucks, cars, vans, cement mixers, and all the city buses. I started trying to take pictures of a few of them but they all turned out kind of blurry (it's hard to take pictures from the back seat of a car here - the back seats don't come with seatbelts!). So, i've decided to start a VW picture collection to see how many different ones are on the Brazilian roads. I've yet to get a good Amarok picture so that'll be my next target. Anyway, made it home and Jeffson's parents had shown up. We all had café de tarde and I learned that his mom would be coming with us to Jeffson's jungle house. Ya, that's the new plan for next Tuesday - we're going out overnight to this cool place in the jungle and really doing authentic survival stuff - we'll even hunt for our dinner and everything! Jeffson said that we needed to convince his mom to come along so that the food would taste better - mom's make the best meals! I sure could go for a piece of mom's lasagna now that I think about it - I guess I'll have to wait another couple months for that. Finally, we finished the evening off with the second night of this music workshop. We got more lessons and sang more songs. Everyone's happy that I'll be able to sing something in portuguese when I return home. I'm not the best singer in the world though, so probably best I save your ears and stick with talking, lol. It looks like the next half of my time here will include much more jungle work, so i'm definitely glad i've had these rest days lately. Even one morning in the jungle is tiring and soon I'll be spending several nights there. I'm really excited!

Jeffson has a spiral staircase to his office

The bridge

The amazon river

More bridge

What it looks like when you leave Manaus

Even more bridge

The crazy area of the market

City centre streets

Jeffson and the ice cream place

I found my car in white! Jetta 2.0

My VW spotting continued

And continued - these white vans are literally everywhere!

The ice cream man

Day 29 - 27 de junho: Manaus

You'll have to excuse this post for being relatively brief and to the point, I'm really tired right now. Woke up today at 8:30 which ended up being about exactly when everyone else got out of bed. We had a nice big breakfast with fruit, bread with ham and cheese, juice and cake (yup, cake for breakfast - here you can have cake anytime!). The morning that followed consisted of driving around to various stops - the ice cream parlour to work out a few things (Jeffson's going through with turning his clothing store into an ice cream parlour), the to the police station to renew his gun licence. This place was massive! It had the same size and style building as back home, but instead of being in the middle of the city, it had it's own huge military-training-like grounds. I guess they really prepare their police for anything. We then picked up the girls and came home for lunch. A little bit afterwards, we left home again for their store. We spend the better part of the afternoon starting its transformation. We took down the clothing hooks, washes the writing off the windows and cleared out the inventory. The freezer they had bought was already in the store so the place really only needed a bit of redecorating. That would be another day. While we worked, Spain vs Italy was on TV and it was a close game that we'd finish watching at home. It went right to penalty kicks which resulted in victory for spain. I would hate to be the italian who missed the net! On the way home, we stopped by the bakery for more bread and they decided to send just me in again to test my portuguese. This was my best attempt yet and even managed to ask the lady to choose the crispier ones (request from Jeffson). We had our café and a great banana milkshake. Not much later in the evening, we all took off again to take part in a music workshop going on at the church. They taught little classes and even though my portuguese was minimal, it was material that I had learned before - music theory. I still remembered a fair bit of it thanks to my many years of piano from the distant past. We finished off the evening with singing. I made sure to sing quietly so as to not draw attention to my lack of singing talent, however I was still noticed. I'm still not quite sure if they were commending a good effort or just laughing at the attempt. Doesn't matter, it's all in good fun. Just got back home not too long ago and really need sleep. Just about dozed off at the church and it didn't help that we didn't have siesta today. Let's see what we do tomorrow!

Found the warning on my bottle of malaria pills a little funny today - avoiding sunlight is easier said than done here, lol.

Water, water everywhere...

Day 28 - 26 de Junho: Manaus and the jungle

Today I set a 6am alarm to wake up for the jungle - my next adventure awaited. Not a couple minutes after I pulled up my jungle pants and put on my backpack, were we on the road. It was a familiar route towards port - I think that after a couple more drives, I could probably navigate this route on my own. It's like Manaus is becoming my own city. Anyway, today's trip to the jungle wasn't to tour any clients, this was a surveillance trip. The land that Jaguar works on is also an area that they protect (from poachers, loggers, etc.) and routinely, they set out on hikes through the land to make sure nothing is happening. We arrived at the port to meet up with the rest of Jeffson's staff: the two that I had done my first tour with, and two that I hadn't done anything with. We all jumped on the boat and headed away from the marina. It was already turning into a beautiful day, however I knew that soon enough, it would be a hot one! Our first stop was actually to the old man's house on the edge of the jungle. If I didn't already explain, turns out that this man used to be part of a native tribe and lives with his family away from the city. He is an expert of the land and a mentor to even these experienced guides.  And it turned out that today, we'd be having breakfast in his cool little jungle shack. We ate a fish soup (of course accompanied by a healthy serving of manioc flour - which accompanies everything here), bread and coffee. It was a good meal and afterwards, we were ready to go. To my surprise, the old man (he was actually in his mid-60s but looked 80 years old) was going to come along with us. It didn't look like he was built to hike, but I was sure wrong about that! The whole day, he was up in front setting the pace for everyone else to try and keep up. I guess growing up in the jungle really builds you up tough. This time, we didn't enter the jungle via canoe; there was actually a hidden entrance in behind the lodge we always pick up people from. We started our hike and it sure was a much faster pace that when We hike with tourists. I felt like part of the military with all these guys suited up in military vests and camo pants. We hiked through trail after trail and many of them weren't even trails at all. The terrain was tough too - super steep inclines and declines. This would be fine except you couldn't grab onto any of the trees because half of them had spikes sticking out of them. My hiking boots held out very well considering all the abuse they went through today. They even held up through some jungle wetlands when my feet sank into a few puddles. Most of the hike, I wasn't even thinking about wet feet though - I was thinking about wet everything! I was accumulating some sort of mixture of dew, humidity and sweat (no idea how much of each) all over my clothes. Half way through, I was soaked inside and out and even dripping for most of it. I don't think I could have gotten any wetter if I jumped in a swimming pool! Every stop we'd make, I'd wring about a  half-litre of water (at least) out of my shirt. The biggest annoyance about it though was that it made my clothes so much heavier. I guess I have to look at it in the sense that I got a much better work out. The whole hike overall was about 8 or so kilometres: but at military pace and with jungle terrain, 8 km at home is nothing like 8 km here. We made some pretty good time too. When we finished, we departed back to the old guy's house and had lunch there. Jeffson brought along two whole chickens so we had it prepared in two different styles: campfire grilled and in soup (just like the fish soup this morning). The arrival here was also nice because we got to swim in the river and wash off all the sweat. I think a lot of it was sweat, because when we finished, everyone joked around that it must have rained over only me. In Manaus' hot sun, my clothes partially dried so it was a bit more comfortable. We made for home after everything was done. There was another soccer game about to start just as we arrived back home: Brazil vs. Uruguay. I quickly showered the jungle stink off of me, then joined the family to watch. It was an amazing close game with Brazil winning 2-1. Needless to say, it was an exciting atmosphere. After the game, I was able to facetime home to be with my whole family in wishing my grandpa a happy birthday. It made me really happy that I was able to be there as he opened his presents, and talk to all the relatives just as if I was a part of it. I rested for a little bit, then accompanied Jeffson to the store for café de tarde items. We picked up bread, cheese, drinks and lastly, from a vendor on the street, we bought a couple pineapples. Now, at home I have never been much of a pineapple fan, but again this jungle fruit has blown me away! The best pineapple I've ever tried (big ones for only about $1 each!). We ate fruit, bread and cake this evening, then finished it off with a bit of language studying. It was a packed day and really fun. Definitely going to enjoy sleep tonight though!

Breakfast

The view on the boat

The crew

With me this time

A lizard at the lodge

Termites on the road to the jungle

In the bush

They speared this flatfish. Apparently it has a poisonous barb on its tail that can leave you hospitalized in excruciating pain for 20 hours. Good thing i didnt fall into that river! 

Protected area

More jungle

We stopped here for a bit. Two locals were working on their boats...not sure why they were here though.

My boss and our guide

We exited the jungle at this random soccer field

The marina

Facebook photos

I will be writing a daily post later on but here are some photos that were posted of me on facebook!

Kayaking on the rio Tambopata (which feeds the amazon)

White water rafting in Ollantaytambo

The canadians at Machu Picchu

Mountain biking the Andes

The initial contiki group (before collecting more people in Cuzco)