This is the first time that Semester at Sea has gone to Manaus, Brazil. It is 1000 miles up the Amazon River. On Wednesday night (January 20th) we entered the Amazon River and the water went from blue to muddy brown pretty quick. The captain made an announcement that they were bringing the stabilizers in so we needed to make sure everything in our room was secure because the ship might roll a lot so we all got really worried. The ship went from rocking so much on the ocean then when we woke up it was like we were floating. The river water is like a lake and is so much calmer than the ocean. It took us 4 days on the river to get to Manaus. The water is really muddy and was light brown and all sorts of weird insects made their way to the ship (luckily we are all on malaria pills for the rest of the trip so we don’t have to worry about the mosquitoes anywhere). It was overcast most of the days we were sailing but still SO HOT!!! You could definitely tell we were on the equator. I laid out the day before we got to the port and fried! It was overcast but occasionally the sun would come out from the clouds and it was unbearable to sit out, you had to get in the water.
On Sunday we finally made it to the port and Hanna, Jill (my roommate), and I were going on an Amazon Explorer trip at 10:30. We decided to go look around the town a bit before our tour and planned to go to a bank to get Real (Brazilian currency). We got off the ship and we were FOBs, what Hanna and I used to call tourists in Hawaii (fresh off the boat). We were taking pictures of everything and I’m sure looked so lost and confused. Since it was Sunday a lot of things were closed and they have this be a family day so a lot of people were at the bus stops which were right by the port. When we had our preport discussion which was the night before they tell us do’s/don’t, things about the culture, and other things we need to know about the place. There were diplomats and people that worked in Brazil that got on the ship with us for a couple days that were telling us important things and it was pretty much a whole week of hearing about how Rio de JaneIro is the most dangerous city and it sounded like if you walked anywhere you were bound to get robbed. About half the ship was taking a trip to Rio and the other half was staying in Manaus. Most of the people aren’t back yet so I haven’t heard if anything bad happened or not. So anyways we were still paranoid even though they said Manaus was safer. We hadn’t walked very far and a guy in a police uniform came up to us and said “Oi!” (which means hello in Portuguese) and he took Jill’s camera from her hand and was talking so fast in Portuguese and I’m guessing he was saying don’t walk with your camera in your hand because someone could take it right off your wrist. Then he looked at me and said “thank you” and shook my hand. Then we were scared and couldn’t get in the bank when we found it because we were too stupid to open the door and we felt so helpless. Finally we followed someone in when we saw we were using the wrong door and tried to figure out how to use the ATM that was mostly in Portuguese.
Hanna, Jill, and I split up with our group and decided our 35 minutes of culture shock was enough for now and headed back to the ship where our tour was meeting. On our way back this tour guide who spoke English was trying to get us to come see the pink river dolphins with us. He was really nice and we were around a bunch of security guards so we didn’t think he meant any harm. He was friends with one of the security guards (who was tall dark and handsome with huge muscles) and he was like do you think my friend is bonito or auguala (I’m not sure if that was the word but it doesn’t matter because I think it means ugly and he definitely wasn’t ugly) and pointed to the security guard. And we all three went “bonito!”. So for the rest of the trip we would look for him and called him Bonito.
The conversation with him lightened our moods and we were excited for our tour. We got on river boats and went up the river to where the Amazon River begins. The Negro river and the Solimoes river meet but don’t mix. The Negro river is black from the decomposition of the trees and everything that falls in the river. It moves much slower than the other so it is a lot warmer. The meeting of the rivers was so cool because they don’t mix until 6 miles down so it is two different colors of water flowing down the same canal.
We learned about life in Manaus and everything that goes on along the river. We went in a side channel of the river to this floating restaurant where they had prepared and authentic Brazillian meal for us. It was delicious! After that we went in the rainforest and saw giant lilipads, a massive tree, the huge fish they made us for lunch, I got to hold a sloth, and we fished for Paraná. It was such a great day and we were hanging out with some really cool people. My roommate and I get along so well. I laugh so hard with her! We have a little group of girls that we eat most of the meals with and we all have a great time. It seems like every night I have gone to bed Jill and I have laughed ourselves to sleep. She makes me feel a lot funnier than I am because she laughs hysterically at all the weird voices I make.
That night the Brazilians that were staying on the ship with us wanted to take us to Samba. So many kids on the ship got ready and I’m pretty sure we were all thinking we were going to be taking dancing lessons and learning how to samba. We got there and it was a huge block party in the street. There were so many people and the beat of the drums was so loud. We were still in a bit of a culture shock and no one spoke a word of English so we were struggling to communicate with people all night. I felt uneasy because no one besides the group we came with spoke English around us but once we worked our way through the crowd we found so many Semester at Sea kids. The samba was more like people jumping around to the beat and wasn’t exactly a specific dance (or there were just too many people for it to actually look like a specific type of dance). There were about 50 people with drums and tambourines that were spread throughout the crowd and somehow they were all playing to the same beat. It didn’t take long until I was feeling more comfortable and didn’t feel like anything bad was going to happen. There were people of all ages there and a bunch of the teachers and lifelong learners from the ship. This local girl adopted the group of girls I was with and even though we couldn’t understand each other we danced all night and had a great time. Hanna and I were on cloud 9 by the end of the night and had so much fun interacting with their culture.
The next day we went to a mall that had free wifi so some kids got on the computer but we walked around the mall. We ate at a restaurant and once again used sign language for the waitress to understand what we wanted. We ended up with a Portuguese pizza that was delicious. It had ham and hardboiled egg and olives on it. Later we went up an escalader and didn’t really know where we were going and this guy could tell we were kind of lost and pointed up and said cinema and we smiled and he was like the movie theater is up there and we were like ohhhh and he got really excited and was like you speak English? And he introduced himself to us and was struggling with his English but was really excited to practice his English and talk to 4 American girls. We talked to him for a long time and decided to walk around with him and he was SO funny! You could tell her was nervous to talk to us and he would get so frustrated when he couldn’t say what he wanted to. We talked to him for probably 2 hours and asked about his life and he asked about ours. It was so amazing. We exchanged facebooks and emails and he hugged all of us goodbye.
Sorry this is getting so long so I will highlight what we did for the rest of the trip so it won’t be such a novel. We went to the fish market and was with a group of girls again and when we walked in it was like a whistling competition between all the butchers to see who could whistle at us louder. It was so funny and loud we couldn’t hear eachother talk. Then next door they had a huge warehouse filled with bananas and plantains and I was trying to take a video of the assembly line of men as they took the bundles of bananas off the truck and as soon as they saw me with my camera they stopped and started waving and lifted up their shirts so it ended up being a really funny video.
The markets are crazy here. The sidewalks are filled with vendors and they sell EVERYTHING. It really isn’t a tourist town so the markets and street vendors are for the people who live there. Most of the stuff are things that are used that they are selling again but on the street they were selling everything from remote controls, kitchen knives, haircuts, underwear, wheels, pots, and pretty much anything you could think of. One afternoon Hanna, Jill and I went to the opera house and were tired so we sat in this park and another local came up to us to practice his English and he was so nice too. He was a hairstylist so he was tan with blonde hair and eyebrows were blonde and was wearing pink shox and a purple Brooklyn shirt. He said his name was Jefferson but I’m pretty sure that is his American name. He went around and shopped with us and was so fun. We exchanged emails and got a picture with him to. It seemed like every time we went out on town something amazing would happen and we would come back to the ship so happy.
They have DELICIOUS chocolate here. We went to a Brazilian BBQ place and that had unlimited beef and sides and we got a chocolate molten cake desert and we were all fighting over licking the plate at dinner. None of the food made me sick so I was a little more daring than I think I will be in other places.
Yesterday Hanna and I went on a trip with Semester at Sea to the zoo with kids who were abandoned and have special needs and it was so incredible. The kids were so so so happy to see us. They got to eat hot dogs and popcorn for lunch so everything was American themes since we were coming to visit them. I am involved in a group on the ship that is called One World Futbol and we have 35 soccer balls to give to kids who don’t have balls to play with. They are made out of the same material as crocs so they are indestructible. You can flatten them and it will pop back out. So at the end of the service visit a lady translated for us that we were giving them a ball and it was a symbol of a friendship that will last forever. They were so happy and were cheering and it was a moment I’ll never forget.
Last night was out last night here so we went with a group of kids to this club called Crocodillios. It went from like 10 people being there to half the ship was there in about 10 minutes. They were playing techno and had crazy laser lights. I was with Hanna and Jill again and it seems like anytime we are together it is a great time. All of a sudden the man that we met on the first day with his security guard friend came up to me. We had talked to him every time we saw him by the taxis because he would interpret for us and tell the drivers where we wanted to go. He grabs my hand and pulls me to a section where the couches and pointed to this guy. All three of us at the same time went “Bonito!”. It was the sexy security guard and we were so excited! I guess he is an MMA fighter and he gave us one of his promotion shirts that is now hanging on our wall. It was a great night and an all around amazing time in Brazil. Sorry about all the typos I’m sure I had. I had to write this quick but will try to at least proof read next time. We leave today and have an 8 day stretch to Ghana. One of the days is Neptune Day and we celebrate crossing the equator and have the Olympics on the ship.
Cio! From Brazil
