Sao Paulo and Manaus, Brazil. January 23- 27. DAY ONE and TWO.

I’ve been getting all kinds of emails from home telling me to write more on my blog. Keeping up a blog is a lot harder than I thought! I have to balance my journal, blog, and emails (all very repetitive) with school work (lots of it) and having a social life! You’d think this would be easy… I live on a ship, what else is there to do? But no, it’s a huge challenge! I’ll write all about Brazil in one huge post, so get ready to spend some time reading!

Day one/two (they blend… no sleep):

After 1000 miles and three days on the Amazon River, we finally reached Manaus, Brazil! Once again, I was woken up by an earthquake in my cabin. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the feeling and sound of the engine turning on and off. Good thing it only happens when we pull into or away from port! The talk around the ship is that SAS has us port on Sunday’s for a reason. So far, the first day in every port (all two… hahah) is a Sunday, so nothing is ever open when we arrive! People say that it’s because they don’t want us going wild the first night, which makes sense… but so far the club owners have opened up especially for us.
I was only in Manaus for that first day, so I didn’t do much research on it. For all I knew it could have been a little grass hut village in the middle of the rainforest. To my surprise, it was a pretty decent city. Like I said before, everything was closed, so there wasn’t much to do. A group of about 15 of us planned to just explore for the day. The one thing we all really wanted to see was the meeting of the waters. We found a man that would take us there, so we piled into three cabs and headed out to the waterfront. Manaus was a bit difficult to get around because very few people speak English. We managed though, it’s amazing how much you can accomplish even with the language barrier. We got to the waterfront and paid 40 real to take a boat out to the meeting of the waters. It was interesting, but I’m not sure I would go see it again. We made our way back to land and found three cabs to bring us back to the center of the city. Rolando, Jojo, Idin and I decided to break away from the group because it was getting too complicated to make sure all 15 of us were still there. Everyone started splitting off after that too. We found a street that had been turned into a giant market. Finally, something that wasn’t shut down! We walked around looking at everything and finally came across a stand that had food. We were so hungry, and ate so much. It was 8 real for all the food you could fit on your plate. It was probably the best lunch I have ever had. Rice, black beans, beef, sausage, and fresh fruit juice.
After lunch and walking around a bit more, we ran into a few Brazilian guys on the side of the street making hand made crafts. One of them made me a beautiful blue wire ring. He put it on my finger and said “Aceito” (marry me) I laughed and kindly declined (but kept the ring! Haha). We stayed and talked to a few of them for a little while, and they were happy to practice their English! After a while, we headed back towards the ship. On the way back, we saw the most beautiful little girl waving to us. We went to say hi to her and her mother, and her mother saw that we had cameras and told us it was ok to take her picture. The little girl posed with her hands on her hips and smiled for us all. She wanted to take a picture with Idin, so I got one of the two of them, and she smiled so big when she saw it. When I showed pictures of her to friends on the ship, they fell in love immediately!
That night, Alexa and I made our way to the airport… we had a flight to Sao Paulo! Our plane was delayed and didn’t take off until around 12:30 or 1:00, and we were so exhausted. Thankfully, the plane was not full so we could have whole rows to ourselves to lie down and sleep. We made a friend on the plane, Renam. He was so cute, giggling every time he spoke English because he wasn’t sure if he was right. He was going to Rio to study for his master’s degree.  When we got off the plane at about 6 am, we said goodbye to Renam and wished him luck, and then met Caue and his mom! Caue is one of my best friends, and is from Sau Paulo, so we were going to stay with him for a few days.
When we got to Caue’s house, we took a nap while he went to work. We slept for a few hours, and then Renato and Lilian came to pick us up! I met them the last time I was in Brazil, they are two of Caue’s good friends that I have since become friends with. They took us around the city, first to buy Havaianas! We walked around for a while and then went to Renato’s place, so we could see the view from his 19th floor balcony. I had only seen it at night time, so this was a cool new view for me as well as Alexa! We then went to a really nice outdoor restaurant to eat Acai! This stuff is sooooo delicious.  We then went to Ibirapuera Park, the cities biggest and nicest park. We walked around and took some pictures there before heading back to Caue’s apartment. Caue got home soon after and we had dinner and drank Caue’s dad’s caipirinhas. He makes the best. Caue had a bunch of friends come over to hang out, and we eventually made our way to a club called Clash and danced the night away. We came back at about 5 in the morning and slept well into the next day!