December 10 - Manaus, Brazil

 Now we're in Manaus (pronounced man-OWS), the farthest up the Amazon we'll go.  Because the river is so low, this is now a tendering port.  We're anchored and are using the ships' lifeboats as tenders.  We were about 3 hours late getting here because we had to slow down for large sections of the river due to the hazardous navigation.  We "changed" pilots around 4:00 am which means we have had pilots on board for most of the river, I think.  There are treacherous sand banks which would be a disaster for us to run into.

We had part one of a two-part lecture on Harry Houdini given by the magician whose show we didn't see.  But he has a lot of info about Houdini and knows his stuff.  There is strong evidence to suggest that Houdini worked as a spy for the Americans and British in the years leading up to WWI.  Interesting and I look forward to the second part.

Our tour today was a sort of highlights of Manaus, which is a very large city of over 2 million people.  Since it's Sunday, the streets were very quiet.  Brazil is overwhelmingly Catholic, but according to our lecturer, the Evangelical Christians are really gaining ground.  Either way, Sundays are still focused on church.  Our bus was nicely air-conditioned, thank goodness since the temps are around 90 with nearly 80% humidity.  We didn't start the tour until 2:30 so the worst of the heat was waning.  We drove by some nice looking buildings, but I can't remember what all they were - mostly government offices.  Sometimes it's hard to tell if a building is in use or not.  The outsides are mostly rundown - a combination of harsh weather and lack of maintenance.  Can't say I blame them; who wants to be plastering and painting in that heat.  But still, it looks really bad in some places and there is graffiti all over again like we've seen in many other parts of the world.

This was the pier near the tender dock.  You can see how low the water is.  And 18 months ago this was all under water due to flooding.  Now they're praying for rain.

Some of the many boats in the doc area with ours anchored out in the river.  Normally, ships could come right up to the dock.

The most famous building in Manaus is the Opera House.  It was started in 1882 at the height of the rubber boom here.  At one point Manaus was one of the richest cities on earth.  Everything to build it was brought from Europe: iron staircases from England, crystal chandeliers from France, and marble from Italy.  Even the Brazilian wood was shipped to Europe to be polished and carved before being shipped back. There are 22 marble columns in the main auditorium.  It opened in 1896 but was only used until 1910 when the rubber boom ended because rubber began being produced in Malaysia.  The Opera House was left to decay in the heat.  It was finally fully restored and put back into use about 4 years ago.  While we were there, a company was rehearsing for a performance of Nutcracker Suite.

The main auditorium is fully airconditioned now, but until 1991 was cooled by pipes filled with frozen salt water under the floor and fans blowing cooled air out vents under each chair.  It was pretty effective, but the salt eventually wrecked the pipes.

This is from one of the boxes which really don't have a good vantage point unless you're in the front seat.

This is a ballroom upstairs outside of the theatre.

The floors in the ballroom were beautiful

View from a balcony off the second floor.

There's a square across from the Opera House that was getting ready for a fair of some kind.  The black and white tile is typical back in Portugal.  The tiles were brought over as ship's ballast.

This is the only outside angle I could get because of where we parked.

This is a model from inside the Opera House

This kind of wiring was all over the central district.  Looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

A high school

A house built by one of the rubber barons to lure his wife to the Amazon.  They only lived in it for a few years before the bottom fell out of rubber and the government took it over for offices.

This is supposedly modeled after the Brooklyn Bridge

No idea what this is; I just thought it was attractive

We only saw a tiny fraction of Manaus, but it seemed a bit sad to me.  I didn't take any pictures of the crumbling buildings covered in graffiti, but there were many of them.  I wish we could have seen some of the nicer parts of the city.  I've put the best bits we saw here.

They opened the laundry room this afternoon at 6:00 pm so when we got back around 6:15 we checked, but the 6 machines were already busy.  We tried again after dinner, but still no luck.  I don't think we'll be able to get near one until we are out of the Amazon.

We were able to join the family Zoom call tonight, although I couldn't get the video to work.  But it was a good connection on my end with almost no breaking up or freezing.  The wifi continues to impress me.

We're overnighting here and we have a river tour tomorrow early.  We'll have to allow time for the slather of sunscreen followed by a topping of bug repellant.  Yuck.