Rio De Janeiro

Yesterday  we flew from Manaus to  Sao Paolo  and then on to Rio.  We got in late last night. Our hotel is directly  on the beachfront  at Copacabana.  

We had a full day tour that included  a trip to the statue of Christ the Redeemer and some other sites like the cathedral and  football  stadium in the morning,  then lunch at a churrescaria, and ending with a trip up sugar loaf in the  afternoon. 

I don't think  I've ever been  to  a city  with such amazing  views. We took the tram up to the top of Corcovado  and then climbed  the steps to the pedestal of the Cristos statue.

We also visited the Cathedral, which was built in 1960 and is one of those awful 60s modernist concrete constructions.   Although it looked a lot nicer inside.

We had lunch at a churescaria - lots of meat.  The afternoon was a trip up Sugar Loaf.  This is a 2 stage cable car trip.   The first stage goes to the top of a nearby rock, then you cross to another cable car that takes you from there to the top of Sugar Loaf - which is over  2000ft up.  

I don't like heights,  but I really wanted to see the views from the top.  Fortunately, it was a fine day without much wind,  so the cable car wasn't swinging very much.   I just closed my eyes while in the car.   The views at the top were worth the effort..

It had been a long and tiring day, so we spent the evening in the hotel bar.   Rio has been the highlight of our trip so far.

Manaus and the end of our cruise

 Today we docked in Manaus, and tomorrow we will be disembarking.   Manaus is about 1000 miles from the mouth of the Amazon.  At this point the Amazon is still about 30 miles wide.   

Manaus is the capital  of the Amazon province and has a population  of  2 million. 

We were booked on the meeting  of the waters cruise which is where the Rio Negro merges with the Amazon  River.  I've got to admit that this was not at all what I was expecting.  I really thought that the Amazon would be about the width of a normal river when we'd gotten  this far up, and that the meeting of the waters cruise would be in some small canoe to take us upstream  of some minor tributary  river. However,  the Rio Negro itself is 22 miles wide at this point - so clearly I had no idea of the scale of what was going on here. 

As it happens  we did set sail in a smaller boat that looked a bit like a miniature  paddle steamer.  

This took us to a conservation  area that was submerged during the wet season  and  above ground during the "not quite so wet" season.   The rainy season  starts in December,  so by now the land was mostly submerged but the reeds were all  above water.  Here we transferred  into small canoes and visited  a  floating  village.

I've  been  to a floating  village in Cambodia  on Ton Le Sap lake and it was a nerve wracking and not very pleasant experience.   This was a thousand  times  better. For starters the water was clean and the life jackets in the canoes didn't look like they were 70 years old.  Also the floating buildings we stopped at looked well maintained  instead of looking like they were rotting and about to sink.  In case you're wondering , I wouldn't  recommend  a Ton Le Sap lake cruise if you  ever go to  Cambodia.   The Amazon  floating village  was actually  quite  pleasant.  There wasn't  a  huge amount of wildlife,  but we did see loads of egrets and some  giant water lilies.

The next part of the excursion  involved  getting  back on the  mini paddle steamer boat and traveling  downstream  for 30 minutes to see the actual  meeting of the waters. On the way I did manage to spot one of the elusive  pink river  dolphins,  but there was no chance of a photo.  It was gone in a flash and  probably  wouldn't have had to  come  up for  air again for another  10 minutes. 

The 2 rivers run alongside each other for about 10km without merging.   The reasons for this include  differences in temperature,  speed and  acidity of the 2 flows.

After the  excursion it was back to the ship for a farewell  dinner and  packing.  Tomorrow  will be a traveling  day, so no blog entry.