Manaus, arriving in the Amazon

 Rachel and I in the airport on our way to Manaus.

Here starts the adventure of Acheena and Áhscheou Glória.

This is how our names are pronounced here...roughly.

I go by Atena or Acheena here... it´s just how it comes out when you only speak portuguese and want to translate it into something recognizable and easy, as the "th" sound in english is generally not used. Poor Rachel, her name is extra hard to say in portuguese. "R" is pronounced like "h" and words ending in "l" usually sound something like "eooh"(it is hard to write this sound in english...) You may not be surprised to read that after realizing her name sounded like a sneeze in portuguese, Rachel gave up using her first name and just went by Gloria a lot. There were a few too many blank helpless stares upon introduction when the person realized they had no idea how to repeat her name.

Sooo here begins another huge post.

As my loving host from Salvador, Fabi, likes to say:

Welcome to the jungle!

Flying into the city of Manaus and seeing the incredible size of the Amazon was a reality check.

I had never imagined a river so large, in my head it was rediculously different. The truth of this place is wild and powerful, with points where you can't see the one side of the bank from the other...  At one point from the aiplane I caught my breath because it literally looked like an ocean. 

A few statistics for you: in the dry season the Amazon gets to be about 6.8miles (11km) at it's widest point, but in the wet season it swells to 24.8 miles at it's widest point... AAAAH, Nature, you rock my world.

We were here in the wet season!

On the rooftop deck of our hostel in Manaus, and playing ukulele on Rachels bunk.

I'm so glad I brought it!

Shout out to Glória ;) who let me use a bunch of her great pics!

 View of the outside area of the hostel.

Roof deck of Hostel Manaus,

we enjoyed many a breakfast and late night hang out session here.

Glacial Ice Cream

This ice cream store is a fixture here in Manaus,

we made sure to eat some every day, with exotic fruit flavors from fresh açaí to cajú!

The most wonderfully strange pizza.

Basically marmalade mozarella.

Walking around Manaus I happened upon this and had to comment.

You know you're in Brasil when even the manequins got back.

BUNDA!

Well, not much more on the city of Manaus, its right by the Amazon river, and was mostly a way-point for us. The people here were quite different though, I felt as though I was in another country. They are much more indigenous looking with broader features and a shorter stalkier build. Rachel and I have become accustomed to being the center of attention wherever we go, but here we stuck out like sore thumbs, attracting open-stares and head-turning down every street!

After doing our research, we purchased a 4 day trip in the Amazon based in the Boca do Juma (Mouth of the River Juma). Getting there requred a 2 car rides and 2 speed boat rides, taking a total of 3 hours. We got to cross over the meeting of 2 rivers, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon. Check out the difference in water colors.

Here's a close-up of the meeting of the waters.

The main Amazon is the darker blue one, it is clearer, colder, more acidic, and has less mosquitos.

The Rio Negro is warmer, full of rich jungle nutrients, and has more mosquitos :)

A shot from the side of our speed boat once we reached the smaller tributary from the Juma.

Much of the river looks like this, with what seems to be a submerged forest, the trees withstand this every year... how do they do it? What I did learn is that there are 2 types of jungle here, adapted through time to suit their environment. The trees below the rise of the water level are ocmpletely different than the ones that are above it, and they require completely different things.

A local house along the side of the river.

Everyone here travels by boat, gotta have one!

Most houses here are built on stilts for good reason.

 Beautiful children from a local family we encountered along the way.

Tucuma.

 Some of the most delisciously strange jungle fruit I've encountered.

 Tucuma.

The one on the right has been peeled, and you can see how thin the flesh is by the seed. The texture is thick and meaty like a fiberous plantain, but the flavor is mild and sweet. I had to buy a dozen, for the pleasure of getting to the fruit as much as the strange wonderful new flavor.

Another new jungle fruit experience. Cupuaçu.

It has huge seeds surrounded by soft fruit. Mine was a little sour...

Amazon speed boat! Hi Adam!

Speed boating through the Amazon

Our kitchen/lounge/dock.

This structure is floating, and is raised or lowered

with the swell of the waters of the Juma... how cool!

We stayed in the cabin up top

Our beds!

 The poster in our jungle lodge, showing some of the area things you can find there.

My buddy and me!

 I love this pic of you Rach

You look sly, beautiful, and sassy all at once,

I think it sums you up nicely. 

 Jungle sunset, day one!

That night we went caiman hunting!

Our skilled guides caught a few for us and taught us about them before releasing them.

BABY CAIMAN AAAAAH so cute.

I got to hold him forever while we boated around looking for more.

I want to keep him!

 Sunrise bird watching.

Our fearless leader.

It's hot already at sunrise, hence the swim trunks.

 A great place for an afternoon nap after sunrise bird watching.

Stay tuned, more to come :)

Carnaval in Rio's Sambódromo!

Rio's Carnaval.

I'm getting chills just remembering it!

This was absolutely the most extravagant celebration of life and culture that I have ever seen. The entire place was bursting at the seams with raw energy and excitement for this incredible event. There was so much joy, singing, movement and color on display. My eyes were always popping out of my head and I was laughing, screaming, and dancing from 9pm-4am. My face hurt from smiling so much by the end and the superglue that held my shoes together was hopelessly outmatched because I couldn't stop dancing.

(Arriving to the Sambódromo was an interesting experience, we were advised to take the metró as the most time-efficient way because traffic around the stadium is horrendous during carnaval. Well... that was an interesting experience. I use the word interesting in the context of an ancient Chinese curse... "May you live in interesting times..." We were jam packed like sardines into the subway cars for 30 minutes, doesn't sound like a lot I know. Each stop more and more people tried to cram in, and I was wearing a minidress, uncomfortably crammed against some interesting people, most of which had their sweaty armpits exposed trying to hold onto something... which was pretty much useless because we all moved as a unit whenever the train started and stopped anyway. Longest 30 minutes ever, and not an experience we will repeat on the way home!)

I've packed this post full of pictures because there is no way to adequately describe how incredible this parade was. And let me just say that live performance is never truly captured in image or even video. As a performer myself, I have always been disappointed by the images I see later of it, it seems diminished somehow. That being said... these pictures are awesome so just imagine how great it really was! So enjoy!

I loved this float. Check out all the people dancing on top of it.

Each samba school has about an hour and a half to parade. So between 9pm and 4:30am we saw 6 schools perform. They each have themes and many different sections of floats, dancers, muses of carnaval, passistas, drummers, couples representing their school. All the while every performer sings the school song as they parade and dance through the sambódromo, to be judged and hopefully win for the best performance.

This is one person on top of a float.

Each float has one, it's kind of like the angel on top of the Christmas tree!

This is the side of one of my favorite floats. On one side of these huge paintings was famous works of art from all over the world. Then the paintings would flip and there were pictures of Brasileiros, some well known, and some just average people. I thought it was a beautiful display of pride and joy in the Brazillian life and culture.

One of the Brasileiros on the back side of the picture :)

The carnaval was full of humor, joy, whimsy, and fun.

I laughed out loud a lot!

Speaking of humor...

It's so hard to pick my favorite picture of the night...

this is a competitor.

This float was so strange and funny.

It was like an art-deco, pop-art, comic-strip scene.

People had costumes with huge body parts all over them, mouths, noses, etc.

Man, these costumes are rad!

Here's a good example of some different sections in a school.

The blue angel things are costumes that anyone can buy and parade with the school.

The silver ball guys are people who learned choreography with the school, with the float behind.

Muses of Carnaval

The Bateria, I love their logos!

This float was so fun, check out the guy on the waterslide.

In the back you can see all the slide people, how fun!

Another muse.

Front row baby!!!

Another video.

This is just amazing.

Wheelchairs!!!!!

AAAHHHHH! Sherrie...you're my female body-building expert.

So, man or woman?

I expect a comment below.

Love it! Mom I thought of you for this one.

I wish I had caught the gold painted girl dancing in this video, she was so good!

On the other hand, the muse in the white costume mostly does a lot of walking around.

This was generally true for all of them. More walking, posing, and just existing in a rad costume, not so much dancing on their parts. I was expecting them to be the most talented and amazing dancers of them all to have the honor of wearing those costumes. Interesting.

There was so much joy everywhere. It's contageous!

This little feature was too funny.

This beautiful man is on top of this thing dancing for a while, then out bursts the fat guy with a rediculous entrance, dancing around in the same costume. It was so funny, I wish I had caught the beginning of this part of the performance. But here's the middle and the end ;)

There was a jungle float with a guy throwing bananas off the top.

Rachel caught one and it now lives in my bag.

Delain and I danced continuously for hours.

Our feet were dead and our hearts were full by the end of the night.

We made so many friends, performers would come up to us and dance with us,

each of us feeding off each others energy and passion.

I think I was still shaking my ass as I was falling asleep.

Happy girl!

Get some, girl!

Sambaaaaaaa!

Definitely one of my favorites.

My ladies!

We had such a fun time together. Who needs sleep when you have Carnaval?

Smoking dragons, the heads were animated too!

WOOOOOO!

Even when we sat we kept dancing. HA! I miss you Delain!

We were seated in the front row in a booth with only 2 other people in it. This poor quiet Russian couple had to deal with our loud hilarity. The guy of the couple seemed to have a better sense of humor, so we had a good time messing with him to loosen them up a bit. He kept trying to eat his sandwitch and we were dancing so much the seats were rocking. I think he was trying not to laugh for the sake of his girlfriend but was had a great time of it HA! It's carnaval people... smile!!!!!!

The later it got, the more rediculous everything became.

So glad to have shared this with all of you.

We were so close we could touch it!

Outrageous!

This was my favorite couple, they were so happy and talented and beauuutiful!

Um... wow.

That's a whole lotta woman.

Viva Brasil!

Many schools started with fireworks.

Passistas.

Metallic paint, thong and armbands... costume complete.

It's hard to capture the scale of this event.

Thinking of you, Annie!

I don't know if you can see them but there's tree-ents on this float.

One of the ents passed out during the parade...

I'm guessing from heat exhaustion or dehydration.

Watching the medics trying to get him off the huge float looked very hard.

At the end of the night, we left juuuust before the last float ended to beat the crowds. We had the most frightening taxi ride I've ever experienced on the way home, with the driver going 70mps throught the streets of Rio using only his fog lights. But we made it safe, thank God. We jumped in the pool in the dark to pass time between 5-6am so we could eat our included hotel breakfast before passing out.

The sunrise over Copacabana from the 18th story pool-deck of our hotel,

after one of the funnest nights of my life.

What a beautiful existance!

Good morning Rio, and goodnight!