I just left Brazil yesterday, I figured I'd write about that while it
was still more fresh and get to life at sea eventually.
Brazil - Day 1
I woke up at 5:30 to go outside and watch us pull into port. There were
probably about 20 of us up on deck 8 to watch, and we pulled in around
6:45. After breakfast I went to the union to wait for my trip to start,
as it was leaving immediately after we cleared customs. My trip was 1
day in Manaus and 2 days in Rio, and was through Semester at Sea. We
cleared customs around 8:45 and went outside to board another boat
(weird right, but this was a whole lot smaller) to go up the Rio Negro
into the amazon. On the rivers there exists a whole floating society,
from floating houses, to floating stores, to floating gas stations to
floating restaurants. It took us about an hour to get from where the MV
docked to the meeting point of the Rio Negro and the Amazon. It was
absolutely insane to see because the Amazon is a murky brown color while
the Rio Negro is the typical blue, and despite touching, the waters of
the two somehow don't mix. So there's literally this line in the middle
of the water where one side is the brown Amazon and the other side is
the Rio Negro. I wish I could add a picture to show how strange this is,
but try to just take my word for it. Eventually, we stopped at a
restaurant in the middle of the Amazon River (what?! who gets to stop
for lunch in the middle of the amazon? is this real life?), but before
we ate we went around to the back and got in canoes each with 8 people
to sail even further up the river! It was as scary as it was awesome
because the canoe was so deep into the river that we were actually
getting wet and it felt like it was going to tip over at anytime AND the
motor kept clicking off! In fact, one of the other canoes actually had
to be pulled by another because their motor turned off for good!
However, this trip down the river was AMAZING. We were in such a small
watercraft that we got to go into such narrow and shallow streams and it
was the first time I thought to be myself "holy shit, I'm in the Amazon
rainforest" and believed it. We saw a bunch of iguanas and various
birds, but what appealed to me the most was just seeing all of the trees
and vines and bushes and flowers. OH MY GOSH is it beautiful and I could
have stayed out there all day. But alas, I couldn't, and far too soon we
had to go back to the restaurant and have lunch. I was impressed at how
much food there was for lunch, and a good amount of it was actually gf.
It was mostly fruits for me, but gosh that pineapple was delicious!
After lunch we went to a craft market and then went on a short hike to a
lillypad garden. It sounds lame, I know, but we got to walk through the
rainforest to get there! We saw our first sight of monkeys and two
alligators! After our hike we got on the boat and were going to head
back to the MV. However, we ended up having to wait 2 hours to leave for
some reason I have yet to figure out. It was very frustrating to all of
us because we paid $2,000 to go on this trip and could be using our time
much better than sitting on a ship waiting to leave. By the time we got
back to the dock in Manaus, we only had 3 hours of time before we had to
be back in the union for an overnight flight, and in that time we needed
to shower, eat dinner and finish packing. So it was really aggravating
because we had only about an hour to explore downtown Manaus when we
could have had three if the boat didn't sit there for no reason (I say
no reason because the reason they told us over and over was that we were
waiting for the other group to finish because our boat had been tied to
theirs, but when we left they still weren't on their boat, and it stayed
at the dock while we sailed off).
So for the short time that we had we got on the shuttle bus that took us
from the dock to the town and walked around Manuas very quickly to at
least see it. Our destination was the old Opera House, so we really just
kind of walked there and looked around as much as we could on the way.
Manuas was a really crowded (and pretty smelly) city, and it made me
start to understand why the Brazilian tour groups at Disney have
absolutely no sense of personal space. After we made it to the opera
house and looked at it and the surrounding area, we literally had to
head back to the ship. So that was pretty sad, but I think that not
having enough time to see everything we want is definitely going to be a
common theme this semester.
Once we got back to the ship our group separated to do whatever. At 8:45
we were all supposed to meet in the union to leave for the airport as we
had an overnight flight to Rio. However, there were some issues in our
group which held us up. By 8:55, two people in our group weren't in the
union, so we sent two people to go call them and others to go knock on
their doors. One responded and came up, but one didn't. We contacted the
purser's desk and a few other faculty came around to help us find him.
By 9:20 he was still nowhere to be found and since we were risking
missing our fight we had to leave without him. I guess that he had gone
into Manaus with a different group and they had all been drinking pretty
heavily, so our guess was that he had been an idiot and was passed out
drunk or something. Anyway, the crew seemed pretty damn pissed (so were
all of us, and i'm sure every student who DIDN'T make it into this way
overbooked trip), and we left for the airport without him. Surprisingly
the airport was PACKED, and it took us forever to even check in. Like,
it was 10pm, why were there hundreds of people in line?!? Anyway, right
when the last 5 of us were at check in, guess who shows up? Yup, drunko.
And the first thing he says? "Who wants some shots?" and then goes into
talking about how he should say he learned his lesson, but he's probably
going to go out drinking right when get there. Completely obnoxious. And
I, among others, was PISSED. I can't understand why people are given
this amazing opportunity and waste it getting trashed and making poor
choices in foreign countries? But that's an entirely differently entry,
because i have a shit ton to say about it. Anyway, a bunch of people
ended up having to check their bags because they had a 10 pound (in
pounds, 5 in whatever Brazilians measure in) limit for carry ons. SAS
doesn't allow checked bags normally, but since it was meant to be carry
ons it was no big deal.
Security was really easy, and I was surprised by how lax the whole
system was. We didn't need to take off our shoes, liquids didn't have to
be out and jewelry didn't have to be taken off. So the process took like
10 minutes for everyone so that was nice. And then we were RUSHING to
find the gate and got on 5 minutes AFTER our departure time, but the
flight didn't leave for another 15 so we ended up being okay. Our flight
was pretty empty, so we all got some space to sleep which was good. And
brazilian airlines actually still give out meals, whoa! And after a few
hours we arrived in Sao Paulo for our layover. In Sao Paulo we to go
through security again to get to our connecting flight, but still were
early making it to the gate. For some reason it was an the international
terminal, which meant we had to customs stuff, but that was also pretty
quick. In the terminal they had a duty free store that sold hershey's
drops, but because I wasn't flying out of the country I couldn't buy
them. I WAS SO DEPRESSED. ANDDDD THE M&Ms AND HERHSEY BARS HAVE GLUTEN
IN THEM IN BRAZIL :( :( :( i wanted my chocolate, waaaa. Anyway, it was
still like 3am so I was in a half-awake state anyway, so that just made
it all worse. To get to our plane we actually had to take a bus from the
gate to the plane which was different, but pretty cool. This flight was
like 45 minutes, which was far too little when we are all wanting sleep
terribly, but it was exciting to be in Rio! We all got our baggage and
went through customs, then met our tour guide at the exit to begin day 2!
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