The Manaus Harbor and a taxi selfie
Staying at Airbnbs has pros and cons. One con we've found in our 10 days in a Brazil is that we end up taking a lot of taxis. This costs money, especially because we always have to take two cars since we can't fit six people in one taxi.
Sunday morning we went down the historic center of Manuas, on which sits the massive harbor on the Rio Negro. Some streets shut down to host parties and flee markets selling all kinds of things. It seems the specialty is Brazilian national team jerseys - the yellow shirts are all over the place.
Of course there's a, um, scent in the air...mostly because of the water, but we're thinking that some of it had to be because of the brutal heat. As much as we can we look for shaded areas and sidewalks to navigate the area. We check out a couple of markets, one selling fish, fruits, and vegetables that was probably an entire block long. None of the places had air conditioning, but somehow it works.
We spent a few hours in the area, getting our first up-close of the river, taking in the remoteness of where we were in the world. We've also been surprised at how a city so far from everything has so many of the conveniences and ways of life as many large cities in the world.
We spent the latter part of the day looking for reputable boat tours that could take us down the river and show us a little bit of the jungle and rain forest. This proved unsuccessful as we couldn't find anything open.
Having sweated enough, we decide to head back to the condo. We hail a taxi and ask if he'd be willing to take all six of us. To our surprise, he said yes. The problem was that we didn't expect him to.
As the biggest guy Brett took the front seat. I went furthest left in the tiny backseat, lifting one butt cheek onto the armrest. Curtis followed, then Kieran, and Clint squeezed in on the right side. Ashely rode on Clint's lap. We knew it was risky since the taxi drivers all drive like mad men. And obviously it was uncomfortable. But it was also adventurous, and once we got back - safely - we laughed at how fun of a story we just created.
