Manaus to Belém

I really need to keep cracking on this blog thing. I just realized that I was in Manaus like a month ago! I will try to catch up.

The rest of my trip in Manaus was pretty uneventful. I woke up the first morning and I wasn't sure but it seemed like I had some beg bug bites or something. I have no idea what those look like, but I had something. It was all on the front of my body too because I was sleeping on my stomach because of that rash I was telling you about. And that is when I knew that the price was too good to be true. :) It actually was just fine. It was just funny to feel like I couldn't sleep on my back or on my stomach. I wasn't sure how I would sleep! No big deal though, it all went away, even the rash after a while. I did the same things as I did the first: walked around, checked out the architecture, the fish market, the plazas, and everything. It is a cool place.

On Sunday night, I headed to the airport. Like I said, it's pretty hard to get out of Manaus if you aren't on a boat or a plane, and I had my boat time already. So I got a flight to Belém that was pretty inexpensive. It left on Monday at 4:30 a.m.

I brought three books with me on the trip and the third was going really fast, so I decided to buy a new book the day before I went to the airport. I went to this bookstore, was checking out some books, and it started to rain. It started to rain really hard. It was amazing. I don't know if I have ever seen rain like that. The sidewalks looked like a waterslide with an inch or so of water constantly running down. The water splashed up onto the sidewalk from the street too and so there were these small rapids at the curbs. And even inside the bookstore, these puddles started to form. But none of them were near the door! And I know that the building had at least another story on top. I don't know where all the water came from, but the bookstore was flooding. It slowed down, and then I left. It was wild! I've never seen puddles like that in a bookstore....

I bought "Around the World in 80 Days" in Portuguese and hoped that I would understand most of it. I started that night when I got to the airport and really enjoyed it. There are always words, especially in literature, that I don't understand but it went really well. I enjoyed the beginning that night in the airport, and slept as much as I could before boarding the plane at 4 am or so.

We got on the plane, and I had a window seat. I like to see stuff out the window, but I don't like being cramped into the wall. Especially when people hog the armrest or are really big. So I usually don't like the window, but thought it would be nice to rest my head against and to see stuff. The guy next to me wasn't big, but he was kind of an armrest hog. And he was hogging the armrest he shared with me and the one on his other side. Then a stewardess came around with a bowl of candy in wrappers for people to have. You know how those things are, people take a few treats. This guy next to me reached his hand in, hesitated for a second, and then pulled out like ten pieces of candy. I couldn't believe it. He stuffed them in his pocket, and maybe my memory is fading (it has been a month), but it seems like he did it again at one of our stops. I was disgusted. An armrest hog and a candy snatcher, right there next to me.

I fell asleep on the flight and Belém was the second stop. At our first stop, I woke up. I didn't know where we were, so I tapped him and asked him to make sure that we weren't in Belem. He told me where we were and then started to make some conversation. He asked me if I was Italian, I said no. He asked me if I had ever been to Belém, I said no. He told me that I needed to call him and have him show me all the sights. He gave me his name and number. It was nice of him to offer. Josimar was his name. And as we finally made it to Belém, he was leaving the plane and he did the "Call me" thing with the hand and mouthed the words. It turns out that it means the same thing in Brazil as it does in the U.S. I didn't call him.

It was still pretty early in the morning when we arrived. I got off the plane, got my stuff, and took a bus into downtown Belém. I will write more about that in a few days!