RTW: Exchange in Chile

Rios do Brasil

Rio de Janeiro, by the way, has something to do with a river after all. Despite his name hinting towards absolute geniousness, the discoverer and founder of Rio, Gaspar de Lemos, mistook the big bay for a river in one January early 16th century.. Thus: "river of January".

That was where I got an extra day, thanks to the utter incompetence and antiservice of Varig, a shitty Brazilian flight company. This bad word-of-mouth is owed to a record (in my book, most likely a big number on a Latin American scale as well) of seven uninformed changes in the flight time. My personal favourite was the "lets take off 5 hours BEFORE and not tell the customers" -joke. As luck would have it, I did something I normally do not and checked the flight time the day before. Not that it really mattered, as that one was overbooked by about 15 people and the next one would be the next day.

Good thing in all this caused such grumpy looks (I was among the least grumpy, as I had time to kill because of the passport situation) that we all got rooms in a five-star hotel in the center of Rio. I was so damn lazy after all the hassle I slept for the remainder of the day, taking advantage of the free mega-buffets (for you sushi fans, yes, there was great sushi included, buffet style..) and extra services (massage, gym, sauna - a regular joke of a sauna by the way, I caused amazement being naked - room service, etc.) found in the hotel. A view of the Sugar Loaf from the hotel window:



The next day we got on the again and again delayed flight (with no food on a 6-hour flight just because it had a stop in Brazil) eventually to Manaus. I had at least 4 days to kill (actually, now the number is 5 and growing, the passport saga is not over yet) and the jungle was the local attraction. Of course, in addition to the jungle the small river in between had to be seen.

Manaus is not along the actual Amazon river, so after a bus ride I got to the real thing. An awesome sight really, the river is HUGE, and right there some 12 kilometers from Manaus the actual river Amazon starts, in a place called Encontro das Águas, or meeting of the waters. The name comes from the fact that there the dark violet Rio Negro from the north and the light brown Rio Solimões (in the picture below) originating all the way from Peru, meet. And the funny thing is that the waters do not mix, they just flow side by side from there (I tried to ask but even my guide did not know why is that). As I was there on a low speedboat on a cloudy day so all pictures of this were mainly a waste of time. Just take my word for it, a sight to remember.

posted by Kassu @ 3:06 PM