Andrew, Julie, and I decided to take a side trip up to see the Amazon
over the weekend. Now, saying, “Let’s go see the Amazon” when you’re in
Salvador is just like saying, “Let’s go see the Empire State Building”
when you’re in Seattle. It’s across the country, and the country is
*big!* Nevertheless, if your choice is visting the Amazon for 0 days or
2 days with long flights, well, go for 2. Totally worth it. But I get
ahead of myself.
Andrew and Julie had taken off Thursday to get things settled. I needed
to stay for the morning at a workshop, but left Friday afternoon. The
plan (and I know this will sound monumentally stupid) was for me to go
to Manaus (via a lovely stopover in Brasilia), and the next day in
Manaus, a guide would pick me up from the hotel. We’d then go to a bus
stop, where we’d go 3 hours by bus to somewhere, and then by boat for 30
minutes or so to the camp on the Amazon and meet Andrew and Julie who
were going up the day earlier. I found out later that they gave me a
50-50 chance of actually making it. Thanks guys! 
As it turns out, aside from a 5 hour layover in Brasilia instead of a 3
hour one (where I met a great guy from Greece on his way home after
bumming around Brazil for 3 months, and a lovely lady who works for the
Brazil equivalent of the FBI on her way home as well), everything
actually worked out exactly as planned. I got to the hotel (the Hotel
Tropical, which is really nice, very old (like 20s construction, but
with lots of old Brazilian dark hardwood, even on the floors) and
crashed, and the next morning at 7:30 the guide showed up. It was Kris
Gomes, the son of the owner of the tour shop (Jungle Experience, owned
by Christopher Gomes. Apparently, he gets a lot of business from the
write-up in Lonely Planet, and seems to earn it well!). We then went to
the bus station where Antonio (our cab driver) dropped us off, and let
me know he’d be there to pick us up tomorrow afternoon. We hopped on the
bus and trucked up 3 hours to somewhere. The buses were these MarcoPolo
busses by Mercedes-Benz; air-conditioned tour buses, really.
By the way… using the toilet on these things is one of the more
challenging things you can do. I don’t recommend it unless you really,
really need to use it.
We made it up to some small town where Kris handed me off to a local
guide, and then we were on a boat (just a small dingy with an outboard
motor) cruising up the Amazon. Well, the Rio Urubu, which is a
good-sized tributary. 30 minutes later, I met up with Andrew, Julie, and
some other camp-mates (Rebecca from London, there with Federico, an
Italian, and Jean-Francios, a Frenchman who was spending 3 months
traveling randomly on holiday.
Wow, things can actually work!