November 5 - 9:05PM - Hostel Manaus

Okay, so this is the first journal entry that I am slightly buzzed for so I’ll keep it short. Wait, I’ll get this out of the way first, my covert operations name is Max Gomez. Kevin is Joe Hamburger, Joe Hamburguesa in Portuguese. Mr. Joe Hamburguesa. That is all.

Anyways, heat and humidity is very heavy and I am sweating bullets as I sit inside on the blue hostel couches and write. Hopefully they wash these things every so often because the sweat drips off you and there is no place for it to go but to soak into the couch. Some of them smell… interesting. You wake up, take a shower and then sweat. Had a rough time trying to take a nap today. AC on full, boxers only, sweating my ass off.

I was all tired and sweated out today from walking a couple miles round trip to the Teatro Amazonas which is the opera house that was built in the jungle during the financially successful times of the European rubber barons. It was a good trip and we got a tour in ingles. Standard opera house type stuff I guess but this place is amazing because everything used in its construction was imported from around the world. Wood and roof tiles from France, marble and paintings from Italy, etc. It’s amazing to think that they even had the idea to build an opera house in the jungle in 1896 let alone what they actually went through to get it done.

After the tour we went to a little juice bar/café type place on a side street and had egg and cheese sandwich and an acai and guarana shake. Acai is the fruit from a palm tree I think and is supposed to have all kinds of antioxidant properties. I like the flavor mostly, almost chocolaty and very sweet. The shake I got was a very thick purple icy liquid ice cream texture.

After lunch we went back to the hostel and relaxed and I finished a book I was reading, the Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Currently it is early in the night and we just got back from hanging out at a restaurant with a Canadian dude named Matthew and a Guinea, I guess that’s West African, who I can’t remember his name. Funny thing is the Canadian dude told us he got mugged twice in Salvador. He’s traveling alone so that might have something to do with it. Sucks for him.

Anyways, the girl that works the desk at our hostel who speaks absolutely zero English and that has been annoyed by us asking her for random but not uncommon things all day long recommended three Locais tradicionales restaurants, all of which were closed or impossible to locate, so we ended up at an outdoor plastic tables (locais tradition) bar/restaurant that I mentioned earlier and got beef and fries and hamburgers (Kevin’s cover). The power went out on us for 15 minutes or so and the bar was completely dark as we tried to eat our dinner. A Brazilian dude that we met at the counter and that helped us order food and that I bought a beer for held his cell phone up for us so that we could see as we ate. Helpful but a little weird. Anyways, rolled out after we ate. Just looking forward to waking up and getting on our boat at 7:30AM tomorrow and seeing the jungle. With this heat in the hostel common area and the high ceilings, bright white walls and French looking chandeliers I feel like I am in Saigon waiting to start my tour of duty in the jungle. The Portuguese language version of CCR’s “Have you ever seen the rain?” that we heard playing at the port earlier in the day and that is stuck in my head helps add to that ambiance.