We landed all five in the harbor with our bags on the back and as always for the first mission to find a hotel. We start with cheap ones contained in our various guides but none for us. It's Sunday, it's 7am and the city is calm. A reel Hotel crosses our path and we offer a pension to go to another neighborhood cheaper. Why not, anyway, we all want to move quickly and go take a shower and good coffee. The hotel will also not the case in the district but obviously this is not what is missing. We split into two groups and visit them one after the other. In one of them, when we ask if they have any rooms available we were wondering if it's for an hour or a day! Well no, for the night! We look at the name of the hotel and it includes everything: Cupid Hotel ... In fact most schools in the neighborhood are the same type. In any case, what type or another, none is necessary, no light, humidity smells, too expensive ... The two groups are empty handed and we decide that we will first take a good breakfast and finally put our bags. In talking with the owner we learn they also have rooms upstairs. Okay, we'll see them and this time it's good, not luxury but it suits us. As we take three rooms we negotiate the price and finally we will install is the first time that we put so much time for us housing. We return to our room and we each give an appointment for later, we all need a good shower and some rest. It's Sunday after all. Somewhat mended, we start with Julia to see a little what it's like this city for which we have traveled more than four days and crossed half of the Amazon. Everything is quiet this morning, it's pretty strange to see so little traffic and people on the streets but it's also nice to discover the city. Manaus is the largest city in the Amazon, founded in 1669 by the Portuguese, it was at that time a village. In the mid-nineteenth century with the development of the automobile and tire industry in v ille 
is growing at a frenetic pace, as in Iquitos, through the exploitation of rubber. The decline comes after the 1910s when the rubber was planted in Asia at the initiative of the British. The city will decline rapidly. In 1957, the government decided to create a free trade zone to boost the economy and is in Manaus found the main industries of home appliances, electronics ... supplying the domestic market. Today, the city has over a million Half of people and saw a lot of tourism. There are still a lot of buildings in the glory days, some in ruins and others standing. We walk to the Teatro Amazonas, the first in South America built in 1896 and most majestic symbol of the economic heyday of Manaus. It has 700 seats and was built with bricks brought from Europe, French glass and Italian marble. We're a little disappointed by his appearance, a pink building not really terrible. For cons the dome mosaic representing the Brazilian flag has more sense. We believe that going to see an opera in the Amazon that le fait, entrons voir si des représentations sont prévues pour les jours à venir et apprenons que nous tombons en plein festival. Nous choisissons d´assister dans 4 jours à "Ariadne Auf Naxos" un opéra de Richard Strauss. La jeune fille de la billetterie nous demande si nous sommes étudiants pour payer le tarif réduit. Nous sommes flattés mais nous lui expliquons que nous ne pouvons plus bénéficier de ce genre de tarifs depuis bien longtemps. Soit elle ne nous a pas cru, soit elle avait envie de nous faire plaisir, elle a décider de nous en faire profiter quand même et nous a proposé de meilleures places à moitié prix ! Pendant que nous réglons les billets nous regardons les affichettes près the counter and read that, without requiring evening dress, some clothing is not tolerated, thongs for example. The problem is that we really do not have proper attire in our backpacks and other shoes we have outside our thongs are our hiking boots, too much class to go to the opera! The girl assures us that it'll be fine as long as they are not plastic flip flops. Anyway it will be necessary. As we come out on Patricia and Reto and continue our walk with them. We dine together in the streets, eating people, good and cheap and will drink a few beers in a nice little bar in the neighborhood our hotel. The boys play pool, here it is played in a different way, using only four balls and the one who wins from the last-no matter what he could do before. All a bit slammed we go to bed hoping that tomorrow the city will be a little more animated. Patricia and Julia do Reto We will keep 
s only three days in Manaus and we will meet in the evening for dinner together. We test another popular meal on the harbor. The food is good but smells are not. The port of Manaus is a very important trading place. Day or night, dockers unload the goods and is therefore a very lively, an entire hall is devoted to the banana, from the darkest green. We spend five days exploring the city and its surroundings and as usual we arpentons walk. Indeed apart from Sunday when the city is asleep, and up to week later, the streets are alive with street vendors, passersby and vehicles. On the eve of the departure of Julia we all three attempts to see the meeting of the waters. It is a phenomenon that occurs a few kilometers from Manaus, the Amazon and Rio Negro meets as their waters have properties different colors and they follow on a hundred miles before finally mixing. If we had not come at night on the town we could see the boat and suddenly in possession of information that Julia dug up at the tourist office we take a bus to a port that told him where we should be able to take a boat not too expensive. Just arrived it started to rain but this is not what bothers us the most. The bus dropped us in the right place but it is the entrance of a large hotel, it would be surprising to find a cheap boat. We are home to the time the rain stopped asking ourselves why the tourist office has sent us there ... The more we advance the less we understand. Again this would be that we would have had this info, with some Portuguese as we speak we could have told us that we had misunderstood but Julia speaks Portuguese. We arrive at the travel agency from the hotel and we'll find out. We are absolutely not the right place, they're good it was somewhat realized, but it is simply the opposite and actually go by boat but it really is not in our budget, c ' is the great luxury. The meeting of the waters so it will be for another day without Julia who leaves tomorrow. As in the hotel grounds there is a mini zoo we decided to go check it out tour by telling us that it is always better than nothing. Hardly had we time to see three creatures that starts raining ropes. We rushed into the hotel to shelter us and we'll finally three hours to wait until the rain calms down ... After visiting all the places where we could go we had a small pool and a game of cards. He had to deal since we could not afford to enjoy either the bar or the shops of the hotel. It was a little surprised but nobody asked us what we were doing there and we could wander around without a problem. The rain stopped and we finished with was continue our tour of the zoo before taking a bus to downtown. With all that it is four o'clock in the afternoon and we had not done much, we ended the day with a short tour before the hearth 
it never sets. Tonight Julia goes to the opera and the other four decide to go for dinner at a Churrascaria taste of good meat at will. We take the absence of Julia who is a vegetarian and would not appreciate this kind of place. For us it's the day after the opera. Meanwhile we say goodbye to our three friends who leave for other destinations. We finally decide not to go see this famous meeting of the waters and enjoy these two days to deepen our city tour. Level museum buildings and exhibitions we will not have much luck, they will be closed for renovation or exposure began only in a few days had just ended, in short we had the impression of not being in Manaus right time. Although the market had moved little since the great hall dating from the heyday in the surrounding streets! That did not stop to survey the city and discover some nice little neighborhoods. The old city is to leave the evening of "high output" for opera. We return to the hotel to make us all beautiful, jeans, hiking boots and a clean up, the great class and join the center and the famous opera. On the advice of the nice girl who sold us the tickets we're ahead and be the first in the box provided for five people, otherwise she has said we will not see much. Gradually people come very well dressed for the most part but we note with relief that our holding does not indicate traveler too. At 20 o'clock we go into opera, in the lobby, a Lego model of the building of over 30,000 parts, we invite you to join openers our lodge. We are the first and until the performance begins we have ample opportunity to study the design and imagine the rich families in our place at the beginning of last century. The musicians joined the pit followed by the conductor, the lights dim, the curtain rises and the actors come on stage. The opera is in German, subtitled in Portuguese on, not easy to follow ... We will come out nevertheless delighted that we changed a few of our evenings playing cards in our hotel room, writing articles for the blog or drink beer with other travelers we meet because even the globe-trotters may suffer from daily ... The next evening we left Manaus in the bus to Colombia via Venezuela, 24-hour bus to Ciudad Bolivar and then prick the west to get closer to the Colombian border.
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