Went to a club/bar/dance venue to watch it. What an atmosphere! At half time the lights dimmed and a wicked mix of dance tracks came on.. everyone got up and started throwing some shapes! Much better than listening to some old dudes talk about how brilliant Neymar was!
There must have been a few thousand heads in there and I can honestly say I've never seen so many stunning women in one place.. jaw dropping ! After the game finished, it turned into a Massive dance night, DJ's tearing it up like a night in Ibiza! Brazilians definitely lived up to the party stereotype this evening, amongst many!
Left earlyish, had a mission of a flight the following day upto the Amazon in Santarem, consisting of 3 flights. Left at 4pm, 14 hours later we arrived at the hostel in Alter de Chao. 25th June.
Day one has been a predictability now, purely to explore the place. Can see the Amazon river from the Hostel, spent an hour chilling on the hammocks they have hanging up, looking straight at it. The place is fairly quiet, not many signs of tourism, which is a positive.
As we were walking through the main town, which consisted of maybe a dozen shops, food shacks, restaurants & bars, we chanced it and grabbed a bowl of what can be only described as translucent slime with kelp juice and prawns. We both ate about half and politely declined the rest. Always open to trying anything once and wanted a taste of what the locals eat. Fuck me it was a struggle, did our best but there was only so much we could eat before heaving!
We booked a mornings boat ride up the Amazon for the following morning, the guide picked us up from our Hostel around 3pm. He took us though some narrow waters in a motorised canoe with a makeshift roof, after stopping off at a local bar on the river we swapped into a 3 man canoe, which was a third of the size. Using a paddle he took us much deeper into the Amazon, winding inbetween trees and shrubbery!
After about an hour we had completed a loop and were on our way back to the local bar we swapped boats from. Overall I was taken back from the purity of nature the Amazon can only give you, an extremely humble experience.
So we got to the bar and after having a cold frosty one we spent some time throwing ourselves into the river via a rope swing. Pretty decent. The next day we booked a trek through Amazon jungle. Left around 9am, after an hour hooning it down the River we finally got to our destination.
There were ten of us, mostly from Canada and the U.S, good bunch of lads. Two guides walked us through the Jungle for about 3 hours, stopping occasionly to inform us of interesting sights. He cut into one tree and explained the white powder that seeps from under the bark helps treat chest infections, it tasted like weak paracetamol! Awesome.
After asking about another tree that had diagonal knife marks on it, he explained this tree is used for extracting latex from. He pinched a small piece from the tree and stretched it out about a meter, pretty cool.
We had passed the secondary section of the jungle and into the primary (dense and basically untouched), we passed the half way mark and the heavens opened.. thunderous heavy rain just anialated us all, but I quite liked it, not every day you get to experience this. For once I wasn't that bothered about it raining!
The rain stopped shortly and a small opening appeared from the dense forest, revealing a breathtaking view over the Jungle and the connecting Amazon river. Simply amazing.
We got back to base around 4 hrs after we left. Had some lunch cooked for us by the locals, chicken rice and salad. Muito Bon (very good). Headed back to the hostel after lunch and wiped out after a hot shower. What a fantastic day.
Just finished watching Brazil qualify to the Quarters, the Amazon has just erupted, what a finish!
Plus I had £2.50 on Brazil to win on penalties at 20/1 when they were 1-0 up, Bosh!
Looking forward to seeing Neymar & co in Fortaleza for the Quarters!
Until the next time.
Alex
