Layne has been under the weather with a cold and bed bound for two days so Rusty and I have been enjoying air conditioning, romantic walks in the apartment compound and repeated applications of goop to his hot spots which are healing nicely. 
That being the case I figured I might as well introduce to our air bnb location on the edge of the city of Manaus. The air conditioning has been fixed so now we have two bedrooms and the living room all cooled separately. It’s not a large space and it has rather peculiar furniture but for a week it gives us a safe base in this city of two million and it gets us out of the 205 degree afternoons. And Rusty likes being out of the van which is important.
And being able to spread out is nice feature. You’d find it small but after GANNET2 it’s spacious and we don’t have to obsess for a few days about putting everything away all the time.
The nearest campground to the city is half an hour out of town on the north highway and this place is within city limits. We have a couple of tours planned and being here makes it easy to get picked up plus Rusty gets to be comfortable while we’re gone. He knows it’s blazing hot during the day so he has no desire to follows us outdoors in the sun. 
Mornings GANNET2 is in shade so Rusty and I finished our walk at the van and I sat in the doorway reading while he sat up in the grass and watched commuters peeling out of their parking spaces. An older guy (my age?!) walking with his young carer stopped by and talked to me in English, a skill possibly explained by a daughter living in Orlando, about our journey. You will discover Brazilians are extremely friendly and these apartment dwellers are proof of that, with a smile and a greeting when they meet around the place.
And make no mistake this place is huge. We are in tower number two and there are eight with more complexes surrounding this collection of towers. It’s not where I would want to live necessarily but for a week it’s perfect especially as GANNET2 fits behind the security gate.
I rather liked the back of this attractive Fiat with a sticker telling the world “Everything I own belongs to God.”
Below you can see the entrance gate quite tall enough to accommodate a nine foot tall van and the entrance to our beehive is opposite the bright red car.
We lack for nothing and we’ve got the tv tuned to the English language and the couch stretches out into a recliner… this is what van dwellers call a break, pretty good funnier a change. We will have to leave one day though as Layne is organizing a flight for me from Paramaribo in Surinam to Europe in mid October so we can’t put down roots. The road will beckon soon enough.
