City Tour Gone Bad

We had booked a five star tour for Friday morning to learn about the history of Manaus and see the highlights. We’ve seen plenty of the working class side of Manaus and we wanted to spend time in old town. It did not go well.

It started out badly when the car arrived 25 minutes late. Then it got worse when it became apparent his grasp of English was rudimentary. 

We got no history of the city driving in, and when I asked how long he’d lived in Manaus he said two million people live in the city. And then we saw preparations for a parade.

We discovered that Friday was Amazonas State Independence Day, but we were unable to discover what independence and from whom and when this might have taken place.  

What we did discover is that the city shut down for a three day weekend. And guess what? The city’s biggest attraction was closed for the holiday. 

Indeed our imbecile driver and fake tour guide announced the Amazonas Theater was closed for the day.

The whole point of our tour was inaccessible.

I went into the cafe at the side door and spoke to an employee of the theater in English and he said they had a tour in English at 10am Saturday. I just walked away from the tour guide and the whole mess. I was incandescent with rage and didn’t want to speak. $170 for a private tour of nothing.

I walked away and Layne followed. This plaza was brilliantly weird, look at the wavy pavement which is actually perfectly smooth. 

The tour guide followed but I just waved him away. No more bullshit, I said nothing but simply wanted to take an Uber back to Rusty. 

We went to a souvenir shop and Layne bought earrings and a small wood cut to hang up aboard GANNET2. Then we found an air conditioned coffee shop where we were located by the owner of the tour company. He was a total jerk but trust me, he would describe me the same way.

He didn’t apologize, he accused us of being rude and disrespectful and it went on and on and I stood there and asked myself if this was how he plans to win over dissatisfied customers. No way I wanted another tour with his company on Saturday or any another day. We could do better on our own. What a waste of time and money. 

In the end it’s a “ he said -she said” situation, and I made my point as firmly as I could without yelling but I am sick of trying to behave like a regular tourist as we always seem to get it wrong. The best tour we have had was the iceberg boat tour at Perito Moreno in Argentina which really was brilliant. Otherwise we’ve had terrible luck being normal tourists, poor guides can easily be replaced with internet searches these days. I need to get reading about Manaus I suppose. 

Uber got us home, Rusty opened one eye and wagged his tail as he sprawled on the couch while I scratched his chest. And we were back to normal. 

Our plan is to tour  the opera house Saturday and on Monday after the holiday weekend we have a lead on an air conditioning company that may be able look at our unit. We got the information from a Brazilian traveler we met in the campground near Manaus last week  and he had said to contact him if we needed anything. Fingers crossed. 

Manaus old town is run down and picturesque in a rather New Orleans kind of way, full of faded glory and decrepitude. 

I’m hoping the opera house tour will give us some more insight into this strange city in the jungle. 

One gets the feeling northern Brazil isn’t really ready for a tourist invasion. And Guyana gives a strong impression of being even further off the tourist route. Well, this is what we wanted. 

But Friday was still a strangely annoying day.