In Manaus

 We went into Manaus to look for help with our rooftop air conditioner. Since we got a leak fixed in Chile it has been cooling less as though there is another leak, but the problem is no one deals with RVs here in northern Brazil. One guy looked at it very kindly but had no clue. We’ve gone to others but this is a town where technicians go to fixed a/c units in peoples’ home and their shops are empty by day. So we will have to make do with what we’re getting from the unit, a string blower but not a lot of cold air. The result of all this was a drive around town and not in the best neighborhoods. This is Manaus a city with a not great reputation in neighborhoods where tourists don’t go and probably shouldn’t. We started by looking for six quarts of engine oil, 5w20 is not a common weight. They had it but no filters, but I have two left so that’s okay.  Jeep dealers have them as a last expensive resort. 

It looked like red licorice to me but it’s synthetic and at five bucks a quart it’s a deal. I have the oil changed every 5,000 miles and the odometer is at 119,500 miles so we’ll do it in Boa Vista, a smaller more easily managed city 500 miles north. 

Then the a/c and they kindly took a look with no result. 

Carrefour, a French supermarket we also saw in Argentina, is currently Layne’s favorite. 

And Rusty got a walk. 

Nice clean and modern open 24 hours:

Some rather strangely named cheese:

This was Wednesday (the “fourth useful day of the week” in Portuguese, I kid you not) and it was time to go home and we arrived just before dark. We don’t like to be on the streets among night owls. 

Thursday we went out to see if we could get the a/c done. Rusty stayed home and we were back by lunchtime with a roadside roast chicken and no air conditioning success. 

I find drivers polite and patient on the whole with no horn honking. The streets are paved with a form of hard rocky road ice cream. We bounce mercilessly through the ripples and over the lumps; it’s awful. Latin American cities are all cursed with underfunded street maintenance budgets making city driving a literal pain in the ass. But (below) if you want a vaccination there’s a company that will come to your home or workplace and I’ll bet it’s affordable. We are fully vaccinated against everything. Yellow fever can get you in Amazonia so they know the value of a jab around here. 

Not the greatest neighborhood, Cidade Nova (“new town”) and you can see we’ve had some rain. 

Gas is ruinously expensive, about $5:50 a gallon(“gasolina commun” not the 100% ethanol) but 30% of it is ethanol so our mileage isn’t great at the same time. Add to that Brazil is huge and distances especially in the north are endless. We are budgeting $850 a week in this country. 

Lava Jato means car wash. If you speak Spanish you may think you can speak Portuguese but this is a language as spoken that will spank you. I think I know how to say credit card now. “Carton de cray-shee-toe”

Layne got a passing shot of a taxi stand, but we’ve only seen motorcycle taxis, no cars. Apparently they do have Uber in Manaus which is what we would use. I rode a moto taxi in the past and I’m not doing that again. 

The pharmacist used Google translate when we went to get diarrhea medicine for Layne. In these countries you take your symptoms to the pharmacy and if you need a doctor they’ll let you know. Cheap quick and efficient, medicines cost next to nothing here for us.

Layne crossed the street to buy a roast chicken and they turned it into an encounter and walked Layne back through the traffic carrying her lunch for her. As Layne said it’s not the kind of service you’d get in the States, we are privileged. 

Tomorrow we take a formal tour of the city including the opera house but here ended today’s tour with thanks to Layne for many of the photos.

Apartment Living

 

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.

Settling In

 We had decided that to enjoy the flesh pots of Manaus we would rent an apartment, and here’s the odd thing: Layne’s first two choices were rented right out from under her. It is not of course Labor Day weekend in Brazil, nor is it as far as I know any kind of holiday but the demand for air bnb accusation is surprising. We did get a place for $353 for the week from Sunday to Sunday and we moved in Sunday evening. Only to discover the main a/c in the living room was not working!  Layne was fit to be tied as the whole point was to have a cool comfortable place for us to rest, a safe base from which to explore the city and a place for Rusty to rest and dry his hot spot.

True to her word the rental agent, on the couch above, got the repair crew in to install a new unit, which repair was not working. We have bed room units but they freeze the bedroom and barely cool the rest of the apartment with the result that we are confined to a room. It’s neither pleasant nor restful.  What happens next I don’t know but Layne is grumpy and Rusty is enjoying the apartment and his hot spot is healing so that’s good and when Layne gets grumpy I get unnaturally cheerful in an attempt to compensate. In short Team Lost is going through a rough patch.

This might be a good moment to point out some of the pitfalls of renting apartments through the air bnb system. Landlords lie and exaggerate and we have learned to read between the lines. We require safe parking for a 9 foot tall minibus, air conditioning or heat, of course pet friendly, and reasonable access to the city in question.  These are difficult issues especially GANNET2  and height limitations  which most people can’t picture. 

We use apartments as needed and only campground near Manaus is thirty minutes outside the city with no electrical plug ins. That means limited use of a/c for a night and a long drive into town to take a tour. The idea with an apartment is to leave Rusty safe and in comfort while we drive a few hours a day touring the city. It’s so hot out here is happy to be left alone in a cool apartment to sleep these days as the years pile up on him too. 

Sunday was it turned out a good day to do laundry in Manaus as traffic was light and we had the laundry to ourselves.  We had heard about Brazils infamous situation self serve laundries but this was brilliant. 

You get a QR code on the door to unlock it which will prevent casual pilfering then once inside another code yields instructions in English. You use one of the baskets to measure a load and with your credit card pay for a machine then you load the machine but add NO dips, the machine uses soap and softener automatically. Brilliant! And there no signs saying no fogs do himself was happy.

It was three bucks each off the washers and three more for the dryers and we washed everything in the van, sheets, seat covers, dog bed cover (illegal per the  sign) and got rid of as much of the red dust as we could. With the van interior in a shambles of clean bedding and clothes and rugs we needed a place to sleep…but first breakfast.

Luckily for us she had a sandwich shop open till noon Sundays and hardly knowing what we were ordering we got pressed egg and cheese sandwiches and two huge con leches. It was I swear a Key West breakfast in Manaus. Amazing.

It tasted good but it was that strange, unexpected yet perfect reminder of home. I could close my eyes and be at the White Street Pier doing nothing but listening to the ocean and eating Cuban food. 

And then I had to give GANNET2 another interior clean to remove one more layer of red dust. The idea was to have a clean comfortable home to return to in a week when we drive north to Guyana. Oh and by the way we are scheduled to cross the equator again into the northern hemisphere. 

Up next week went shopping at an Assaí supermarket which Layne explored and did not much like, describing as less like Publix and more like Gordon Food Service but I liked the easy access parking with shade and Rusty enjoyed a lengthy (for him) urban  walk, about two blocks in the heart. Then the weather turned.

We had a massive squall with heavy rain like summer in Key West but with the huge roof it was no problem, and soon enough the rain went away leaving puddles. 

On the way to the apartment through a city closed down on a Sunday afternoon Layne spotted a food stand. 

Chicken on a spit or on a grill…

Huge grilled sausages and look at this fish: 

We took grilled chicken, two sausages and a fish for future meals. The fish comes in a pizza box as demonstrated by these young customers:

I took Rusty for a walk and bought some sodas from a convenience store, and I noticed he had three card readers so when he picked up the red one I asked could he use the orange or black pointing to them and he laughed but I have no idea why they have them all. 

Check them out lined up on his counter, I qualified for the red one only. 

And finally we got to the apartment in a vast complex and discovered our parking spot for Block 2 Unit 306 is right round the lot beyond the swimming pool. Look what you have to do to park a 21foot van; imagine if we had an expedition truck…

The guy in the photo with his tiny three month old puppy hung out and chatted about the van and our journey, a few slow words at a time and then a young couple with a an infant spoke some pretty good English and it took ages to unload GANNET2 and fill the apartment fridge. Brazilians are just curious and friendly and chatty and totally approachable. I wish I spoke Portuguese but I am working on it.

Rusty assumed the position. A short walk to pee, then a long ice cold air conditioned nap. His needs are simple and I am happy to accommodate him. Here’s hoping this apartment works out and the a/c gets fixed, and Layne can get used to the quirks of this strange rather uncomfortable layout. I just want to stay out and read a book, watch a tv show, something that takes me far from Brazil and ignore the 105 degree heat. In a couple of days let’s take a city tour. For now I want to rest on my laurels in Manaus.