29 October 2023 Manaus

In search of creative activity

“Life is disappointing and then you die..”
Buddha first teaching

“Everything falls apart, so be careful out there.”
Buddha’s last teaching

Slept in until after 9 am, then had an easy morning organising backpacks as I am flying later with only hand baggage. Checked out at midday and left my bags at the hotel.

My flight is not until 3:30 am, so I won’t leave for the airport until around midnight. Effectively this gives me twelve hours to play with. I deliberately don’t tell myself ’12 hours to kill or fill’ as that sets a negative frame of mind. I have 12 hours to be creative with my time.

I set off down the main road which was cordoned off to traffic. At the top of the road, there were a number of food stalls, then stalls selling all sorts of odds and sods. These were followed by more stalls selling food and the bottom of the road. It was here that I stopped for a late breakfast Brazilian style, consisting of various fried meats with spaghetti and potato salad. Cheap and cheerful.

I needed coffee, so I cut across some side streets aiming for the same coffee shop that I enjoyed yesterday at ‘Cafeteria do Largo’ by ‘Largo de São Sebastião’. By the time I got there they were still preparing to open for Sunday afternoon.

At this point, Marina appeared out of nowhere, and said she was looking for a taxi to go to the Museu da Amazônia – MUSA, and asked if I wanted to come along. How could I refuse such a opportunity to be creative with my time. While waiting for an Uber we met two more people who had shared the journey from Tabatinga.

It was about a 30-minute ride to MUSA where we arrived just after 2 pm.

This wonderful open air museum is well worth a visit. We walked through the forest on a well defined path visiting the Arachnoid House before continuing to ‘The Tower’. The Tower is of metal construction and climbs above the tree line. It was quite a hard, hot and sweaty climb for me but very much worth the effort. We then continued along a 1km path back close to the entrance and café. Here we met another two sailing companions visiting MUSA on this fine Sunday afternoon. It was now a little after 4 pm and the site closes at 5 pm. We had look at the Aquarium that contained some very large Amazonian fish. The Aquarium was next to a small pond with giant floating lilly leaves, and also nearby, was the House of Snakes. We returned to the entrance where our sailing buddies were waiting for us to go the the Parque Rio Negro to watch the sun go down.

The Black River Park wasn’t too busy with families out walking and groups of boys playing soccer. We made our way to the end of the park to get a few photos of the sunset but the horizon was very cloudy so I only took a couple of shots.

There may not have been a great sunset but there was a wonderful red moon, such as I have never seen before (image at Instagram @kapikoy100

Back near the entrance to the park there were a few food outlets, so we had a couple of large pizzas between us, before taking another Uber back to Teatro Amazonas. The four of us said our good-byes and I headed for the I ice-cream shop for my dessert. Back at my hotel I sat quietly for a couple of hours until midnight…

Budget costs: