Today we went jungle tracking...
not bad not bad at all... lotsa mosquitos though, and not a lot of animals. The only wildlife we have encountered are the two dogs from the nearby village Venus and noname... They have followed us throughout the way. We did see snakes, but do to my severe animosity to those creatures (trying not to call it phobia) i stayed on the sides. I think Noof got a couple of shots.

THen we were suppose to go parana fishing again which we skipped. We decided to hang out at the 'hotel'. We ended up hanging out with 3 spider monkeys. ONe very old and apparently male (papa) one younger still a female and one a baby called Shakira (apparently an orphan). The little one has a habit of climbing on you and not letting go it takes 3 people to get her off you. (I have pics to prove it) It slept on Noof for good portion of the afternoon . THe two other ones were hanging out wtih me by our room climbing all over the place restling or just sitting. amazing... Then we went exploring to the 'beach'', and the local touristy spots quote on quote, we also managed to climb on the observatory tower which was partially closed. Me being unbound by the red tape i went all the way on top which was missing a step or two and the very top was missing the floor period. So i ended up hanging on to the polls just to take a couple of about the tree shots. When we got down my knees were still shaky... now i'm waiting for the touristy stores to open so i can go and shop weee haaa...

tommorow morning we are leaving for iquacu falls which should proove to be as interesting as ariau towers...

later

02/25
well, it took us 9 hours to fly to Manaus. To be clear the flight should take 3 hours ( like going from NY to Florida) but since it made 5(!) stops on it~s way it took 9. On top of that the plane was small ( think crop duster) and i donґt remember myself feeling that air-seek. ON a positive side they fed us exactly 5 times... and it was the same sandwich with ham and cheese...
We got into Manaus at about 12 am, beat. You couldn~t really sleep on the plane since they would wake you up to put your seeat in the upright position everything we would land or take off. The hotel in Manaus was tremendous with a zoo inside, a huge swimming pool, and endless hallways of rooms... we didn~t really get to enjoy all that however since we had to wake up at 6 to go to the amazon towers.

02/26 after pulling ourselves by the hair out of bed we went on a 2 hour boat ride on Rio Negro (black river). the water is amazing. It is burgundy, but clear as hell... after a beautifull ride we finally arrived.

Amazon towers (www.ariau.tur.br) is tremendous. The little bridges are suspendes high above in the air in the middle of the jungle connecting various towers of rooms... we were greated with loud screams of 2 huge colorful birds (of course i don~t remember their names (cacados), spider and squirel monkeys running around playing with kids and... just everything all together wonderfull and great!

soooo, we had lunch and at 3 went parana fishing on canue boats ( that~s not how it~s spelled but lets pretend)... on our way our guide, Gabriel, showed us his house where his parents and his brothers and sisters live... the kids were adorable (Michelle the damn trick works they all wanted to take pictures of each other and then see it on the screen!), but it started to rain and got dark very quickly ... bla bla bla... then we got on our way wet, cold and miserable, buuut I caught my first fish ever! it was a cat fish though, which we let go after of course doing a photoshoot with it.... our guide caugh parania and we begged to go home...

dinner...

went night alligator watching... what a trip.. these guides would search for the aligator with a flashlight somehow see their eyes in the dark go catch one and bring it to the boat for everyone to take pics with and touch... nuts... the crock that we caught was about 7 years old, a girl ( as we found out after on of the tourists inquired if it was and the poor thing was turned over for a closer inspection), and aparently was a good size to be made into a purse or shoes... grrr...

now i~m sitting at this wonderful internet room suffering through a 64kb connection therefore i~m going to sleep...

tomm, we go jungle tracking and god only knows whatelse...

I don~t know how much i enjoyed Salvador, but this is definitely awesome and Soooooooo recommended!

and soooo many pics =) don~t know how good they are comming out though ahhh half of the time i want to forget i have a camera... who owns whom...

ciao

02/23 -- today we did nada... it was a day defined by ґpoeli teperґґ mojno i pospatґ, pospali teperґmojno i poestґЁ exact translation being-- we ate now we can sleep, we slept now we can eat,etc...
then we spoke with Andrea Noofy~s friend from Sao Paolo who came to Salvador for Carnavale... she told us which box to buy tickets which we did... the box is basically a two-three store stand overlooking the street where all the people and floats go buy so you can yell and scream and jump and pretend to dance... which was kind of an experience since this time we decided to be smart about the money and the camera...
we had quiet a distance to walk so we had to find a way to conceil everything so it doesn~t get stolen and we don~t get killed in the process, and me being pissed about the fact that i can~t leave my room with my camera ... i wasn~t having it anymore... soooo, the money went in: Noofy~s shoes (John), all the little pockets we had, i wore double underwear with money attached with bobbypins to them (and i~m not kidding!), my camera went on the string under my skirt dangling between my legs ( at that point i was curious if it would fit into my behind =D) /
singing the warrior songs we went ahead on our journey paved with many many obstacles...
otherwise it was very nice a lot of people all dancing...
the characters that we were curious about is most of the man were dressed as ghandi~s as we found out later they is an affiliation called ~children of ghandi~ so all the man where white with blue turbans, white robes with blue beads on them and white loafers... there were sooo many of them that they would make wonderful waves of white and blue piercing the crowd...
24/02 we slept at least until 3... got up went to eat, feeling brave in front of our hotel (there~s a police precint right by us) we starting shooting the sunset when a buncha kids ran up to us and started toying with my camera (Michelle got a couple of cute ~michelle kids shots~=)) then their mother showed up angrily waving her finger in our noses and pointing to her stomach until she was appeazed with a couple of rios... at that point she was very nice to us ... =) then we ate again (seems we do a lot of eating here considering how cheap it is )
and then we gathered our bravery and went on the streets again to see more of carnavale... this time we stuck were there was not too many people or rather not too many suspicious looking people and we jumped around a bit... and then went home to sleep.... ahhh
02/25
today we decided to venture out of the norm (being that the carnavale is over) sooo we got up caught a cabby and went to see this church Bonfim... which is a very pretty local church. On account it being Ash Wednesday it was closed (bumer) our cabby offered to wait for us... then he drove us to the port (forgot the name will have to remeber) and the cabby offered to wait for us... then he drove us to the this lake Tororo which has all these african goddeses standing smack in the middle, with a wonderful little restaurant on the shore where we had an enourmous meal for 85 reos $35??? for 2? and the cabby waiting for us there... then he drove us to atm machine waited and then drove us home

the point being that we spent a day out with this guy driving and waiting for us... and at the end he asked for mere 85 reos... it~s unbelievable... there~s so much evil and there~s so much good...

tommorow we are going on the tour of Pelerinios and then we are off the airport to go to our next destination: Manaus...

xox
Olya

soooo, we went to the islands.... marvelous trip by boat with a gorgeous skyline of Salvador... the islands themselves were marvelous with lotsa locals fishing, selling stuff, doing one of those capoiera dance-fight kinda performances...
then we ran out of money and apparently those islands are not up their with the rest of the world... geees what are they thinking ;) soooo we found two very nice boys from our group who happen to stay in our hotel and who happen to be from harlem, new york and baltimor,maryland... who agreed to ґsponsorґus (go figure)
the thing is that when we tried getting money from an ATM a day before apparently all the banks in our area are CLOSED!!! because of the carnavale and walking 15-20 minutes with a stash of cash in your bra is NOT an option... by the way a bra became not only a much needed support but a much needed safe box... (however i spoke with an Israily woman from our hotel who said the stole money from there too, so much for carrying it there)....

so today we grabbed a cab to go on a quest for an ATM machine which costed us plenty and was sort of a mission with a plan carefully layed out to make sure the money was retrieved safely and delivered back to the hotel...

enough about that.... another grave mistake made on our part was not putting enough sun-block therefore i now look like a roasted crab with a huge blister smack in the middle of my nose.... mike suffers less but still has plenty of burning spots....

no idea what we are doing today hopefully something safe....

adios

What a huge city.. Think Los Angeles... flying over it you don~t see the end or the begging... sea of red roofs blening with a cloud of fog on the horizon line.

We had 5 hours before our plane to Bahia Salvador, so we went to visit Noofy~s friend -- Andrea. Andrea is a 3rd grade teaching assistant at an American school. Her family lives 5 minutes from the school, so we stoped by her house to freshen up and then went to visit Andrea~s class (they were preforming Cinderella) Later on her schauffer drove us back to the airport. Hmmm.. a schauffer... did i mention they have a maid and a house filled with wonderful things -- paintings, icons, stones, rugs. All tastefully arranged (think Architectural Digest). I think i saw my fu ture... Then we went to see the play where I met Andrea. Andrea is a bubbly happy go lucky person who squeelled and ran in a 100 degree weather to greet us. The play was amazing. Really talented kids and well planed performance.


We really did get to see the city much. We will be staing there another day on our way to Rio so we figured that we~ll have that opportunity later.

We arrived about 9 at Salvador. The room at first horrified me to the bone, I now realize, was not that bad. Except that the hotel is located right on the beach and smack in the middle of the Carnavale. Which might not be a bad thing except that right at around 11pm they started banging something really loudly and iddn~t stop till the morning. ohhh well.... and so we slept... walk up... ate... slept some more... walk up at 10 pm and decided that we shoud go to the carnavle and check things out....


grrrr.... well.... a number of people on hour way pointed to my camera (the little olympus one) made big eyes and said something to the extent of don~t go any further... but did i listen??? noooo... i~m an avid traveler i mean what can they do?...

well the further we pushed our way through the jungle of bodies, the louder the music got, the more people were jumping... things started to happen... groaping, touching, my camera got grabed 3 times at their final attempt i just gave up the case from the camera with my sigs in it...if we were in US we would file some kinda of an abuse suit ohhh well i~m not and despite the adequete presence of dudes in heavy armory things got heavy to the point where me and mike looked at each other grabed hands and started running towards our hotel. Around 2 am we chilled in our hotel still jittery other what happened and I started questioning whether to take my camera(s) at all, anywhere....

----
09/20 today we decided we have enough of carnavale. We will wait for Andrea to show up with her friends (at the very least they speak the language). For now weґll do the cultural touristy things. So we went to the Hystoric town which was quiet pleasant and lacked any physical contact for which we are both very greatfull =oD so now Noof is chilling by the pool with very spunky music playing and me being the idiot righting this on this note i think i~ll go join him...

tomm we are going boating to some islands around here where they told me it~s safe to bring the camera alas...

ciao