Manaus – Day One

Today, at around lunchtime, we arrived at the capital city of Amazonas, Manaus. It’s a two-day, overnight stopover; Tracey and I are escorting a tour tomorrow, so we had all afternoon to wander into the city and explore.

Marco Polo is berthed alongside the cargo quay, which has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is that we are some way from the cruise terminal, such as it is, and no pedestrian movement is permitted anywhere within the port. This means that to get into the city, we had to catch a shuttle bus to transfer us to the main gate. I’m still trying to think what its advantages might possibly be…

Leaving the port, and stepping into the city was like stepping into another world. Most of the streets adjacent to the port, in all directions, were full of market stalls and people. To describe it as bustling doesn’t really cut it. There’s something very raw and visceral about walking through Manaus; the noise, the smells, the constant activity, rattled on at a pace around us as we made our way slowly, but surely, up the main street towards the city’s famous opera house.

We were joined on our travels today by Christine, the Creative Writing tutor. When we got to the Opera House, we were also joined by Barbara, one of the other craft tutors, who had made her own way up from the port but felt distinctly uncomfortable in a city that is apparently under a certain amount of turmoil.

As well as the general hubbub of people, and busy market stalls, there was also a very noticeable police presence; with troops stationed on almost every street corner and large Military Police vans parked strategically here and there. We discovered much later that Manaus is currently undergoing something of a turf war between two warring factions. Rioting is a common occurrence, centred around the prison, and there have been several incidents of violence involving visitors recently, with stabbings and muggings disturbingly on the increase.

Tracey and Christine bought tickets to tour the Opera House while Barbara and myself sat outside trying desperately to get the wi-fi to work (to no avail). On their return, we decamped to a small pizza cafe adjacent to the Opera House for a drink, and to use the wi-fi on offer there.

Our route back down the hill towards the port took us through some particularly busy, almost claustrophobic, market streets. If I’d known about the riots and stabbings then, I might not have been so keen to run the gauntlet, eyeballing the locals… you never know who’s going to take exception to you or try to cut the rucksack off your back…

We briefly looked in on a large craft market before meandering back along the river side to the cruise terminal (such as it is). I say ‘such as it is’ because in its current state, it is a mere shadow of its former self. It’s mostly a very large, empty building with a handful of sad-looking craft stalls and a wi-fi network that simply can’t cope with the large numbers of people trying desperately to use it.

Manuas was once an extremely rich, opulent city, riding on the back of the rubber boom that gave rise to its very foundations (the Opera House remains one of the city’s iconic buildings from that time). Thanks to a dastardly englishmen who claimed the rubber plant he was taking home with him was a present for Queen Victoria, when in fact it was heading for India to be replanted and lovingly propagated, the rubber business crashed spectacularly, and Manaus has never been quite the same since. It is said that the city is on the up but there is clearly much poverty and decay here; gangland killings don’t do anything for its tourism ratings.

Back on the ship, we headed for the back deck, where we sat and drank tea, watched the sun go down over the river, and ate dinner al fresco, while watching the flashes of lightning crackling in the distant sky.