JOURNEY TO THE AMAZON! First impressions of MANAUS (Brazil)
what's up everyone so right now we're at the international airport of rio called galeao and we've come here because we're about to head to the state called amazonas which is where the amazon rainforest is. excited to go to the amazon? yeah i think it's going to be an adventure and something very different from everything that we've done. yeah because you're brazilian but you've never been to the amazon. no and i heard that it's a totally different place compared to rio and other states. yeah so we're going by two flights right? yeah the first one going to sao paulo and the second one is going to manaus which is the capital of amazonas yeah and i think the flight one way cost eight hundred reais? yeah 800 for the both of us and just one way because we're going to come back from a different airport so we're taking all our bags on the flight with us so no need to drop off any bags and we're just trying to get our tickets here, yeah so we're just trying to print it out now. not working? no off we go, so i didn't mention but the airline that we're going with is called latam which is a brazilian airline b-31, not so comfortable right? no. look how thin that is that's crazy, but it's only an hour flight. yeah should be fine. yeah
so we're here in manaus now, we didn't bother filming the second flight because it was basically the exact same airline, the same flight and it was also dark and we wanted this video to be about manaus and not all the transport to get here, so manaus is the main city in the amazon the capital of the state of amazonas, so it's kind of funny when you look at it on google maps because it just looks like this big city right in the middle of the amazon rainforest and all around it you don't see anything but just a rainforest, so yeah it's like the the heart of the amazon and it is a really big city, there's over two million people that live here. and we're staying in the historic center so this was 27 dollars a day, there's no places to cook but we do have a little microwave there and a fridge and then in here it's just a simple little bathroom and then through here a bedroom and that comes with ac as well. yeah if you come to the amazon you definitely need to get a room with the ac right? yeah because here is so hot, we were walking yesterday and it's very very hot the entire day, even during the night it's very hot so you definitely need an ac. yeah you'd struggle with just the fans so about just one minute from where we're staying is the main historic square here where we've just arrived called largo de sao sebastiao and this is where you get a lot of the main historic buildings so that is paroquia de sao sebastiao there from the late 1800s and the main site to see is the theater just behind these trees. so this is the opera house called teatro amazonas and that's from 1884, that's when the construction started. and look at that weather over there i think the rain's coming carol. yeah as usual here in amazonas it's always like that i think
almost every day it rains so it's something that people from here are already expecting yeah that's why we brought a umbrella as well so i think it rains super heavy for a few hours and then clears up. yeah. yeah anyway we're gonna head in this place now so the ticket costs 20 reais per person, you had to reserve it online that the hour that you want to come here and you also need the covid proof right of vacination. vacination proof yeah yeah it's actually a guided tour and i think there's a show going on already, check it out. wow!
so i didn't expect them to start playing the white stripes, a rock song. that was a interesting musical choice. look how impressive this looks though, kind of dark in here so the camera quality is not that good, designs all over the ceilings, all the way around as well beautiful isn't it? yeah i like it, i like the color as well. yeah i think i think she said it wasn't
always pink? no it was a green for just a period of time and now it's back to the original color. yeah this color looks way better, and check this out so this is a lego model so all this is lego, so that's the color that it was for a while, a green color i think she said there's 30,000 pieces of lego here sent from denmark, really cool so all these european looking buildings around here like the church and this one here, they were all built in the late 1800s and that is because there was a big rubber boom here in the amazon region, so here in the amazon of brazil and even peru they found the the rubber tree and started to produce rubber and this place manaus at the time was the richest city in south america because of that so a lot of wealthy european families settled here and then from what i read the seeds were smuggled out of the country and sent to asia and then they started planting the rubber trees and selling it for cheaper and that ended the boom here. carol one thing that i don't understand though is how the europeans settled in this heat? yeah it's extremely hot here and i don't know i think it's like that the whole year so i don't know how europeans and even brazilians, how can you live like this. yeah in this humidity yeah. way way worse than rio. yeah i guess people get used to it, i mean the locals definitely do but it is hard to handle. yeah i can't imagine a european getting used to this in the 1800s so just behind the opera house here we have this impressive building called palacio da justice also built at the end of the 1800s, justice ministry. so you can go in this building as well but you have to
make a reservation online and we didn't, and yeah you can also do a tour looks like it would be pretty cool. i also read that since this was such a rich city at the time they actually had electricity here before a lot of the major european cities in europe, so yeah this place had electricity before those places but since it was abandoned after the rubber boom ended they couldn't afford to run their generators so the city was still without electricity for decades so we just got an uber it took about five minutes since we don't want to walk for 8 reais and we've come to the main riverfront, the port of manaus. so this is probably more like the business district because it's super busy around here this is where all the people are at, and did he say this place is called praca do relogio? relogio yes because relogioa is watch yeah so got this cool little clock tower monument and it's actually a watch shop inside where you can fix your watches and clocks and all around is the old style buildings this road all the way down there was like that and it looks like there's a park on this side. so carol is gonna get a juice, fruit juice from this region guarana so we've had the soda before. yeah. but i don't think i've ever had the actual juice guarana juice
yeah check it out so it wasn't what carol was expecting but she got it anyway. yeah because in rio when we drink guarana it's like the guarana juice so i thought it was the juice but it's some mix it should be very healthy because there are many nuts and the guarana which is also healthy. did he say there's pineapple as well? no no i don't think so. i don't know he said a bunch of ingredients yeah but you can't have it because you are allergic to nuts. yeah i'm not allowed to drink it very nutty, very nutty, yeah it's like only the only taste that i can taste is the nut. not the guarana? no. no. so if you're looking for fruit this is the place look at all those bananas, got the mangos it's papaya. oh it's papaya? yeah. not mango
so here we have the old historic market we might walk through there quickly and got this huge river on this side, so this is called rio negro which translates to the black river because obviously yeah it's just a huge black river so down here you have some of the boats that i think these are the ones that are used for the boat tours? yeah or just to take people to other small villages or small cities in other areas of the amazons but that's why there are many sizes of smaller boats or bigger boats. yeah like that one over there looks like a big ferry boat. so there are some tours around here, i think you can do sunset tours there's also a tour that takes you to where the amazon river meets this river, rio negro so i'm not sure which side that's on but somewhere around here the two rivers meet, i think the upper part of the river of the amazon river is called rio solimoes so it's basically where solimoes and the rio negro, this river join together. so even along the river you have these little markets right here, right now it looks like everyone's packing up i don't see many things there can see some fish over there so i think this market here is basically people from other communities in the amazon and fishermen they come here on their little boats and then drop off fish and stuff. i saw a video of this place previously, i think they even brought pigs on these little boats it's pretty crazy but it doesn't look like we've come at the right time so this seems to be like the port here where the people arriving from different regions and this might be the most riverboats i've ever seen going all the way down there you can just see it's jam-packed just riverboats everywhere.
we're traveling around to different states in brazil and everywhere is just so so different. yeah yeah people are different and food different and also everybody speaks portuguese except for the indigenous people but every region has a different accent so sometimes it's harder for you to understand like in the northeast it was harder, but here in manaus the accent is a bit similar to the carioca accent. yeah to me i can't tell much the difference to me it sounds like they're from rio. it's weird because it's so distant. i think the only place
that we saw that was similar to this is india right? where the different regions were like you're in another country. so brazil is very similar to india in that aspect look at all these watermelons man, wow the never-ending watermelon, they're huge too shrimps and prawns, loads more fruit vegetables obviously it really is a big market look carol this is where i would do my fruit and veggie shopping if i lived here so many options. yeah loads of options what is that? cassava. oh cassava i guess this is the meat section look at the size of these fish yeah this market's huge isn't it? yeah and i think there's another one but i think this one is the biggest one because it's a more modern one. fish everywhere and now we're going to head into the older market, i can tell it's all just from looking at the the building. looks like it's made out of metal? yeah it's weird yeah this one looks a bit more organized, more space so there's the date on this building 1882. so that's all how old this place is
yeah so this one's more like a arts and crafts place got like souvenirs, more for foreigners the other one was more local and pretty much food only it's kind of similar to that one in salvador. yeah yeah because it's more for tourism. yeah so we found this local spot to eat at right here in the market got the fans really needing that and we're gonna try out some amazon food. yeah whtas yours? mine is pirarucu a casaca. yes pirarucu is the fish, a casaca is like the style, and the fish is from the amazon and it's a big big fish hopefully we'll see in the next days i don't know if we can find the fish. so the the dish comes with the fish the pirarucu fish, and also comes with some vegetables like garlic and onion and also the flower i don't know which flower it is but if you can see like the yellow things it's like a flower and also banana, you can see the little pieces of banana. yeah that's interesting, and then just like everywhere in brazil you got the beans and the rice and mine's like a fish stew, i didn't even know i was getting a strew but yeah here's the big piece of fish and what's the name of my fish again? tambaqui. tambaqui
i think that's also a fish from amazon right? yeah so the main dishes here in manaus all of them i think are with fish because as you know there's the big river here, so they're like ten kinds of fish the most famous ones, and the names are very peculiar so it's very different. in rio de janeiro I have never heard these names. Yeah you cant order this in rio. No so we had to learn a bit about each one but yeah it's just different names. yeah so mine also has some veggies in there so see some tomato, onions, yeah all sorts of different things smells great though lets see how it is, the taste of the fish is a bit similar to cod fish actually. cod fish? it's not as salty as the cod fish but it's similar i think because it's a bit dry but it's good i'll try the banana. yeah the banana i like the mix, the sweet and salty tastes. sweet and salty. yeah i like it it. yeah it looks good
healthy too. okay now it's your turn. yeah i'm gonna try the the stew first on its own oh man that's amazing i thought it was going to be like a tomato flavor but it's not at all, it's like a little bit sour it actually reminds me a bit of like a stew that i had in the philippines called sinigang it's kind of a salty. oh yeah i love that. yeah even the color looks similar. yeah. brazilian sinigang is it spicy? a little bit spicy yeah there's some spices in there, i don't know what it is but very mild. and now the fish yeah the fish has basically absorbed all the stew so can't taste much of the actual fish taste, it's more like the stew taste has a nice soft texture though, the fish it's not chewy at all I wanna try the stew yeah it's very tasty, it's better than mine actually it is because of the stew isn't it? yeah the stew is so good the fish is mild right? yeah, loved it yeah amazing, amazon food! so we got another uber this time for 30 minutes and that cost 30 reais and we come to an area called ponte negra, there's actually beaches here. i had no idea that there are sandy beaches in the amazon but apparently there are. a huge beach actually so that's called praia de ponte negra yeah that is a massive beach, did you know there are beaches in the amazon? not like this, yeah i knew there were like parts with sand but like when you look at this it looks like a beach on the ocean. yeah that does look like an ocean beach
and this area is so different, i'm guessing this is the rich area? Yeah it looks like it. just like the other big cities in brazil you can see the difference between the rich and the poor yeah the like the difference in the equality right? yeah it's huge everywhere, yeah look at this it's just like fancy huge apartment blocks all the way down there. In the area that we're staying in the busy area where i guess the majority of people live, it’s kind of run down, a lot of the buildings they don't look very new. yeah this area is very modern and fancy. yeah everything looks brand new here, so they have these nice walkways with viewpoints so this really does just look like an ocean beach so i think this is the same river we saw before Rio negro? yeah it is a different area yeah a different area, actually there's a huge bridge over there so, i think that is ponte do rio negro Anyway let's head down. carol this isn't how i imagined the amazon yeah this does not feel like we're in the amazon right now at all get these guys off. so the driver that took us to the hotel from the
airport he did mention about the beaches, he said right now the river, the amazon river is low tide. it's not really the proper rainy season so he did mention about there being some beaches around here, i just didn't think it would be like this though let's see how the temperature of the amazon is oh it's nice, nice and warm. yeah that's why this guy's chilling in the water no waves too so yeah super relaxing so we ended up coming on this grass hill here because even with the sun going down right now It’s absolutely scorching hot on the beach and we didn't come in swimwear because we weren't really planning on going to the beach today. like i said before we didn't really know there was a beach like this. anyway i don't know if you
can hear in the background all these noisy birds in the trees here behind us as well going to be hearing a lot of that i think in the next few days, so we didn't really come here for Manaus right, we obviously came here to do the tours in the proper amazon rainforest so that's what's going to be coming up in the next videos but still this place has been pretty interesting, pretty interesting to see the big city in the middle of the amazon. so tomorrow is going to be our first day of doing a tour but we Have like three different tours books so i think we're going to go around seven to eight days straight of doing things so there's going to be loads of videos coming out from around here in the amazon rainforest and we're both just really excited because this is one of the ultimate travel experiences i think, discovering the amazon rainforest. so stay tuned for those if you like this video just drop a like to support us subscribe to see more videos like this follow us on instagram and we'll see in the next you
2021-12-04 11:02
