we had some freetime on our hands so we went roaming around the towers... we saw a piramid, a UFO launching pad, a brook of everlating youth... we climbed a watch tower which was falling apart under our feet and when we came back we were greeted by our monkey friends and whole buncha parrots ... aaa how sweet it is...

The day we went boating and got really really burnt

met a couple of new people: William and Kevin (who turned out to be from our hotel) and Leticia (a Brazilian girl traveling around)

Capoeira takes it's origins in African martial art, developed by slaves to fight their masters. To hide the technique they developed into a kind of an acrobatic dance.

this time we bought tickets to a "box" where you watch the carnaval from a kinda of a stand

we were very brave to actually take our cameras near our hotel where we had a police station on the corner in our clear view...

... a day of roaming around the city on a taxi that ended up costing us about $15 for a whole day... We visited Bon Fim church. Which is the most important one in Salvador. Then we went to lake of Tororo. It has the statues of Gods and is quiet scenic. There we had probably our best meal in Salvador at a nice little restaurant for about 20 bucks...

... the last day in Salvador, before going to Manaus, we had a city tour... First we went around Porta da Barra light house, then we went to Bonfim one more time. This time it was open and we were able to go inside... then we went on to Pelerinio again... and off we went...

we got in the Tropical Hotel in Manaus at gee 12am??? after a 9 hour flight which should've taken 3 hours. We made 5 stops on the way, the airconditioning was broken and it was a bumpy ride (i don't remember ever being so air-sick)... on a positive side they fed us 5 times! on a negative one -- it was all the same -- ham and cheese sandwiches... noof, had enough?... we were to leave for Ariau towers in the morning at 7am ... so Noof passed out and i got myself busy, doing what else, taking pictures :)))...

...this was interesting...
in the middle of the night we went on a boat to search for gators..
in the pitch black (i left some of those useless shots) our guide and the boat driver found a gator, went on shore to fetch it and brought it to the boat....
we looked, photographed, touched and let him (or as we found out her) go ...

a beautiful 2 hour ride to Ariau Towers along the Rio Negro... Rio Negro is called so because the water is almost black, along the shore the color is amber, but the water itself is clean and clear...

that was fun
we went on this boat ride with our guide Gabriele...
saw what we were told was a dolphin (was to quick though to take a shot)
stoped by the house of our guide... with whole buncha kids running around (Michelle)...
then it started to rain...
then we fished...
i caught my first and only fish wich happened to be a catfish =/
our guide caught an actual parana...
very cool

not in any particular order at this point

... in the day light we become brave and go to the historic part of town with our camera's and our credit cards ...

THE night

basically our first carnavale night when we got scared sh$%^7tless and ran back to our hotel... therefore only a couple of 'carnavale' pictures through out our whole time there :)

http://www.ariautowers.com.br/

...the next morning we to have breakfast... we were greated by this green parrot who was sitting on a purch by door to the restaurant and eating grapes... Noofy made a a real connection with him after lunch... this spider monkey Shakira made contact... and we watched squirrel monkeys have breakfast....

then we went on a jungle tracking tour with our new guide Ricardo, met a David from South africa...

from wild life we met 1 snake, 1 dog (who came from a near by village), a whoooole lotta fire ants (grrr) and a cow (which noofy clames to be a bull, but i think it's too pretty to be a bull). The rest i guess was hiding somewhere...

... woke up real early (what else is new) and had a maaaarvelous day....
we had a great guide who took us on a 3 part trip... first part was on Argentinian side where we walked across metal bridges straight over the falls, then he took us on the boat ride... that was pretty amazing they took this motor boat straight into the smaller falls (do i have to say how soaked we got?), then as the sun was setting we rushed over to Brazilian side to catch the sunset... we barely made it and then walked around almost in pitch black with only guide's cellphone as a guide... by this time the national park surrounding the falls was closed and there wasn't a person in site...
then we went to a churascaria restaurant with Olivia and Dipa (who we met at Ariau towers on our aligator trip and who shared a plane ride with us and stayed at our hotel and decided to join us for the tours), which again had marvelous marvelous food (there we saw again this very nice couple who were with us the first part of the tour)... stayed there till closetime and went home, since we had to wake up at rediculous hour once more to catch a plane in the morning...

... woke up real early... it was nice and rainy, but cleared out just in time...

ok so it wasn't THE most important game... but it was full of typical brazilian fans, referee's, buncha tourists, and most importantly the player-actors...

oki doke... lets break the whole 'ohhh the carnaval-monkey-falls-sunsets beatiful' crap series (did i say crap??? oops)

we met this little fellow in Argentina... it was one of those 'can i take him home things' and since i didn't have my mommy telling me i can't so i took him home...

THESE ARE THE TRAVEL BUG SERIES...

the thing spent most of the time in my back-baggy emerging when I pleased for random photoshoots on the road... i think he liked it!!!