Belém

The last couple of days in Belém have been fun, meeting people and getting a group together before heading up to Manaus. Nearly everyone in the hotel is taking tomorrow's boat, so there will be 15 or so of us enjoying the hammock lifestyle. In addition to cramming hammocks onto the deck, it turns out they stack them 3 high, so it's going to be very cosy. The trip takes 6 days, so we're all going to know one another very well by the end of it. Tomorrow we have to get to the boat at 7am to hang up our hammocks then we go back in the afternoon to depart. I'm guessing there wont be internet access on the boat (they need Tenzing!) so hopefully I wont have a nervous breakdown. Though after the last couple of days a break might be good. Internet is really cheap here, so I've been spending a couple of hours a day on it.

Today I went to the Botanical Gardens with a couple of people from the hotel including a horticulturalist, which turned the visit into a very interesting and educational one... lots of fun. The gardens have a lot of plants and animals from the Amazon region, including crocodiles, amazing parrots, monkeys and a few jaguars. There are a few animals roaming free in the gardens as well and we even saw a sloth climbing in the trees which was really cool. Hopefully we'll get to see some animals other than mosquitoes and ants on our voyage.

Catch you in a week!