Boa Vista

Boa Vista is Brasil’s northern-most capital (and almost its northernmost town - of any size). It lies around 900km north of Manaus, in the state of Roraima. Part of Mount Roraima (up which I have been – thanks Mr Churchill) lies within the state, and it borders the southernmost state of Mr Chavez’ personal oil field, Venezuela.

I have two friends up there – Emerson, a lawyer, and Martin, who’s just, well, Martin. And I decided to visit them. It’s expensive to get there by plane, so the only other course of action is car/bike (not recommended because of the state of the roads), or omnibus. At R$90 one-way, this seemed like a good idea, and off I went. The original scheduled time is 12 hours bus station to bus station, and after 12 hours you’re generally ready to get off just wherever you happen to be at the time. In our case, unfortunately, it ended up taking 14 hours 20 mins. Joy. And on the way back we didn’t fare (pardon pun) too well either, making it in a pretty poor 14 hours. Having stayed up there for just less than 24 hours, I conclude that the 28 hours 20mins on the bus isn’t really worth it (sorry lads). Of course it ought to be quite interesting, since the bus passes through the Waimiri-Atroari indigenous reserve (no stopping, no photographing, thank you very much) – but since we passed through it in the dark on the way up, and I was asleep on the way back, I’m sorry to say that all I can tell you about it is that the road is awful and the indigenous folk don’t have street lights.

Never mind – herewith a photo from the garden, of the lesser spotted banana thief, and one of Naice enjoying a caipirinha at our local. None of you would of course be so tasteless as to ask which one is which...

We have been psychedelically tested

We have now been subjected to a rigorous psychedelic examination, but in spite of this, we are apparently fit to adopt. All we need to wait for now is the piece of paper that confirms this, and then we will be on The List. Scary stuff or what..?

I mentioned before that Manaus was just about to re-elect the most (allegedly) corrupt, (allegedly) inept, (allegedly) ignorant (alleged) moron as Mayor, even after having experienced his reign of (alleged) abject uselessness in the past. And so it has come to pass. I have asked a good cross-section of the population (from the gardener to the doctor to the Director of BIC) and EVERYONE INSISTS that they didn’t and wouldn’t EVER vote for this guy. “So why,” I asked, “has he been elected again?” “Ah well,” they nod, “it’s the indigent and ignorant, you see. They love him.” So there we are – it seems that over 50% of the population here are indigent, ignorant, or both.

Although we now have our new camera, unfortunately there hasn’t been much opportunity to use it. True, we went fishing up the Negro last week, but it turned out to be dull for two days, and trees and shrubbery and the like don’t look like much without a bit of sun. Neither does brown or black water, for that matter. True, I did see - for the first time in my life - two Ariranha (Giant Amazon River Otters), but I was fishing on a river bank without the camera at the time. I can tell you, however, that the adjective “giant” is perfect. And true, I did go to Boa Vista to see some friends (see separate entry), but Naice needed the camera for her course, so that was that. We were also scheduled to go to Barcelos (but we haven’t had enough time), and down the BR319 (cancelled by one of the group). So we’ve been confined to taking the odd pic here and there around the house, and that’s what you see here.

News at last

Hello all, and thanks for the concerned enquiries. However, I’m pleased to report that rumours of my demise have been exaggerated, and we’re still struggling along here. The problem is a combination of ridiculous internet connection problems (as discussed previously) and a large number of guesthouse enquiries. The result is that most of the internet time I get has to be devoted to the enquiries, and the rest of the time is spent either looking after guests or tidying up after them! Sorry Betty, will try to do better.

Anyway, what’s been happening? The adoption police came and went and we now have our appointment with the shrink on 20th October. In the meantime, someone phoned us to offer us triplets. Yes - triplets! Aside from being borderline illegal, I really don’t think we could handle triplets – well, not unless we closed the guesthouse and stopped all our other activities, leaving us no income at all. If on the other hand, anyone would like to sponsor a family, just say the word…

We have a new camera, brought to us by a friend visiting the USA. If you’re interested, it’s a Panasonic Lumix TZ5 with a 10x optical zoom, a 28mm lens and 9.1 megapixels. Unfortunately, until we acquire an SD card for it, we won’t be taking many photos - but I’ll probably have some for the next blog entry. Here’s one of Kelly in the meantime.

Naice has been busy with her Tourism degree (someone here asked her if she would be a qualified tourist on completion of the course), and has been running all over the place evaluating local tourist attractions (conclusion so far – they’re fine except for the fact that they don’t understand the need to provide information or assistance to the tourists J). On the strength of her first presentation, she has been invited to do another one at a university showcase event next week – very impressive.

We have a couple of weeks without guests now, hopefully enabling me to catch up with my personal correspondence (sorry folks), giving us the opportunity to evaluate some other business possibilities, and maybe even allowing us the chance to get out and about a bit. Speaking of which, I’m going down the BR319 with Naice’s brothers on Thursday, to have a look at some land there. The BR319 is the theoretical road running between Manaus and Porto Velho (to be more precise, Humaita). On the map, it’s approximately 700km long; on the ground, it becomes pretty much impassable after 200km. This fact is particularly interesting, given that the land we’re going to look at is 250km away. I’m also going fishing with friend Charlie on Friday, for the first time in an age, and I’m looking forward to it. We hope to both go to Barcelos next week if we can, particularly as there is a chance I can do an article on it for a Dutch magazine (long story – later, later…). Further ahead, we have friends Dawn and Garry (maybe) coming to see us for Christmas, and then…well, 2009 is too far away to think about just yet. Besides, before we get to Christmas, we have a very busy November to cope with, with 14 guesthouse bookings so far (yikes). Interestingly, although December is looking fairly quiet, we have a confirmed booking for….December 25th. Well, why not? In fact, perhaps the Library Board would like to have the Christmas party here – should I get the beer in now…?

As always, will try to post more frequently in future.