We returned to Brazil via a long day bus from Santa Elena, Venezuela which departed on the morning of the 15th and arrived in Manaus at 12.30am on the 16th. Manaus is a city of approx 2 million people situated very near to where the Amazon starts. We we warned it wasn't the nicest of places and true enough it lived down to our expectations. Quite frankly, bar a nice opera house, the downtown área is a dump and also hellishly humid. After our Venezuala robbery experiences we were a little wary walking the streets particularly at night where the town centre became a little deserted. Never mind, we weren't here to see that we were here to see the jungle which we did via a three day, two night trip which left from here. This involved initially seeing where the two huge rivers meet to form the Amazon then onto a jungle lodge to do some activities here. These were the usual fare of piranha fishing, alligator spotting at night, a jungle walk, canoeing plus visiting a local indiginous village. To be honest we'd done pretty much all these things in the Pantanal but we figured as we're here we may as well do a trip. We heard that the jungle is difficult to spot wildlife and these reports are true enough. Our nightime alligator spotting prodced one tiny baby one and all over there was very little to spot, even the birds are minimal. Our guide did find a huge tarântula for us which mercifully was a comfortable distance away from us up a tree whilst we were on the boat. Despíte the general lack of wildlife the scenery is lovely and we enjoyed the trip. What we didn't enjoy though was the poor organisation from the lodge itself. We were kept waiting 3 hours for an excursion on the trip the second afternoon. On the last day we were due to to go out at 5.30am to see the sunrise. We waited untill 9am where our guide turned up pissed and very probably coked (looking at his eyes) out of his brain. He'd been to a pre carnival bash at a local native village. We were pretty unhappy and the Dutch/Swedish couple we were with were on the verge of apoplexy especially when it seemed the wasted guide was about to take us out on a boat for a trip. We insisted that he was in no fit state to take us so the owner (who spoke no English) and one of the indiginous natives took us out. We picked up other travellers at a nearby native families who had had their Amazon trips utterly ruined by the lodges c*** ups. In particular, there a Swiss guy who was supposed to go hiking for 5 days in the jungle which he'd booked and paid for but couldn't go because the guide was ordered to go back to the lodge to look after other travellers. It was a total farce and it seemed we'd got off likely compared to others. In fairness the hastily arranged boat trips produced our highlight as the native shinned 50 feet up a tree and found a sloth which he brought down for us to look at. These are totally bizarre creatures which almost have the appearance of a stuffed toy. The best description we can come up with is that they are a cross between a koala and a monkey. The Amazon jungle was fun and we're glad we did a trip but our advice is if you are coming to this part of the world and want to see wildlife go, to the Pantantal. It's teeming with animals and birds there plus you'll get much better looked after there. We returned to the grimey,sweatbox otherwise known as Manaus on the 19th ready to fly to Salvador on the 20th.