So we finally arrived into Manaus on Wednesday morning and Riggers and I found the hostel which Heather and Claire had eventually been able to get sorted the day before whilst we spent our days apart.

Ever since I had studied about Manaus and it's place in the Amazon during Geography classes at school, I had built up this image of what it was going to be like in my head.  In reality it seems just like any other average sized Brazilian town, and other than the heat and humidity you almost wouldn't even know that you were smack in the middle of the worlds largest rainforest!

Wednesday was Claires birthday and although we didn't do much during the day in the evening we went out to a traditional Brazilian all-you-can eat BBQ for the best meal we have had for ages!  Then back at the hostel we had the cake we had baked and drinks whilst we rode out a storm.  The plan was to head out for a big night but nowhere at all was open and we ended up settling for just a drink at this most random of places where all the locals were off their head and either offering us drugs or telling us to be careful in Brazil!

On Thursday we experienced the local buses and went to an animal farm in the day for Claires birthday and then just did some shopping and tried to sort some stuff out for getting on to Salvador.

Due to time constraints and little difference in money, I had proposed that rather than go all the way to Belem for 4 days on the boat we just go a day and a half down the river to Santarem and then get a flight to Salvador, so we started looking into everything that that would entail.

We made our own spaghetti bolognese for tea as we try to save a bit of money, and then passed a bit of time until we headed to the airport to pick up Ste.  It was really strange seeing Sowers but a bit of male company is a welcome addition to the group!

Friday morning was hectic as we tried and failed yet again to book the flights and then waited as it seemed every bus other than than the one we needed to get to the airport to meet Hutch drive past us.  I was getting really anxious just as a small bus was slowly passing us and a local guy already on it saw us waiting, knocked on the window to get our attention and mouthed 'aeropeurto' to us as he luckily assumed that's where we wanted to go.  We ran on and couldn't quite believe our good fortune, and the guy turned out to speak good English and was really friendly.

At the airport for the second time in 12 hours, it was a surreal half hour or so as we waited for Hutch to arrive.  For some reason I felt nervous waiting outside the arrivals lounge but when Hutch finally came through the doors the moment we had been waiting for and talked about for almost 11 weeks arrived and I gave her the biggest hug!!!

The next 2 days were just mental and to be fair a bit of a baptism of fire for Ste and Hutch as we seemed to spend most of it running round trying to sort all sorts out and nothing seemed to be easy as we all had different things which we needed to do.

We did however manage to squeeze in a night out on Friday to celebrate our first night as a sextet!  Again we struggled to find many places which seemed good and we ended up deciding against expensive taxis to a supposed lively area and instead followed these two guys who had latched on to us first to an odd underground bar and then to a gay club, at which point we decided to call it a night!!

The hangover on Saturday morning wasn't helped by getting up after only a few hours sleep to watch United throw away a 2 goal lead, but by the end of the day we had finally got everything sorted and with the jungle trip booked we got what would be our last good nights sleep for a few days in our 8 bed dorm which Hutch and I had to ourselves!