When we returned to Manaus we had a day to look around before catching our bus to Venezuela. Manaus is a strange place that boomed during the early 20th century when the extract from the local rubber trees was harvested to keep up the demand for the nerw motor car tyre. Americans and many Europeans settled here to run their business and make extortionate amounts of money exploiting the local trade and harvesting the rubber.

Whilst they were in Manaus they built houses and offices as they would at home in very extravagant colonial style with detailed plasterwork cornices and columns draped over the facades of their buildings. When the bubble burst on the rubber rush the companies moved out before they lost everything leaving these very ornate buildings behind them. Nowadays quite a few of these buildings have been demolished to make way for hideous brick and concrete block buildings but nestled between them you can still see the remains of the old colonial style buildings as just husks of their former selves. Manaus as a town does not really have much to offer the tourist as it is predominantly a working port town with a very large wholesale fish meat and fruit market dominating the lower area of the town where it meets the Rio Negro.

The smells coming from these markets range from sweet smelling fresh tropical fruits to stomach turning stench that comes from the stalls selling intestines and freshly stripped colon as it slowly heats in the midday sun!... Yummy! We walked around the town in search of the two only real attractions that it has to offer which is the theatre and the old market building. We found the old market building but this was in the middle of being renovated and was covered in rickety scaffolding, hoarding and hairy assed builders! We managed to find the theatre and as you can see from the photos it is an amazing building in the middle of what looks like war torn Beirut. The theater was built in the middle of the rubber boom and cost 3 million US $ to complete in 1897. Everything apart from the native hard wood flooring was imported from Europe. The marble for the staircases came from Italy the French Furnished it and the Brits designed it and made sure it didn't fall down. Good ol´ British engineering there for you!

In the evening (Tuesday) we took the night bus to Boa Vista and then on to Santa Elena in Venezuela. A quick note about the bus journey, we almost missed it due to a mix up with the times, we had the most annoying loud mouthed Yank sat behind us, at the back of the bus was the most drunk man I have ever seen who soiled himself half way through the journey causing the bus to pull over and us to vacate whilst the toilets and the drunk man were hosed down. We met an English couple (Paddy and Becky) who were going on to Columbia. They have said that if we want to meet up with them at a later date we are more than welcome, and we also met Martin, a Danish guy who we are currently planning a trip to Cainama to see Angel Falls with. Thats all for now… next report from Angel Falls