Tamales for breakfast

Saturday night is Tamale night in San Cristobal, when women, who've spent the day making piles of tamales for the coming week, and then sell any extras to anyone who stops by. So out we went, into the night, on our tamale adventure, searching out the little red lamps hung outside of homes. In all, including our guest, we purchased 6 tamales, from 2 different from-home purveyors, in 3 different varieties (all chicken): chicken w/peppers, chicken assafran (different peppers), and chicken mole, each of which we sampled at breakfast this morning, with sour cream and cholula. All were delicious, especially the banana leaf-wrapped (as opposed to corn husk-wrapped) mole and assafran varieties. Tamales for Sunday breakfast might fast become tradition.

Today we hope to round out our kitchen furnishings, with a couple of decent chopping knives, salt & pepper, a big mixing bowl, and other sundry little items. Beyond that, I don't know what all our day will hold. Guadalupe – one of S.C.'s bigger and better churches, on the hill opposite us – looks magnificent this morning, and must be full of parishioners this mass morning. After some fog earlier, by mid-morning though it has burned off and the sky is about as clear as we have seen it. A portent of huge successes to come? I have to think.

San Cristobal gives up its fruits, we partake

Afternoon of our first full day in San Cristobal. After some frustrating phone calls between Jessica and American Airlines, we learned that our bags had landed, or would soon land in Tuxtla, and we taxied down the mountain to retrieve them. Sure enough – I say this despite never for a second, until seeing the bags in the lost and found closet, thinking it more likely that the bags would be there than that they would not – there they were, and 3 hours and $65 later ('at the cost of' might be more accurate), our belongings were ours again. Huge success.

Around noon, a former Reedie and one-time tenant of this property stopped by on her way through town to show us around some of the trickier aspects of S.C. living: what to do when the city stops refilling your water tank (because water is scarce), when the natural gas tank needs replacement, etc. This was some help, but her greatest contribution to our well-being here, I'm sure, is the wonderful little weekly organic market that she told us about, where we shortly set off to and bought nice cheeses (not a common thing in these parts), hand-made crackers, chocolate, tortillas and vegetables. Comestible inspection later revealed these items (those that we got round to trying, anyway) to be delicious. Already two huge successes, and it was only about 1 o'clock.

Now we are relaxing a little bit, enjoying our bright, airy living room (pictures soon, really), and view, making some little trips out for this and that, and learning what we can about the first real day of college football season. Which I'd better now get back to.

we arrive in San Cristóbal, our bags travel the world

It turns out that our two largest bags were homesick for Boston. This, according to the puzzled-looking American Airlines representative in Mexico City, is where they wound up yesterday...en route from Miami to Mexico.

But we have arrived, after a fair bit of airport-sprinting, in tact along with two smaller pieces of luggage as well as our laptops, recorder, and other important things. (Not that socks and sweaters aren't important. It is currently 53 degrees here.)

Our house is lovely. It is small, and needs a little decorating, but from the window where I am typing I have an amazing view of the large-domed Guadalupe church and the mountains in the background. (Pictures to come once the bag containing the necessary cord arrives.) We have a beautiful backyard and are an easy walk downhill to the center and markets. Here is a picture of our new city that I didn't take:

On the agenda today: call American, see if our bags have made it, go back to the airport, more unpacking, market shopping, decorating, exploring our new neighborhood.

Out of Manaus

Thursday morning, and we are 3 hours from fly time. Our bags are packed, and now we only wait until it's a reasonable time to go get a taxi. Tonight we fly to Miami, and from there to Mexico City, where we spend the night in a hotel that -- did you know about stuff like this? -- is inside the airport. Whoa. Then tomorrow morning we catch a smaller flight to Tuxtla, and then it's up the hill to San Cristobal and the great unpacking. It's been fun, Manaus, but we're ready to go to Mexico.

On the boat: Days 6 & 7

We are still in Manaus, at our Novotel (where everyone is very nice and the kitchen isn't very good, but the Studio 5 Mall is only a short walk away), but it's time we finally got back to the last few days of river-jungle exploration aboard Tucano. 

Days 6 & 7 were good fun adventure, mostly. We took our last walk in the jungle on Friday (day 6), and both groups happened across large groups of squirrel monkeys. The monkeys weren't especially afraid of us, many of them climbing into branches directly above us, and watching us watch them. Later that night, on the boat, there was a caipirinha party 

on the top deck, which quickly turned into a pretty wild little dance party, mostly to some funky Fooao (local popular dance music style, with its own dance step, which we have proudly mastered - Jessica demonstrates, left). 

The boat navigated throughout most of the night, all the way south, past Manaus, to a lake on the peninsula that separates the Rio Negro and the Rio Salmoes, which meet at the peninsula's end to form the Amazon River (we will get a picture of this meeting up at some point; it's pretty spectacular). Waking up and seeing floating houses and restaurants, and other boats nearby was something of a shock, after being basically all by ourselves on the Negro for the past week. I guess there are many more boats on the Salmoes and the Amazon, and that virtually all river tours stay in this area; someone even said that our Tucano is the only boat currently plying the Rio Negro much north of Manaus. Makes me feel a little special. 

Still, it was pretty clear why there's so much attention to this area. We saw a lot of animals on this last day. On a very touristed walk along an elevated bridge to an inland lake we saw more squirrel monkeys, a big cayman (~8'), a funny turtle that looked like it was trying to fly, and several big fish. Later, on an evening canoe trip down a channel that cut completely across the peninsula we saw a 3-toed sloth (this one up close, and it was pretty neat), more monkeys, including capuchins, a tree boa which Edivam wrestled onto a canoe paddle and passed around, and many more birds. 

We woke up on Sunday (day 8) just across from Manaus, and were back onshore at the Tropical by about 8:30. So long Tucano. It's been swell. 

Canal do Bois

We got off the boat Sunday morning and spent one more night in the Hotel Tropical. The rest of the Burgesses flew out yesterday and Jess and I moved to out new location, the Novotel Manaus. Here is where we will spend the next two nights before flying to Mexico.

The Tropical was pretty amazing in an old-colonial-palace sort of way (mini zoo, multiple swimming pools) but one of our more incredible discoveries was made from our room: the Canal do Bois (Cow Channel). In the evening they hold live televised cattle auctions (call in to bid). We watched an auction of 181 bulls. Just to check, we turned it on later, and saw around 50 Brahmas being sold off. In the morning it seemed to be an informative show about milking. Alas, our Novotel does not get this channel, but we have plenty of city to explore and not a lot of room for cattle.

We saw a little of Manaus on Sunday as a bigger group: the municipal market (lots of giant fish and some strange fruits), and the Teatro Amazons opera house. Apparently Manaus was the richest city in South America during the height of the rubber boom, and the plan was for it to become "The Paris of the Tropics". But then the British grabbed some rubber trees and after some failed attempts, eventually got them to grow in more convenient places (i.e. British colonies) like Singapore and the tropical Paris didn't last. Manaus now seems pretty gritty, but not without its charm. Today we'll venture out and try to see the inside of the opera house (it was closed Sunday) and a museum or two. Our hotel is pretty far from the center and we don't want to be downtown too late, so we may come back and try to catch O Procurado (a.k.a. Wanted) at the nearby mall movie theater.

On the boat -- Day 5, 8/21

I am very excited for the swimming and fishing. Days and days in this heat, with the great wide river right beside us all the time, and we haven't once been able to just jump in. But in another hour or so that dream will live. Piranha fishing also sounds like good fun, provided we get a couple of bites. Otherwise, just sitting still in the canoes in the heat might get a touch oppressive, and swimming then might not be the thing. Haven't been a lot of very exciting animals the last day or so, though those orchid bees that hung out with us on the top deck while the others were all out on excursion were quite something. Like a cross between a bumble bee and a tank, and roughly the size of your thumb.

Oh, but the boat is stopping now, so I had better run on deck and see about this swimming. I don't want to be left behind.