The first of many long distance bus journeys

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  Sao Paulo, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Wednesday, September 30, 2009

so after finishing our fantastic trip to the Amazon rainforest, we had a morning to kill in Manaus before our flight back to Sao Paulo. Manaus is an industrial town built mainly around its port (that being the main route in to the place apart from through the small airport) and the export of its important raw materials. More recently its taking advantage of the tourist boom and a government initiative that has made it a tax free zone for industry. All in all it makes it a grim place that suffers from a lot of pollution, is quite run down, but is the typical spot people use as a base to see the rainforest.

Daniel, the guy who met us at the airport, insisted we had a look at the Manaus opera house at least, so thats what we did in the morning before our flight. Its quite nice, but doesn't really redeem Manaus as a worthwhile place to visit apart from as a good base for jungle trekking! We then set off with our bags, in the stifling mid day heat upwards of 35 degrees C, to catch a bus to the airport. Needless to say we were hot and tired but, we made our flight in good time, and upon landing in Sao Paulo at 9pm, we decided to try and make the 11.30pm overnight bus to Campo Grande (a city of the Pantanal region, to do some MORE wildlife spotting!), mainly because we had no real desire to see much of Sao Paulo. We luckily caught a connecting transfer bus to the coach station pretty much immediately after collecting our bags, and made it in time to get our tickets and get on the coach.

This was the first of many LONG coach journeys we'll be taking in South America. At 16 hours its by no means the longest but it was still pretty horrible! Luckily the coaches out here are a lot more comfortable for longer journeys than the ones in the UK. The seats recline a long way and there are pull down leg rests so we slept a fair bit, and despite there being nothing of note but scrubland and the odd town between Sao Paulo and Campo Grande, all in all it wasn't too bad a start.

We arrived in Campo Grande just after 3pm local time a little bit dazed from our 24hrs of travelling, at the local bus station and stumbled across the street to the hostel we'd looked up. Turns out they do excellent and well priced tours of the Pantanal wetlands region, so we're booked on one to leave tomorrow morning for 3 nights! Its all a bit non-stop at the moment, but after showering and eating a proper meal we're feeling a lot better.

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