February 28 – Manaus, Brazil

February 28, 2017 – Manaus, Brazil
After a quick lido breakfast, Linda and I got off the ship at 8:30am. This is a working port so we needed to wait for a shuttle to take us to the port terminal. There were 4 of us waiting until right before the mini van shuttle arrived. All of a sudden 40 people were waiting. We were lucky and got on the van. We needed to get to the Opera House before 9am. We walked very fast and go on the tour bus at 8:55am.
We thoughts the price was 60 reals each ($20 USD) but it turned out that there was a senior discount so we each paid 30 reals. The tour was 2 1/2 hours long and we got to see many places you couldn’t get to by walking from the ship. My favorite part of the tour was going over the Ponte Rio Negro (Negro River Bridge). It is the only bridge that spans the Amazon – or so they say since it spans the Rio Negro which flows into the Amazon.
“The meeting of the waters” is a spectacular sight. About 1 hour after we left Manaus, the Rio Negro meets the Amazon. The water in the Rio Negro is black in color while the Amazon is brown. As we got closer to the meeting point, a clear line differentiated the 2 rivers. When the ship crossed from the Rio Negro to the Amazon, you can see the merge.