March 25th - 26th Belem
I must have forgotten what it's like to stay in a hotel as I was surprised when the receptionist in “Hotel Unidos” in Belém (Portuguese for "Bethlehem") insisted that we didn't need to pay on arrival and a porter proceeded to take our bags to our room.
We only had one night in the town which lies as the gateway to the Amazon so after showering, we headed straight out for a walk along the banks of the Amazon estuary. The markets were closing for the day but I could imagine the hive of activity they must have been earlier on. I bought some running shorts (from C&A of all places!) and then as the rain started, we searched for a place for dinner. As is so often the case when you are tired, hungry, wet and your flip flops are like a hangman's noose, we struggled to find anywhere. An Italian restaurant with a special 2 for 1 on pasta dishes eventually saved the day.
We were up at 5.30am the following day for our morning flight to Manaus. Compensation for the early start was the best breakfast buffet we had seen in Brazil - cakes, fruit, pastries, ham, cheeses, bread, juices, coffee. As any true backpacker would, we seized the opportunity to pack up pastries and make ourselves sandwiches for later. As we were so doing, an employee of the hotel came over to inform us we were not allowed to take food out of the room. I was embarrassed but on the other hand didn't think what we were doing was too wrong – we had, after all, paid for the breakfast and only had fifteen minutes for eating it as we had to take a bus to the airport. I asked the man what the difference was if we ate the breakfast in front of him or on the bus but he continued to say we weren't allowed to leave with the food. At that point I started to wonder what we were going to do - eat all the pastries to prove a point or hand them over blushing. I looked at Helen and she took the lead. Encouraged by her experience with children in her policing area who were caught with cannibis and knew that a Police Community Support Officer has no powers of arrest, she turned to the employee and simply said, “What are you going to do about it?” And with that she added, “Come on Gabi,” clutched the plastic bag full of food and set off out of the hotel. I followed sheepishly. On the street, a hand started flapping madly from one of the hotel's windows and we heard a hissing noise (the South American equivalent of whistling). A passerby came up to us to tell us he thought someone was trying to get our attention. We just giggled and ran off to catch our bus.
To get to the airport, we had to take two local buses. The second one was absolutely packed with people and it was a real struggle getting even a space for our feet let alone our bags. As we stood like sardines in a tin, not taking our eyes off our belongings, I asked myself whether the discomfort and stress was worth the 20 Reais we had saved by taking a bus instead of a taxi. As soon as we were in the air-conditioned airport, however, the sweat having dried off and our bags checked in, I started to feel the sense of achievement of surviving Brazil's public bus system once again. How easy is it to forget such trying moments when your body temperature has returned to normal and you are safe, fed and watered once more!
