Yesterday I left Manaus at 10 am and it took 16 hours to get to Boa Vista from where I had a bus to Puerto la Cruz in Venezuela. The road was really bad, with big holes, no asphalt and it was very dangerous as there were steep slopes on both sides and the bus was swinging all the time (because of the holes). I was really tired because of this. However, the vegetation and animals I saw from the bus were fantastic (no anacondas though!!...). There were swamps everywhere and huge palm trees as well. There is no reception in the Amazon forest so I was wondering - if an accident happens, what do people do??... I was the only backpacker on the bus from Manaus but today there are four of us: a guy from Canada and a Japanese couple. It is nice to meet other backpackers after months of meeting local people only :)
We arrived in Boa Vista at 2 am and my plan was to wait for my bus in the station until 7.30 am but I met a man on the bus, his family came to pick him up and they invited me home to have a short sleep. They also gave me lift to the station in the mornig. Amazing... it would not happen in England or Poland... but in Sicily for sure!! :)
Boa Vista is another isolated from the world town (well, Manaus is a big city), surrounded by the jungle. But people live there, they work and they organised their lives in the best way they could.
The man told me about INPA, an institute in Manaus which carries on a lot of research in the Amazon forest. I would like to visit it in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Amazonian_Research
