Saturday 13 March 2010

DAY 60 Mar 13 - Manaus, Amazon River, Brazil

We have nothing planned for this our second day in 'the heart of the Amazon' other than to find our friends Uli and Inge before they leave for their flight back to the USA. It was originally planned to be a day for relaxing and doing some final sightseeing in this exciting city of Manaus.

One of the outstanding features of this city is The Amazon Theatre (Teatro Amazonas), an opera house located in the very heart of Manaus. It is the location for the annual Festival Amazonas de Ópera (Amazonas Opera Festival) held in April each year.

It was built during the Belle Époque at a time when fortunes were made in the rubber boom.

Construction of the Amazon Theater was first proposed in 1881 by a member of the House of Representatives, Antonio Jose Fernandes Júnior, the idea being to construct a jewel in the heart of the Amazonian forest and to make Manaus one of the great centres of civilization.

In the following year the State legislature approved some limited financing, but this was considered insufficient.

In 1882, the president of the Province, Jose Lustosa Paranaguá, approved a larger budget and initiated a competition for the presentation of plans. By 1884, construction was ready to begin under the Italian architect Celestial Sacardi who planned for the theatre in the Renaissance style to be state of the art and to include electric lighting. The theatre was eventually inaugurated on 31 December 1896, with the first performance occurring on 7 January 1897 with the Italian opera, La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli.

It has since been restored four times, most recently in 1929, 1974 and between 1988 and 1990, and it currently has 701 seats covered with red velvet.

But what about our friends from Naples?

During the night their ship had been moved so it was now docked just behind the Prinsendam. Around 8 o'clock the P and O ship the Artemis arrived and docked in the area left vacant by the Royal Princess.

By 6.00 am the river was quite busy with vessels travelling in all directions. Boats here are a major means of transport and in many ways replace the car.

It was going to be another day like yesterday, hot and humid.

I spent a few hours working on my blog for part two of yesterday, the one that I couldn't finish last night due to fatigue.

Maria slept on until I woke her with her morning coffee. We decided to have a quick bite to eat and then head to the gangway of the Royal Princess.

As we approached the ship there was Uli and Inge walking towards us.

We were all delighted to at last meet-up with one another.

They had a few hours to kill before they would have to head for the airport and their return to Florida.

We all took the shuttle bus for the short ride to the terminal where there was a small café. We sat down ordered some coffee and caught up on all the news.

It appeared that they missed us by maybe 5 minutes yesterday and had even talked to our tour guide. What a shame but that was all behind us now.

We will be back in Naples Florida in 11 days time when we will again resume our regular weekly night out with our two dear German friends.

Once we had seen then off to the airport in a taxi we headed over to the market opposite the terminal.

It was now becoming oppressively hot and sticky and not the weather for wandering around.

Despite this we thought we should make the effort and see the Cathedral and the city's famous Opera House.

The Cathedral was quite unobtrusive compared with ones we had seen in Brazil and painted in bright pastel colours on the outside.

Surpris-ingly despite there being three ships in port there was no crowds in the church.

After this we decided to walk to the Opera House which was probably a mile away. This was an exhausting experience and probably a bit of a mistake.

A taxi ride might have been a better option for getting there. We were both wet through by the time we reached the theatre, as it is known locally.

Opposite the Opera House is a magni-ficantly well renovated building that is now the Justice Depar-tment. What a truly lovely building. It was, I think, one of the original buildings from the colonial period.

It was not possible to see inside because it was the weekend and was shut for business.

Unfortunately the three visiting ships had deposited many of their passengers here at the Opera House and we had to join a queue to buy our US$3 equivalently priced entry ticket.

The building was quite cool and had a welcoming breeze blowing through its corridors.

Instead of waiting for an official tour we just went ahead and did our own thing while at the same time listening to one of the guides explaining what was what to a bunch from the Artemis.

We were delighted to see that an orchestra was practising and we were able to sit in the auditorium and listen to the music. In fact we quickly moved upstairs in the building and occupied one of the private little boxes.

It transpired that the music was being performed by the City's Youth Symphony Orchestra. Some of its members were very young indeed particularly in the percussion section.

In one of the large anti-rooms in the building we soon discovered the Gonsalves and Fowlers. They had previously spotted us in the audit-orium.

In addition we found our friend Henk leading one of the CSI tour groups.

He is pictured with Maria in the photo below.

His wife Lucia was leading another from the same group.They must have had two bus loads of clients today.

In the building is a small museum which included in its exhibits the ballet shoes worn by Margot Fontayn at her 1975 performance of "The Amazon Forest" here in this very building.

In addition to this prized pair of shoes was much other memorabilia from far off days that had been associated with this amazing Amazonian Opera House.

We took many photographs here including a few of our Canadian friends who were also, as usual, very active with their lenses.

Opposite the Opera House is a church dedicated to Saint Sebastian. It was again nicely decorated with nothing too fancy.

The heat was certainly getting to us now so we hailed a taxi and headed the mile or so back to the ship and the comfort of its air conditioning. The rest of the day was spent blogging, reading and generally just keeping cool.

Sunset was at about 6.30 as the ship sailed away to our next port of call, Parintins.

We left behind the Royal Princess and Artemis alone on the quay. Both ships were due to sail away the folowing day to their respective destinations.

The sky was a rich red in colour as the sun finally vanished from view.

Tonight we had a 7.30 appoint-ment in the Pinnacle Grill courtesy of Holland America Line. The meals here are huge and I don't think I did justice to my rib-eye steak.

2 comments:

  1. I have been enjoying reading your blog. I was never aware that you could cruise up the Amazon. Your trip is on the countdown to the finish. I guess you are both looking forward to getting home and catching up with family and friends.
    Leanne, Australia

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  2. We were so lucky when we did our Amazon cruise in October, 2006. At the time, there had been a Music Festival on in Manaus and we were there for the final night. The Veendam managed to get tickets for those who were interested in going so off we went. It was a wonderful night and the music played was "The Four Seasons" by Vivaldi and and a different version by a Portuguese/spanish composer. It was hard to believe that we were up the Amazon, close to the jungle, whilst listening to this beautiful music in the magnificent opera house. We felt so privileged to have been given the opportunity to be present at this final concert.

    Jennie

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