They had reached Manaus. They had arrived.

Panda-faced (deep red but for pale white eyes where my glasses deflected the sun) and in Manaus. In fact a little to the West, on the Ponta Negra, where the Rio Negro, the colour of overbrewed Earl Grey is supposedly so acidic this is the one part of the trip which should be mosquito free. Jonathan, trusting the evidence of his eyes in our room, demands maximum prophylaxis neverheless.

I feel it's necessary to crank up the adventurousness of the trip so far since it might be considered frankly Amazon-lite. We're in a sort of compound, which is inhabited by the same two indigenous tribespeople we saw welcoming people off the baggage collection carousel at the airport. I suspect they may not be from one of the remoter tribes (it may be the elegant spectacles worn by one of them to augment a costume otherwise consisting of only a few feathers).

But Manaus has had its challenges. Dropped off at the Cathedral, appropriately for a Sunday morning, we've had little but benevolent looks from residents who clearly feel two sweating gringos with a video camera have enough to worry about. Old Manaus is not hard to find - the Cathedral, the Market and the Docks were all a short walk from each other, but they now nestle in a city whose pirate DVD stalls, Coke stands with portable TVs and ubiquitous plastic beach inflatables rather overwhelm the 'Belle Epoque' Manaus advertised on various architectural imprtovement projects (including what looked like a remarkably gap-windowed central police staion - and I don't mean it had lots of khakis on sale). Yet for all the soundtrack of what seemed like Brazilian Carly Simon surging from every hole in the wall bar, there was underneath it all a spirit I decided I recognised. Resolutely commercial - every Manuasite we saw was either selling or buying something. Vigorously energetic - commerce still went on during our Mad Dogs and Englishmen historical itinerary, with streets lined with stalls in front of shops closed for Sunday that were themselves carved out of mercahants palaces of a century ago. The docks still welcome cargo on the floating harbours imported from Britain back in the rubber boom. The Customs House (Alfandega) was, so all the books say, shipped out in sections from England too. Its tower-cum-lighthouse is still there, just as it must have been for Maia as she and Miss Minton arrived a hundred years ago.

The docks look like they are being 'improved'. Some of the streets where the guidebooks give dire warnings about being knocked unconscious with drugged beverages (what gay guides identify with the ambivalent acronym AYOR) seem to have been given over to redevelopment, with a new theatre promised for the dockside as far as I could make out from the hoardings. It looks like it's planned to offer films and demonstrations of traditional Amazon life, however, but it's hard to tell. In any case, a new riverside theatre in Manaus seemed like a good omen for Journey to the River Sea at the new Unicorn.

We strolled through the market, filming fish and meat and fruit and grains that must have been there in some form when Maia was shopping and the Les Halles-like structure was young. We saw an igape still visible in the midst of twenty-first centuiry Manuas, its green-topped water lined by the stilt-supported backs of houses for which the vegetaion covered surface looked like a back garden. We saw black birds circling the refuse of the dock waters.

And we saw the Teatro Amazonas. Closed for Sunday, but extraordinary gleaming gold at the top of the hill. They're doing the Ring Cycle there which seems an appropriately Fitzcarraldoish bit of programming. More on that later, I'm sure.