Tropical Hotel: River, Zoo and Lounge

On the third weekend after Jing arrived, we attended an event at the
Tropical Hotel along with my team leader and his wife. He was giving a
speech at the environmental law conference there, and luckily the
conference didn't require formal attire. Arriving early, we waited for
our translator Ary to arrive, as well as one of the project organizers
from our Brazilian counterpart. In Brazil, people and events are rarely
on time, so we stood around in the lobby for quite some time, but
eventually they arrived, however, only to tell us that the event itself
was running an hour behind schedule and instead of speaking at 6:45, the
speech would probably be around 8pm.
While our team leader headed into the event, he told the three of us we
should wander around the hotel grounds and look around. The conference
would be entirely in Portuguese, so we could just come in before 8
o'clock and see his speech. I'd been to the hotel in June just to look
around and sit by the Rio Negro one weekend after playing tennis with my
coworkers. The Tropical Hotel is considered the most luxurious hotel in
Manaus and it does have a beautiful view of the waterfront, so I took
the ladies down the path of steps through a small forested area to where
we could see the river. I was surprised at how much the waters had
receded in the past two months, since when I was there in June, the
waters were at their highest (and this year was a record level due to
snow melt in the Andes mountains apparently). There was actually some
beach where we could walk and we took a few pictures as the sun began to
set.
Before dark, we headed up to the hotel courtyard where they had a small
zoo... that is, if you can call a half dozen caged animals a zoo. There
was a bored-looking jaguar in one cage, two sleeping aardvark-looking
things in another, and finally, a large caged in area of woolly monkeys,
which were actually pretty fun to watch as they hopped around seemingly
bemused to entertain their guests by swinging with their tails, feet and
hands along the sides and top of the cage. But soon the sun had set and
we headed inside to the lounge to have a coffee and chat to kill some
time, listening to stories about our team leader and his wife who had
traveled to numerous countries over the years for his business trips.
Sometimes they brought their boys with them, once to Chile and once to
Tanzania, although the boys were apparently too young and claim they
don't remember those adventures, but do seem to have a penchant for
travel of their own, having taken trips overseas for leisure over the
years as adults.
The clock neared 7:30pm, so we went into the conference room. It was a
large room with seating for well over 100, but, as it turned out, there
was a big FIFA game between Brazil and Argentina that evening at 9pm, so
most of the conference attendees had already begun to depart and there
were plenty of empty seats. However, the speech was well received and he
even managed to get a couple laughs from the audience that was there. He
kept his speech rather brief, after which more people departed the room,
and the conference dragged on until 9pm--apparently environmental
attorneys are not big football fans.