Tabatinga in Brazil, Leticia in Colombia and Santa Rosa in Peru are the towns at this three-countries border in the Amazon. Not part of the initial plan, leaving Brazil through Tabatinga and entering Colombia through Leticia turned to be the best route to skip Venezuela considering cost, time and also flexibility to flight to Lima via SantaRosa/Iquitos if the situation required as my father was at the hospital and it wasn't clear for how long.
Fortunately he recovered fast and I could continue travelling keeping my stay in Tabatinga and Leticia very short, too short perhaps.
Having discarded the 6 days boat trip due to comfort but also time reasons, I booked a non-stop flight from Manaus to Tabatinga with Azul airlines. We started on time and from the air we followed the Amazon river for some time.
The 2 hours flight went fine except the last 30 minutes which were very very bad, with extreme turbulence as I never had before. We were flying at around 11.500 m and were inside a huge yellowish cloud. It was not the usual "earthquake" like shaking what we got, but more an up-down-shake like in a roller coaster, with falling phases of 10 seconds or so where the pilotd were fighting to keep the plane horizontal. At the end both, the plane a brazilian Embraer 190 jet and the pilot did an excellent job.
Tabatinga just had a heavy rain as we landed and the roads were all muddy. There is a plan to rebuild the asphalt of the streets inside the town, just on time for the elections later this year.
The taxi from the airport took me to Leticia. The two towns are just next to each other and there is no boarder control. In other words I left Brazil in the same way I entered it, without a stamp.
I spend the night at a hostel in Leticia. The town surprised me as very active, happy, wealthy and with good infrastructure. There are many travel agencies but tourism is not big here yet. Nevertheless I met some people at the hostel that came for a couple of days and were spending already their second week enjoying the town and the tiny jungle villages around it. I could have stayed longer.
There was no problem the next day getting an entrance stamp at the airport, where the colombian immigration is located. They just asked a few questions and told me that technically speaking I was in the underground from the time I left Bella Vista (Paraguay) two weeks ago to the moment I reappeared in Leticia (Colombia). Next time I will make sure to get the stamps; this time they will have to check this blog to know what I was doing :)
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