WFNY World Cup Diary: Bring on Portugal

MANAUS, Brazil — Our taxis Saturday morning from Natal’s beach area to the new airport saw the drivers reach a speed of 140 kilometers-per-hour through a small cobblestoned street area. At times you think they are racing, so you close your eyes because you expect a motorcyclists or pedestrian to be hit. But somehow it works.

The airport opened a just a few weeks ago, and on this morning, the entire computer system shut down. Not knowing when it would come back on, some of us on the checkin line for the flight to Manaus were quietly wondering if we’d make it before Sundays game.

What made it easier to accept was the line about 50 feet from us, which had 200-300 colorfully dressed Ghanaian fans waiting to check in for their flight to Fortaleza. Their game against Germany was four hours away, yet they thoroughly entertained everyone by dancing and chanting during the wait, showing no signs of stress that perhaps they’d miss their game.

Traveling.

The computers came back on 1.5 hours later and we watched the Ghana fan board. They would likely be on time. Four hours into our flight, the entire plane was snapping photo after photo out the windows of the Amazon river down below as we approached our landing in Manaus.

Once the wheels hit the runway, a young kid started ‘I Believe that we will win’, which is when we realized the plane was overwhelmingly pro American. Everyone followed along.

This was a positive for us because for the past five days it seemed like every American we talked to in Natal said they couldn’t make the trip to Manaus. It’s far and expensive to get here, so we were expecting a showing perhaps one-third the size of what we had for the first game.

It’s no secret that it’s hot here. What slaps you in the face the hardest is the humidity. The roads from the airport to our condo already reveal more of a true city than we saw the past week, and it feels like a World Cup is being played here.

The heat seems manageable at night when we make our way to the FIFA Fan Fest in the Ponte Negra area to watch Nigeria-Bosnia. There weren’t as many people there, possibly because of the match-up, but it’s a neat area that we expect could be huge for other games.

This ain’t the Cuyahoga.

From there we taxi it over to the US Soccer party, which fortunately was only about 10 minutes away. We had no idea you needed to have RSVPd, and the line to wait without a pass was 40 minutes long. But then five guys walked out and handed us their wristbands and extra pass and we walked right in. Perfect.

Inside the scene is similar to the pre-game party in Natal—flashing lights off a stage with a large crowd of US Soccer-wearing adults jumping around and dancing in the middle with others, like us, taking it in and chatting from the sides. To no surprise, the beer was flowing smoothly.

Our suspicions were right—there are not as many American fans here as Natal. We may be fewer in numbers but if last night is any indication, everyone is ready to make some noise tonight as we take on Portugal in the jungle.