Our next destination was the Amazon rain forest, flying into Manaus. We were to spend one night in Manaus and then be transferred to the lodge in the morning. Manaus is the capital of the state of Amazonas and is located at the confluence of the Negro and Solimões rivers. It is the most populous city in the Amazon rain forest with a population approaching 2 million people. Manaus is in a different time zone than our other destinations in Brazil, and is 3 hours ahead of Portland. We were scheduled to arrive very late in Manaus, at 12:58 AM local time. Our flights got delayed by about 30 minutes and by the time we made it to our hotel it was almost 2:30 AM. The plan was to quickly repack as we could only take 2 suitcases total to the jungle lodge, and go to bed to get as much sleep as possible.
We were on track to do that until I had an unfortunate incident and almost electrocuted myself. We wanted to charge our phones and cameras, but I could only find a single electrical outlet in the room that Matthew and I were sharing and that outlet was in the bathroom. Not wanting to put all these items next to the sink in the bathroom I noticed there was a mini refrigerator and microwave in the room, so I figured I could unplug one of those and plug our extension cord that we use to charge our devices into that outlet. I saw two cords plugged into a small box down below the refrigerator and thought that the box must be to split one outlet into two. So, I unplugged one cord and was moving it out of the way when I suddenly felt intense heat on my right hand, and then my hand, arm, and whole body started pulsating with electrical shock. My hand had closed tightly around the prongs on the cord and I was unable to let go of the cord. After what seemed like several seconds, either by intent, by accident with me trashing around, or by God’s intervention I managed to pull the other end of the cord out of the wall. In the meantime, Matthew was half asleep watching this happen and not knowing what was going on. He later said he thought I was having a heart attack. It took me about 5 minutes to recover enough to even be able to talk and to realize that I was going to be OK.
After recovering sufficiently to realize what had happened, I found that I had two burns on my right hand where I had grasped the prongs of the cord. They would later turn into blisters from the electrical burn. I tried to run my hand under cold water to stop the intense pain and cool down the burn but the water in the sink was lukewarm, so I sent Matthew down to the front desk (it was now 3 AM) to buy me a cold bottle of water to put on my hand. I had noticed they had cold drinks for sale in the lobby when we checked in 30 minutes earlier, and that was all I could think to do to solve my problem. I later went down and bought a metal can of cold juice to put on my hand as I thought that would work better (and it did). I figured no point in trying to explain to the desk clerk what had happened and what I really needed as he did not speak English and I can’t say anything in Portuguese other than thank you. After recovering a bit I investigated to see what had caused me to get shocked by simply unplugging a cord. What I found was that the box I had seen under the refrigerator was a 220V to 110V converter, as the refrigerator required 110V and the power in this part of Brazil is 220V. The converter box had two female receptacles, one marked 110V, the output, and one marked 220V, the input. I had unplugged the cord going into the 220V input. It turns out that this cord (which I later found across the room where I had thrown it after I had gotten it pulled out of the wall) had male prongs on both ends. So, one end was plugged into a live 220V outlet in the wall, and the other end is what I had unplugged and grabbed. Clearly this design does not meet UL safety standards or any other international safety standards since it you unplug things in the wrong order you could seriously hurt yourself or worse. I have received some electrical shocks in the past, by momentarily touching live 110V wires (don’t ask how, but I will tell you the answer – stupidity) and an electrical livestock fence, but those were just a quick jolt as I was only in contact with them for a fraction of a second. In this case the pain was intense and my whole body was quivering even after I had disconnected myself from the 220V cord. I ended up with two burn marks (one a nice circle like the prong tip, the other not as bad and more in the shape of the letter J as the other prong must have moved while I was electrified) that turned to blisters after a couple of hours. I also had significant swelling of my hand in the vicinity of the contact points. However, as I am writing this a couple of days later there is no apparent long term damage, just the blisters which have gotten worse, and the swelling which has gotten better. Not sure yet what the learnings are from this incident other than avoid the Hotel do Largo in Manaus Brazil. You should be able to unplug a cord and not expect that the prongs on the cord are going to still be electrified.
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| Burn marks on my hand ~30 minutes after the incident |
After all this excitement it took a long time to go to sleep due to the pain, and partially because I was worried that perhaps my injury was more severe and I wanted to still be awake so I could call for help if needed. Ultimately I fell asleep a bit before 5 AM, and had to get up at 6:15 for a 7 AM departure. However, I still had extra adrenaline and pain to keep me awake.
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