7days 6nights - a perpetual journey 1100km upriver

  Amazon River - Manaus to Tabatinga, Brazil
Monday, December 4, 2006

A perperual journey of 1100km up the Amazon River from Manaus to Tabatinga, the border of Brazil.  On a boat called the Don Manuel, crammed with 300 locals and 7 tourists, we alternated along each side of the wide, cream colored river, passing by dense jungle patches, moss-covered trees, and small villages with stilt houses and cattle farms, just like an IMAX movie! 

It´s one of the largest rivers in the world, and thus its home to many EXTREMES of the natural world.  For example, at the mouth of the Amazon River, where it meets the sea, it is so wide and deep that ocean-going ships navigate its waters and can travel as far inland as two-thirds the way up the entire length of the river. We managed to see some huge ships carrying large containers of goods, and crazy things such as vessels hauling loads of enormous rocks! 

And here´s an interesting fact: because fish have all the room to grow in this gigantic river, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world is found living in the waters of the Amazon River. The Pirarucu is the largest, exclusively fresh water fish in the world. They have been found to reach a length of 15 ft/4m and can weigh up to 440lbs! They´re also delightfully tasty! We were even lucky to catch a family of River Dolfins (both pink and grey exist in the Amazon waters) encircling smaller fish ready to attack for dinner.  By chance, we caught a glimpse of one dolphin doing a  Discovery Channel style flip out of the water! 



Weaving in and out of the multicolored hammocks stung up in every single square inch of the boat, we would bang into people at both ends, heads and asses, and would have to swing them out of the way in the corridor just to make our way to other end of the boat. Scenes of children being breastfed, laundry being stung up on every side railing, locals reading biblical pamphlets, and pepole napping at all hours of the day.  We were surprised as to the number of young children travelling on the boat.  They would be crammed upside down, this way and that, tucked away into their parents hammocks during the night, and running around naked during the day...playing with action figures, trucks, dolls, or skipping ropes. We personally befriended Michael, the cutie with the Spiderman ("Homme Aranya" in Portuguese) shirt and huge smile, David the lollipop sucker who loved Ashif's goatee, and curly Magdaleana, who's father would religiously comb out all her curls, wash her clothes and hang them to dry every single night (what a good Daddy!)

 
 

The meals, however redundant and lacking flavour, seemed to be the only thing to help keep time and track of the passing days.  Cheap, dry crackers with a dish full of soy margarine for breakfast, hearty chicken/beef/fish on top of spaghetti for lunch, and ground beef mixed with rice for dinner...EVERYDAY.  The timings were completely nuts, breakfast at 5:30am, a huge lunch at 10:15am, and dinner at 5:30pm, one hour before the sunset and darkness rolled in.  Locals would line up 1 full hour before the food bell rang, and would bring back deep tupperware bins full of food (enough to feed a whole family!) to eat on the floor near their hammocks.  Waiting in line provided us with an opportunity to really get to know some of the locals.  We shared chats about politics, music, the environment, and their personal stories of why they were travelling such a long distance.  Some women had just given birth in Manaus and were returning to their village along the river, some were meeting their families after 20 years to show their newborn babies to their parents, some had been in Manaus for reunions of the Evangelical faith, and some were Peruvians returning from business trips.  One man enjoyed our talks so much that he presented us with huge avocados as a kind gesture before bidding farewell upon reaching his town.

We carefully rationed off our 10L of water, not daring to drink from the communal filtered tap (do they ever clean those things?).  We were constantly searching for fresh fruit to supplement our meals at the numerous port stops we would make along the river.  The townspeople at these ports would gather to see the big boat arrive, as we docked in style with live music blaring from the upper deck.  You could find any size of banana, delicious fresh fruit brought in from the villages, icecream, beer, almost anything you wanted!  At one stop in the middle of the night, we jumped out and ran through the village on a hunt for Cachaca (the local moonshine made from sugarcane spirit) and a bunch of lemons to make "Caipirinas".  This filled the void since drinks were the only missing ingredient in our card playing all-nighters in one of the backpackers' cabins. Including the two of us, there were 7 foreigners from countries outside South America on the boat (2 Dutch, 3 Canadians, 1 Spaniard, and 1 French).  We formed a close bond over the 7 days and would have gone mad if we didn´t have each other to speak English with, and laugh about the absurdities of river travel. 



So, what would people do all day long?  They would sleep, hang out upstairs at the bar deck, drinking and playing cards or dominoes, and constantly listening to LIVE MPB (Musica Popular Brazilero).  Yes, there was even a synthesizer complete with a sound system on the boat.  The singers, we have to admit, were pretty horrible, with scratchy thick voices screeching overtop synthesizer beats, singing the same songs that are now permanently imprinted in our brains. We enjoyed nightly conversations under the stars with the other English speakers on the boat, while the captain, avoiding potential damage to the ship, shined his beam on flotsam and jetsam and the shore line at night.   At sunset, we brushed our teeth by the sinks at the back of the boat, where newborn babies were being bathed in sinks, and spiders weaved their nightly webs, catching unseemingly large flying critters.  Then we would retire to our cabin (yeah, we splurged this time - best $50 we ever spent), where the air conditioning blasted with semi-refreshing cold, dry air. We spent time in our cabin reading, playing cards, cutting fruit with our swiss army knife on the tiny table, periodically stuffing paper towels into an oil leak in the ceiling, and inspecting our rotting bananas.  Oh, and we can't forget, we also had to tend to Reeshma's toe, cut open from two stumbles on metal stairwells on the boat, one almost breaking her neck as she dangled in mid air! 

 

Unfortunately, we also witnessed helpless river banks eroding from constant cultivation, making the jungle seem to just end abruptly at its borders. Large cattle and soy farms spontaneously appeared every so often along the way in between patches of dense jungle, evidence of the huge worldwide demand for these products.  In fact, Brazil is now the largest exporter of cattle and soy on the entire planet. We wondered how this was affecting the ecosystem and how long it would be before the world suffers from the destruction. We even teamed up with the other backpackers and took  it upon oureselves to be the Litter Police, and gave dirty looks and lectures in broken Portuguese to locals nonchalantly tossing plastic cups, beer cans, and candy wrappers into the river, claiming the river will just clean it all away. 

Indeed, the boat trip up the Amazon River felt like an endless journey for the rest of time.  A nice, slow, easy pace with lots of time to read, nothing to do, and nowhere to go.  It doesn't get any better than this.  Beautiful sunsets, dense jungle, quaint villages, exotic animal life, phenomenal rain storms, and wonderful people all along the way. We only hope the River basin will somehow outlast its inevitable destruction, and the gigantic fish and river dolphins will flourish in their natural environment for years to come.

  
BBC News Article on the Destruction of the Rainforest

(View this entry´s SlideShow/PhotoAlbum above)