11 de Mayo
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2007
1
240
332
Trip End
Jan 14, 2008
Belem,
Brazil
Monday, October 15, 2007
The lovely breakfast was served from 6am. One sweet buttered roll, and treacly coffee so sweet it might as well have been pure sugar. Pete is dreaming of a cappuccino and vanilla slice from the local bakery, again.
We occupied the morning inventing silly things. The river is almost totally flat, it drops only 200 metres from Manaus to the ocean hundreds of kilometres away. What a wonderful bike track this would make ! Used tyres could be used to make a floating bikeway. Pete made sketches and is ready to send them to a manufacturer.
The views are still lovely, with occasional low hills and yellow-flowering trees. The top deck is good for sitting, with a pleasant breeze, as long as you put yourself well away from the blaring loudspeakers. All our stuff is locked up and we think no-one would be game to knife them open.
Lunch was first served at 10am, the usual beef, but as there are 4 sittings we managed to stay unfed till after 11. The table is along the side of the boat so you have nice views while devouring the unpalatable grub.
Later the boat stopped at the riverside town of Gurupá. There is a small Portuguese fort here. The Portuguese travellers and Karin asked how long the boat was stopped, and were told 20 to 30 minutes, so off they hopped to see the fort. Luckily Pete was unaware of this, or he would have been left behind too. The bastard of a captain took off early, in full view of the 3 running towards the boat, yelling and waving arms. They had to hire a speedboat to catch us up. This time the captain condescended to slow down marginally so they could get back on board.
We ran into a rain storm, and despite the tarps being pulled down the rain drove inside the boat. Rivers ran over the deck, and our luggage was looking in danger of getting soaked till someone pointed to the life vests, which we shoved under our packs to get them off the ground. The grumpy captain would have been very cross, but he failed to do a check.
Barb has come to the conclusion that the average Brazilean guy is a male chauvinist pig. They push and shove if they want to get past, no 'excuse me'. The large fellow in the adjoining huge hammock sprawls out taking up enough space for 3 demure ladies, and kicking Barb as he wriggles into a better position (for him).
Once or twice a small canoe was paddled furiously in the direction of the boat. These are hitchhikers. The successful sling a hook at our boat, tie up, and climb on board. How on earth are they going to get back to their starting point 20 kilometres behind us, armed with one tiny paddle ? Hitchhike upstream the same way, maybe.
Sometimes a horde of canoes appeared from houses on stilts beside the river. Passengers on our boat slung plastic bags of what we thought were rubbish into the river, but no, these are gifts for the river dwellers, packets of biscuits or sweets.
We met the river smugglers too.. A small boat with a covered cabin pulled up next to our boat in the middle of the jungle, our boat stopped and unloaded a stack of car batteries and a small fridge; money changed hands. Then another wad of reals appeared and very quickly a gun was handed over and hastily tucked inside the purchaser's shirt.
