WEEK FIFTY THREE, RIVERS, RUM, REMEMBERING!
Trip Start
Jan 17, 2008
1
10
44
Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Manaus,
State of Amazonas,
Brazil
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The boat was a big, white, metal ferry with no comforts or luxuries
like hot water or tables and chairs! Everything was painted metal, the
floors, the toilets, the showers, it makes the booze cruise from Dublin
to Holyhead a luxury 5 star Cruise liner! The sinks and showers where
supplied with water from the river itself. So you were washing teeth,
face, body in a lovely yellowish - brown cold water, the same water
that was used to flush the toilets! The toilets themselves were located
above the hot engine rooms and heated up very quickly which in turn
stifled the air in the tin can toilets and warmed the toilet water and
toilet paper waste that is disposed of in waste paper bins that are
only emptied once a day! As soon as you stepped into the toilets you
had to hold your breath as you navigated a sea of yellow piss and river
water with soaked soggy toilet paper collecting in the pools that
swamped the floor. It was so humid that your skin got clammy as soon as you opened the door and the stale smelly air seemed to coat your whole body with its foulness!
We were the last few passengers on the boat so we got the hammock
spaces that nobody wanted, right at the back of the deck by the TV and
stereo speakers, above the engine room, which roared constantly like a
hoarse angry dragon! We were right beside the metal, traffic full stairs
and under the permanent fluorescent light and surround on two sides by
the open sides of the boat which left us exposed to the torrential
rain, scorching sun and howling winds that battered the boat everyday!
We hung our hammocks up from the exposed pipes and settled into our
spaces. It was going to be a long trip for me and I knew I was going to
get very little sleep on this Amazon trip. I also sensed that I was
going to get very bored very quickly as there was nothing to do on the
ship. It was a means of transport on this the largest river in the
world not a pleasure cruise. There was a little bar upstairs on the
exposed deck with a few plastic tables and chairs, which we dominated
by old Brazilian men playing angry games of domino's! There was a TV
right above my head that blasted loud crap Brazilian music concerts and
that was about it! I also had no Ritalin so I was going to be an ADHD
nightmare, I pitied the boys having to put up with me for so long!
We got three meals a day, a bread roll and sickeningly sweet coffee for
breakfast at 7am, rice, beans, spaghetti and whatever meat they had
available for lunch, we ate water Buffalo one day, and dinner was at
6pm and it was left overs turned in to soup if we were lucky or just
served up as that same meal again! After breakfast we would read some
books, then after lunch, if we were lucky we would fall asleep and kill
a few hours, if not, it was more bloody reading or watching the
portable DVD player, after dinner it was more and more reading until we
could take no more and wrapped ourselves up in our hammocks and prayed
for a sleep induced coma to kill at least 12 hours! But that never
happened for me, I was awake and up every morning by 4 or 5am unable to
sleep any longer do to the crying kids, thunder storms or just the
blinding fluorescent light right above my head!
The Amazon river is a huge mass of brown that looks like the strong
tea, with not enough milk, that your nan serves you in those brown
Pyrex cups that they all seem to have one or two of but never a full
set! It stretches for miles and miles across and is bordered by various
types of vegetation in every shade of green. There are no other
colors, no flowers, no parrots, no monkeys, no snakes, no nothing
except a few lonely solitary faded grey wooden stilt huts dotted on the
edge of this vast wilderness of emerald. These huts are inhabited by
large indigenous family's that paddle out in their dug out canoes when
the ship passes to collect plastic shopping bags of food and clothes
that the passengers throw overboard for them. It is very funny to see
these Amazonian Indians in primitive canoes emerging from these shacks
in the rain forest wearing Mickey Mouse t-shirts, Man Utd Shirts,
baseball caps or skimpy girlie tops saying "shake your ass" or "i´m
with stupid"!!
A few of these locals manage to hook on to our boat and
climb aboard and sell us shrimp or heart of palms, which are delicious!
Apart from these locals and a few small fresh water blind pink dolphins nothing
exciting happened to break up the monotonous hours of my day. During
one stormy night, when again I couldn´t sleep and was the only one up
and wandering the deck at 3am I actually wished for a big wave to come
and rock the boat violently to sweep me to the edge and have to cling
on till the boat righted itself just so I had something to do and to
get my heart rate beating again, but no such luck. However, the next day was better as I celebrated my one year traveling anniversary! I spent the day looking back on my year of adventures and travels and boring the boys to death with all my tales!
The boys however where coping real well and having a great time just
reading, chilling and gently swaying in their hammocks. They welcomed
the slow pace and peacefulness of the journey, the uninterrupted 'me
time' to finish their books and fill in their diaries and watch the new
DVD´s they had bought. They enjoyed the snoozing in their hammocks and
didn´t seem to have too much of a hard time sleeping. Gosh, I wish I
had their calm and patience and not the attention span of a 21 century,
TV educated, 12 year old, Ritalin reared child! The first two days
passed so slowly and I was getting cabin fever, how was I going to last
six days on here?
Finally, after 4 days, we are allowed off the boat for a few hours to
go into the town where we have docked, Santarem. We walk all along the pier and
into the town and straight to the Internet, after four days with no
contact with the outside world we were dying to hear from our family
and friends! Afterward we stocked up on some supplies and watermelons, I then got the guys to take a photo of me holding the watermelon so I could Facebook it with the caption 'I carried a watermelon' I was very bored alright? But all
too soon it was time to head back on to the boat. As we pulled away from the post and headed back up the Amazon we saw the meeting of the two rivers. Santarém is bordered by the Amazon and the Tapajós rivers. Both run
along many kilometers in the front of the city, side by side, without
mixing. The Amazon's milky colored water carries sediment from the
Andes in the East, while the Tapajós's water is somewhat warmer and has
a deep-blue tone. This phenomenon is called "The meeting of the waters"
by the locals. It was pretty cool to watch and a definite highlight of the trip!
The next day we called at another town but it was dead and all locked up!
So we bought a few bottles of rum, however, we were not allowed to bring them on to the ship! Whatever!! No rum on a boat!! Rubbish!! So we created a decoy and had a Laurel & Hardy scene
of trying to smuggle the bottles on to the ship with lots of running,
chasing, hiding, dogs, cooks and captains! But, we did it and now had enough alcohol to get us
through the last remaining days on board.
On Paddy´s Day we put the rum to good use whilst playing poker on the
top deck of the boat. What a memorable way to spend Paddy´s Day,
winning money, getting drunk, making friends whilst sailing down the
Amazon. That night I learned Samba and Funky dancing off some local girls
then watched the moon rise over the Amazon as we docked for the last
time in Manaus. We spent one more night on the boat before heading in
to Manaus to a hotel to wait for my credit cards to arrive.
The city of Manaus is deep in the Amazon yet it is a modern city with
lots of traffic and sky scrappers and concrete slabs of buildings. No
sign of any rain forest, monkeys, in fact not even a tree in sight! Not
what I imagined the Amazon Rain forest to be like at all.
