So, the Onze de Maio (the boat we picked up in Manaus to carry us the 1000 miles down the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean) was definitely sub-par compared to the other boat, AlmTE Alfredo Zanys, that took us from Porto Velho to Manaus.

Typical cargo/passenger boat on the Amazon.

On the upside, we met an awesome couple from San Fransisco.   They kept us entertained and were great company for the four day journey.   But before I get into that… first the horrors.

1) The whistle.   Yes, the whistle.   Morning, noon, and night, (I mean breakfast, lunch, and dinner) the staff wandered the boat with whistles letting everyone know it was time to come and eat.   And by “morning” I mean 5:30 a.m.

2) The mess hall cum bunk area.   Instead of a fixed area for dining 12 at a time like we had on the boat previous, this boat had tables seating 30 each that slid up the poles to store in the ceiling when it wasn ´t meal time.   You don ´t learn this until after you ´ve strung your hammock and the boat has departed.   So, the poor folks who had the misfortune of stringing in the table area had no choice but to get up at 5:30 every morning to tie their hammocks out of the way so the tables could be lowered.   To top it off, the tables came to rest directly above their luggage, which meant they had no access to their bags during meal times, not to mention the dirty feet and lots of footprints once the tables were put away.

3) Loopy hammocks.   There are four bars running parallel to one another from which to string your hammocks.   To cram in as many people as possible, as folks arrived, the staff ran around laying the smack-down on anyone trying to skip more than a bar (and therefore avoid chronic spine curvature).   If the ends of your hammock aren ´t far enough apart, (especially if you ´re 6 ´7″ Pat), there is absolutely no way to sleep comfortable.   Luckily we pulled a fast one.

4) Fewer bathrooms.   Our second boat had double the people and half the bathrooms.   Not a good combination.   One time I had to pee so bad, and the bathrooms were occupied for an hour straight.   I honestly considered crawling up on the rail and peeing off the side of the boat.

5) Bathrooms for little people only.   Poor Pat couldn ´t stand up straight, and I could barely turn around without scraping against the wall.   A problem because of…

6) sub-par cleanliness.   The bathrooms were a focal point of quickly accumulating ickiness.

7) Non-flushing toilets.   They were designed to flush, but somehow the pV=nRT concept has escaped these people.   So… the liquid waste would flush, but the solids stayed until the staff would pour giant buckets of river water into the bowl.   Splashy splash.   EWWWWW.

8) Busy bow areas – the previous boat had all the staircases between levels at the stern, but this one had them at the bow, ruining a great hang-out area.

9) Crowded upper deck.   The lifeboats (hard plastic “rafts”) took up most of the railing space, and chairs lined the rest under a canopy with no head room even for us shorties.

10) Sub-par meals, and not all you can eat.   More like all you can eat before your neighbor.   And people weren ´t considerate of others down the line.   At our last meal, the woman who got the meat dish first picked out every single vegetable for herself.   She actually dug through until she had found and captured every last pototato and carrot.   I wished I knew enough Portuguese to give her a piece of my mind.

11) Windy, windy, windy.   It was much tougher to read and write in the wind of the open water on this boat.   Boo.

Enough complaining.   Despite all the dissappointments, we still had a ton of fun cruising down the river.   Like I said, John and Rebecca were awesome, and between planning the rest of our trip, having great conversations, lounging in our hammocks, napping, and sharing some cerveja (beer) on the upper deck, we had an incredible experience.

Rebecca went to school at Humboldt (where Pat is going in the fall) for three years, so she was able to give us some good advice as well as hook us up with some people living in Humboldt  County.   Among the many insightful conversations we had, one of the best as far as journal topics are concerned, is safety.   I realized, when were were stopped in a port of a fairly large city, I would actually be more afraid and more worried about my baggage in the U.S. than I am here.   We decided that might have something to do with the U.S. being such a violence-prone culture.

Random tidbits that I am too tired to organize:

1) Long ago, the Amazon was an ancient inland sea covering almost half of South America.   Once it became the Amazon river, it flowed to the Pacific until the Andes rose up however-many thousands of years ago.   Then the water broke through the other side and started its present-day flow to the Atlantic.   The river is HUGE at some points (feels like you ´re boating across an enormous lake) and so narrow at other places that you can see tiny fruits hanging from trees on shore.

2) When we stopped in Santarem (the 1/2 way port) I bought a coconut that I opened by pounding on the dock (a trick I learned in Bolivia) only to be told by standers-by that it was rotten.   Damn the luck.   I learned to always have them opened at the market.

3) The red sand and cliffs of the Amazon are one of the most striking parts of the area.

4) Noctural spiders… who knew?   Each night I ´d go to bed dubiously eyeing my several eight-legged bunkmates only to find them gone in the morning.

5) Skimpy skimpy skimpy… I suppose because of the heat (although it gets this hot in the U.S., too) people dress like women at the Sturgis Rally year round.   It ´s just a bit surprising, that ´s all.   I ´m used to conservative tank tops instead of small bits of cloth.

6) Beef by the side, not the pound.   Meat from animals is not packaged before shipping here.   At one port, we watched them haul on a minimum of seven freshly  quartered animals (some beef, the other too small to be beef) and stick it in the boat ´s fridge.   Just strange to see things at the beginning instead of the end (supermarket).

7) Insects of death – a giant flying ant/wasp and a  flying beetle as big as a half-dollar were the entemological highlights of the trip.

8) Forest dwellers hitching a ride… they ´d paddle out in their canoes and as the boat zoomed by, they ´d use a three to five foot metal rod to snag one of the tires cum bumper blocks on the side of the boat.   Incredible!

9) seven-year-old  Tiger Woods look-alike obsessed with Pat… This kid had a killer smile and couldn ´t quit grinning every time we caught his eye.   His dad told Pat at one of our last meals that he wanted to get a picture of the two of them together.   Cute!

When we got to Belem, we said our goodbyes to John and Rebecca, checked into the cheapest hotel in the book, and beelined for the laundromat where the dryers are gas powered and so hot that our clothes came out smelling like burnt synthetic (my underware).   Oh well!   Belem is a beautiful city, and we found a delicious Italian place where we shared a plate of pesto pasta.   Mmmmmm!

After laundry, Pat and I split up so I could take care of my post office chores (I promised my former co-workers I ´d send a letter).   The post office is SO different here.   They don ´t sell envelopes, rubber cement is the seal of choice, and apparently people don ´t send much mail.   I was sent into a room with a bank of chairs facing two desks at the head of the room.   It was entirely empty save for one man behind a desk who swathed my envelope in $7.50 worth of stamps and sent me on my way.

I met up with Pat, and we saw the city sights… old forts, old buildings, and a very new port station… clean and air-conditioned… full of tons of expensive restaurants.   We indulged in the local flavors of ice cream (açai… a berry from the Amazon, and tapioca… quite good) before finding a really friendly internet cafe.   They didn ´t charge Pat for his hour of internet time because his computer quit and wouldn ´t start again.   A rare thing to do here!

After a dinner full of the typical problems (just because it ´s on the menu, don ´t expect them to actually serve it!) we headed for another internet session before returning to our hotel only to find our bed infested with ants.   The night attendant said he couldn ´t get us a new room until the morning, so we packed up and slipped out to a place that cost twice as much but offered four times the comfort.

The next morning, I asked the woman at the front desk to call the bus station and find out departure times for our next destination (Fortaleza), but she refused to call.   She was certain they left at 7:00 a.m. (too late for that one!) and 8:00 p.m.   Just to be sure, we went to our favorite internet cafe, and they found out for us that one of the only busses had left 15 minutes ago.   We decided to head to the station ourselves.   We approached a ticket counter with our destination advertised.   I couldn ´t understand the attendent ´s response about when the next departure was, so I finally asked him to write it down.   Agora.   (Now.)   Oh!   We bought tickets and ran through the terminal, down the stairs, through security, and jumped on the bus just in time.   Phew!

Right before we left Porto Velho, the boat really filled up.   Before I knew it people were stringing their hammocks directly above me and directly below me.   “Are you kidding!?” I thought.   No, not kidding.   Apparently you can fit nine people into a space seven-foot-tall, six feet wide, and maybe seven-feet deep.   Unfortunately, Pat and I are night-owls, and so we were the last ones to wiggle into our spaces, which meant absolutely no room.   (The girl above me basically slept on top of me all night.)   We restrung in the morning so that if we had to have someone above/below us, it wasn ´t an unfamiliar butt/back/head/foot.   Space and individualism are so highly valued in the U.S., that it ´s quite a change being here where everyone shares everything.   Although it takes some getting used to, I actually prefer it.   It ´s way more friendly and warm, and when you ´re not expected to “succeed” and have all your own things and own space, you never worry about it and you have nothing to guard or protect.   Also, the boat trips between cities always take 3-5 days, so for sure by mid-day #2, your neighbors have become your friends, and the whole thing turns into one big party/sleepover.   Writing in my journal also invoked plenty of attention; I made plenty of new friends and had more conversations (chock full of sign language of course) in one hour than I had on the rest of the trip!

Pink dolphins in the river were a highlight of the trip (for real… pink river dolphins… flamingo pink!), as well as all the time we spent hanging out on the top level bow (the boat had three levels), not to mention all the beer and  cocktails.   Surprisingly, we never got bored.   It ´s so nice to sit on the bow and watch the forest fly by, basking in the sun and cool breeze, and there ´s always some relaxing to be had in your hammock (not so many neighbors during the day).

The meals were monotonous but delicious.   Beans, rice, farofa, veggies, and hunks of beef or chicken were presented at each meal.   And breakfast was the usual bread, butter, and coffee.   We would soon find out we were being spoiled (see next blog).

Something that I found absolutely appalling was the standards for dealing with trash.   Brazilians may keep themselves super duper clean, but what they do with their trash is horrifying.   Almost all of it went straight into the river, even when a person was standing right next to the garbage can.   It ´s like putting all the trash in the same location doesn ´t even occur to them.   And it ´s the same on land.   It seems like no one even looks for a trash can.   If they finish their drink, they just throw the cup/can/bottle in the gutter.   Done with your chips?   Toss the bag over your shoulder.   It just upsets me, because most of the perceptions of the United States that I have encountered in my travels are that the U.S. is this incredibly rich, pristine paradise full of mansions will rolling green lawns, etc.   I think the visual pollution of trash is a really powerful image, and we don ´t have it.   Except for really big cities like downtown New York, Chicago, L.A., every place else in the U.S. is super clean.   But I feel like the perception is,  “Oh, you lucky, privileged rich people who get to live in pristine, clean places where all the  trash is picked up.”   Because here, all the towns have people whose  job it is to  walk around and  pick up trash.   But the reason  everything is so clean in the U.S.  is because we don ´t throw  trash on the ground in the first place.

I ´m not really saying what I mean.   It just makes me mad because I it seems that the perception is that the pristine condition of 90% of the U.S. has to do with money, and I feel like that ´s just not so.   It ´s a cultural thing.   It ´s not clean because we pay for it to be clean.   It ´s clean because our culture teaches that throwing your trash on the ground or in rivers instead of finding a trash can is lazy, pathetic, and wrong.   And don ´t think they lack for service to empty the trash cans all the time.   All those people that spend their days wandering around with brooms and trash pans would probably much rather be gathering up sacks of already collected trash.

Enough.

Anyway… As we approached our destination (Manaus, the biggest port city 1000 miles upriver from the Atlantic on the Amazon), we got to see the “meeting of the waters”.   It ´s really cool.   Manaus is where two rivers come together.   One is called the Rio Negro (black river) and one the Rio Solimões.   The black river really is black as a result of the soil in the area that it flows through.   The other river is like coffee with cream.   Because of the different temperatures and flow rates of the two rivers, they join, but don ´t mix together for about four miles.   It ´s really neat to be boating along side the wavy center line watching the stark contrast of the two rivers flowing alongside one another and not mixing.   This meeting of the waters is also inspiration for almost all the artistic stone work in all of Brazil.   It started in Manaus, using white and black stones in sidewalks and streets to create different designs.   The contrast, of course, represents the meeting of the waters.   We ´ve seen it all over Brazil, and it was really neat to finally understand and see where it all came from .

Once we arrived in Manaus, one of the many uniformed tourist touts trying to make a buck asked us if we were bound for Belem, the Amazon ´s other large port city near the Atlantic ocean.   We were, and he said the only boat leaving that day, the Onze de Maio (11th of May) was $230 reais (the Brazilian currency).   We were expecting to pay no more than $160, so I told him we ´d have to find another boat.   At which point he told me, “Oh… well, I have a “friend” on the boat.   I can get you a deal for $160.   I knew something was up if he could afford to drop the price $70.   He showed us the boat, and I told him I had to go to the bank to get money.   He tried to get me to leave my passport so they could fill out my ticket while I was gone.   Of course I refused.   I asked the gate guard in the terminal for an ATM and he said I ´d have to walk to the main street.   When I returned with cash in my pocket, he waved me through security, and I headed back towards the dock.   The tourist tout had gone, and the people at the ticket counter couldn ´t understand why I didn ´t already have a ticket.   Finally, they wrote us out tickets direct from the boat for $150 each.   Apparently the system is that the uniformed touts are authorized provide the service of running around to arriving boats and drawing business to departing boats.   Instead of a commission, they get as much dough as they can scam out of the tourists.   You agree on a price with the uniformed tout, pay him, he writes you out a “ticket” that you then present at the ticket counter where they write you out a real ticket.   Later, once you ´re out of eyesight, the tout hands over the actual fare and pockets the rest.   Luckily, we escaped the system.

With several hours to spare before departure, Pat and I headed into town together this time to pick up some supplies at the market.

When we returned, my amigo manning the security checkpoint waved us back through, but his buddy atthe final counter asked to see our tickets.   I realized how lucky I had been that the security officer had remembered me and waved me through the first time I ´d left, since I wouldn ´t have had a ticket to get back through!   We showed him our tickets, and he turned us away just as our shuttle was arriving.   He sent us back to my amigo who said we couldn ´t get on the boat at this port… that we had to go to another.   I panicked.   We knew the boat was leaving within an hour (we could never get a straight answer), and we were just ON the boat in THIS port!   How can we not get back on!?   The guard escorted Pat and the panicking Jema to an information counter, where, after much number crunching and computer research, they handed us a small piece of paper with a seven digit number on it and sent us back to security.   This time, they greeted us smiling and waved us on to the shuttle.   PHEW.

We found out later that passengers aren ´t allowed to board in that port… only cargo.   You have to go to another port and take a boat taxi.   Silly system, and if I hadn ´t asked that guard about the ATM, I would have been so screwed when I tried to come back with the money to buy tickets.   We have had some incredible luck with this trip!

Our flight to Guayarmerin on the Brazil/Bolivian border was much less eventful than expected (thank god).   Other than taking off late (surprise, surprise) and having to wait in the sweltering heat instead of in the shade with everyone else (to beat the other tall guy [6`5″]  to the exit row), all went well.   This ended up being one of those small 20-seater planes with one seat on either side of the aisle, and three across the back, which Pat and I rushed to claim as our own.   The plane was so tiny!   I literally had to bend in half to keep my head from hitting the ceiling, and poor Pat practically had to crawl down the aisle.

We landed at a po-dunk airport on a strip of dirt (kind of scary!).   We could feel the plane actually sink into the dirt, and little chunks of earth flew everywhere when they threw the engines into reverse (or whatever it is they do to slow the planes down).   After a confusing security process (we thought the guy was trying to either steal our bags or force us to take a taxi ride with him by getting us to give him our claim tickets… [why isn`t he helping anyone else?]), we finally had our mochilas in hand.   Turns out the airport is barely even on the outskirts of town.   Actually, it`s in a field in the middle of town.   After a short conversation with a guy about where we should stay, buy hammocks, etc. (thank god for my Spanish), we set off on foot and bumped into our chosen hotel a few mintues later.

The room was cute, and we threw down for a three hour nap.   No, we are not lazy, just totally beat from way too much travelling.   And I`m sick.   The five-million-hour, fill-your-lungs-with-dirt bus rides have left me with all the symptoms of a common cold. Greeeeat.   After procuring hammocks, some cheap eats (we`re subsiting on bread, water, and fruit now thanks to the plane ticket splurge), and water (we go through at least a gallon a day here!), we dropped off our stuff at the hotel and went for some air-conditioned internet-time.   Yay!

We intended to cross the border today and take the five hour bus to Porto Velho, but my illness, combined with our collective lack of motivation, along with the fact that the guide book (published two years ago) promises we won`t be able to get a boat until Tuesday anyway, kept us here for one more day.   So, instead of getting up early, and packing up, and going through the stress of getting our exit stamps, entry stamps, finding a way to Porto Velho, and remembering how to speak Portuguese again, we just got up, showered, ate and what-not, and then napped for three more hours.   I wish I could say that did the trick, but I am still feeling under the weather.   It`s weird to have a “cold” in 90 degree, humid weather.   I hope I bounce back soon!

On another note, the constant culture shock (always moving to new towns with different customs, food, ways of doing things, modes of transportation, legal procedures, etc.) is really kicking our butts right now.   Both of us would kill to be in Gillette shopping for a cabbage-rice-shrimp dinner at Albertson`s

I just want to buy some triscuits and some shrimp and some whole grain brown rice and nice clean head of cabbage without and flies on it.

and renting a movie from Video Experience and going for a hike up the state-land butte.   But instead, we are in a Bolivian backwater where the only food we recognize is pizza, and flies swarm the meat cuts hanging for sale in market shops, and little boys pee in the gutters at their mother`s commands.   Usually the different ways of life are interesting and exciting, but right now they`re just sort of depressing.

Nonetheless, we will be moving on tomorrow, down the Rio Madiera (I think.   It`s one of the Amazon`s biggest tributaries… I know that…) to Manaus, and then down the Amazon itself to Belem on the coast.   From there, we hope it will be beaches and wonderful spicy food all the way back to Rio de Janiero  and finally to Sao Paulo.   We are both much looking forward to lazing the days away in our hammocks reading and playing cards and spying pink dolphins and red macaws.

Hope all is well with everyone.   Take care!