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Published: March 19th 2008
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Amazon
Dont we look comfortable in our heavily guarded spot - Sarah, Phoebe and I were the security Did you know that the Amazon is over 6 million sq. kilometres and is larger than the whole of Europe. The Amazon boasts over a fifth of the world's bird and plant species and the river holds 20% of the worlds fress water. At the mouth of the river in Belem it is so wide that you can not see the other side. There is even certain parts of the river which are comlpetely black due to the algae and there is literally a line where it hits the normal water as the 2 can not mix.
I had the pleasure of a 4 day trip down the river to Manaus Brazil on a cargo ship in hammock class. The boat was full with about 250 - 300 people. The River is so wide that we didn't really see any animals other than dolphins one day, so as you can imagine we drank our way through the 4 days. By the end of the 4 days there was a 15 strong crew of us that hit Manaus.
We had time to get on the boat a day early and choose a good spot but by the folowing day it
Amazon
Whose drank my beer?, Oh I did! did not make any difference as people literally just squeezed in any where that they could. It was like a human maracass, thankfully there were 3 of us to guard our spots but this made us not so popular withone of the locals.
The river boat was what you could call an experience.
There were 5 toilets of which 4 doubled as showers. The main 2 toilets were directly above the engine room so while in there you were guaranteed dripping on your head, you then had the pleasure of guessing whether the drip was from the shower sirectly above you or just the condensation as it was a walk in sauna (without the ucalyptus aroma).
Your day then mainly consisted of being woken by a whistle at 4.30am for breakfast which was normally dry crackers and nasty coffee (Yes I made sure I thanked them for the wake up call). Lunch was at 10.30am which had to be taken in sittings of around 20 people, after queuing you were served rice, pasta and some sort of offal. Dinner was finally at 4.30pm where you received pasta, rice and some other sort of animal meet (I weren't
Amazon
Where is my hammock again? sure on the animal most days). The bar always shut at around 11pm (until I befriended the bar man and encouraged him to stay open a little later each night) but the 1st night we had a raid by the police at 2am for drugs and they searched the whole boat and random passengers (including Sarah) and had the nerve to disturb us for over an hour. I am surprised that they didn't search me as when they were docking I had noticed that there was a party and decided to enlist Sarah and Marcelle to come and check it our with me. I actually think we would have got away with it had Marcelle not been Brazilian but when I started showing my dance moves to the old bill shouting "Me, necessita Fiesta" and practically the whole boat hanging over the edge laughing I knew my dancing days were done!
What I failed to mention was that we already knew about the raid from one of our Brazilian friends and that we had all been warned to check our bags as it is not un common for others to stash their drugs in your bag. Even though Sarah
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One of the many sunsets with the girls had pre checked her bag the look on her face said it all, she couldn't be 100% certain that nobody had stitched her up. Thankfully all went well and we were off again!
The boat stopped at least 5 times a day for the first two days so by the third day when we had ran out o Vodka, Rum and any other spirits we couldn't wait to dock so we could replenish our sorry supplies. Typically we didn't stop and had to spend the last day for 12 hours solid drinking Skol, we may as well have been drinking water by this time.
So with such an important part of the worlds water supply at the mercy of these boat operators you would like to think that their main aim would be into conservation of their local environment. Sorry to disappoint but one evening when we had been kicked out of the bar we sat at the end of the boat for a night cap. At this time a memebr of staff came to clear out the toilets *, removed the rubbish from their and threw it straight over board. (*For those of you who dont know
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More of the extended possee in the whole of South America you put all your waste, toilet tissue etc in a bin and not flush it down the toilet). Unfortunately this was a common occurence while on the boat and in south America as a whole. Rubbish is happily thrown from any mode of transport as it seems like it is simebody else's problem.
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Nat
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Save the Waves
Well they have not adopted Royal Caribbeans SAVE THE WAVES environmental policy have they.......neither do you have to worry about not being picked to dine at the captains table for either first or second sitting in the grand ballroom........Sounds very very exciting all the same......Without a doubt a bloody great experience regardless...............Oh and by the way.......even if your half way across the world and in an area whose natives are renound for some of their dance moves, you still can't do nothing about those 2 left feet............Back in your hammock!!!!!!!!!!!!Enjoy Babe