AmaSun

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Love the Pun!
Love the Pun!

What do you think of first when you look at a starry sky?
Does the mystery spin your mind into a wonder, or does that endlessness that is stretched out infront of your eyes cause you to look back in on yourself.
I find that once I have found the Southern Cross (painted on the worlds ceiling by one of us Southerners a long time ago), and after I have cast my eye to its Southern Star and imagined my home down there in the Pacific, that the infinite sky is listening to me.
The stars don't care to hear the sound of my breathing or my steady slow pulse, but rather it waits on the hope of catchng my thoughts. That first thing that runs from my mind then finds me forever engaged in ponderance with a commitee of stars. Together we ponder over what insignificant things loom in my head. I feel connected with everything for that time at night, on my back, somewhere, looking up, and within myself amongst the stars.
Do you ever feel that way? Or is it just something wonderful that I imagine to pass the night away?

A three day adventure in the jungle aboard a 15ft river boat with a couple of locals, and a Swedish girl (whom I met in the airport) took me into the dark corners of the smallest Amazon backwaters, and out into black watered lakes amongst Pink Dolphins, and Caimans. I caught Pirana with a rather basic rod and line, and spotted Sloths, Monkeys, Parrots and all sorts of air borne bugs visiting the glow of the camp lanterns. The starry nights were filled with songs of the wild, and at day we cut through narrow flooded jungle water paths, often pushing and pulling ourselves through the trees.
The guide, river boat captain, and families we stayed with along the way really demonstrated to us how happy a life in the jungle could be, but after considering their way of life and comparing it to mine I am more then happy to have Wellington marked in at the end of my adventure as HOME! Deep down I don't feel I am an Amazon Man (despite popular oppinion).

After going out into the jungle for three days I bought a hammock and some rope, and strung myself into a big old river boat. From Leticia I headed with the slow-flowing water of the Amazon toward the Atlantic, bound to stop in the Amazon city of Manaus.
For three nights I would hang a few feet above the old steel floor of the boat, amongst 100 other Amazon travellers. The sunsets that preceeded the incredible star clustered skies were of equal magnificence, (as you can probably tell from the abundance of sunset photos). The days were warm and seemed to bear down with damp rays of sunlight. Each day was shared between the overcast and the sun as each took turns in dividing the light, and sharing it with us on the river in their own way.
To pass the time that I spent open eyed, I would read my book, and listen to my small collection of music as I lay in my surely secured (???) hammock. At night I could roll myself out of my hammock and go up onto the top deck to watch the sunset and starrise with the beating rythyms of Brazilian music ringing out from our onboard stereo, and into the dark jungle...
But I would always end up in the same place after the darkness had won out.
Back in the hammock with an ice-cream or two, and sometimes a can of coke to wash them down. The films that followed the onset of the long night looked interesting and action packed, but unfortunatley flooded the decks in the local tongue (portuguese), which I have no comprehension of.
I was left in Manaus after the four day journey a richer person than I had been when I was taken from Leticia.
It is now only the constantly restricting constraints of time that have persuaded me to purchase a ticket aboard a ship of the sky, rather than continue along the widest land-bound waters of our world in a river boat. So now as my itinerary stands I will fly from the Amazon on a Saturday aftrnoon, and land on the Northern Coast of Brazil in the city of Fortaleza in the late evening. From that coastal setting I can begin a new journey along the endless sandy sun drenched beaches, and hope to get thrown back to the white shore by turquoise waves that I might just manage to catch aboard a surf board.
The word is that the food is pretty alright too! So I will be down for a good deal of feeding while I am there. After all, I have lost 10kgs since September when my adventure began. I figure it is the part of me that will stay on this continent forever.

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