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After our first taste of the jungle we had a day to relax in Iquitos, so we spent it at the beach of Lake Quisticocha, a small resort 20km from the town. The beach itself was beautiful and we made the most of the sun, but the weather found a way to ruin it as the rain found us. It was quite a sight actually - glorious sunshine being replaced by a monsoon in the space of minutes. There was a zoo in the resort, though unfortunately it was a bit run down and some of the animals were kept in tiny cages.
After dinner at the Texan restaurant (again!) we headed for an early night, as we had a long four or five days ahead of us. Our next destination after Iquitos would be Manaus, about 1600 miles down the amazon in Brazil. Although it is possible to fly indirectly between the two in one day, this is both expensive and pointless - why come all the way to the world's largest river network and neglect the chance to travel it?! There was never any doubt in our minds which option we would choose.
The journey began at
6:30am on April 19th with a mandatory customs check outside in the rain before boarding a 40-seater speedboat which would take us all the way to the border. The journey took about 12 hours, and was hot, noisy and cramped; we couldn't even see much out of the tiny windows. The only thing that made the journey bearable was the sense of adventure we both felt, and the knowledge that we were just beginning an epic voyage across half the breadth of the continent.
We reached the border at 6pm, the small town of Santa Rosa being the last post of Peru. The sun set while we waited for immigration to come and let us consign Peru to our memories. We had come to love Peru and it's people; having our passports stamped to candlelight was the most atmospheric of farewells.
A short, clandestine feeling boat trip in pitch black across the river and we were in the town of Tabatinga, Brazil, joined side by side with Leticia, Colombia. By now we had met a French couple and a Japanese guy also heading for Manaus, so the five of us set about finding a place to stay. The
boat to Manaus was leaving at noon the following day, so we had no other option but to stay there.
We immediately noticed the language difference. Despite being surrounding by Spanish speaking countries, it became apparent that speaking Spanish here wasn't going to cut it! The owner of the first place we went to did not understand a word we were saying to him (and vice versa), but we managed to get a couple of rooms for the night. It was, without question, the dirtiest, dankest and dingiest place we had so far laid eyes on - so bad in fact that we decided to leave. The only problem was that we had signed the register, so the owner made us pay 10 reais (£4) per room to let us leave without any trouble. Luckily the next place we found was much nicer, although this being the amazon there were still bugs around!
A short nights sleep followed; we had to rise early as we had a busy day ahead. First we needed to find a bank. The guide book had implied US dollars would be sufficient here but it seemed to be mistaken, so we trotted off
to the Banco do Brasil. It took about 15 minutes for the ATM's to give us any money, but eventually we were off to our next stop: Brazilian immigration.
Immigration had been shut the evening before (giving us one night of illegality!), so we desperately needed our entry stamps. We got a taxis to take us there (Chris's taxi needed a push start!) and soon we had our stamps. Next stop was the dock to buy our boat tickets: £70 for three nights travel, accomodation and food was fairly reasonable. Chris then took a taxi to Colombia to change our remaining dollars, seeing as we wouldn't be needing them.
When he returned Carina had hatched a plan to get a Colombian stamp in our passports - all we had to do was go to the airport in Leticia and say we had arrived and were also leaving today. Simple. Not quite. The armed immigration man wouldn't do it as we already had our Brazilian entry stamp; the only way would be to get a Brazilian exit stamp and come back. Seeing as we were due to board the boat within the next hour or so (and didn't fancy
explaining to Brazilian immigration why we wanted an exit stamp and then another entry stamp) it appeared our mission had failed.
We pleaded in our best Spanish (well, Carina did the talking!) that we had spent loads of money on a taxi just to come here, and eventually the woman next to him took pity on us and gave us the entry and exit stamps we craved - we even got fingerprinted! All this effort and we only spent about 45 minutes on Colombian soil!
We rushed back to the docks where a queue was building, though we had left our belongings at the front with our traveling party. We had an hours wait followed by an exceptioally thorough customs check (every bag was searched and every person rubbed-down) before boarding our home for the next three nights.
As we were at the front we got the pick of the hammock space, so we chose to set up camp next to a huge pole to which we could tie our bags, right in the middle of the deck. We got our hammocks up without any real trouble, though it did take a few attempts to get them
just at the right height. Within a couple of hours we were on our way; by now the deck had become quite full, though we counted only nine travelers in total - the rest were all local.
Swinging in a hammock while sailing down the amazon is the quinessential South AMerican journey, a voyage unlike any other in the world. The river is vast beyond imagination, set on such a grand scale it appears almost unnavigable. It has more water than the other top ten rivers combined, the mouth is 320km across and it contains over 2000 species of fish.
We can't pretend river travel is always exciting: progress is painfully slow and it is not the most comfortable way to travel. There is a constant hum from the engine and it can become chaotic when the boat docks en route. But to really see the region, to obtain an understanding of it's size and to see and meet some of the people that live there, sailing down the river is the only way to travel. The boat itself was better than we had expected: it was clean, with surprisingly good bathrooms and good (if monotonous) food.
The speedboat
At the dock in Santa Rosa. After a busy and noisy first night (which, for added authenticity, featured huge flying beetles!) the boat became less crowded as we got nearer Manaus. We spent hours sitting on the top deck, watching the rain forest pass by us, never growing tired of our the view. We both became lost in our own sense of awe at our surroundings and the beautiful sunsets. We had been looking toward this particular journey for months, but it never became the ordeal we thought it might be.
We arrived in Manaus at 10am on Saturday April 23rd, passing over the famous 'meeting of the waters', where the brown, murky waters of the Rio Solimoes (the Brazilian name for the amazon between the border and Manaus) dance with the tannin-black waters of the RIo Negro. For 18km the rivers sit side by side without their waters ever mixing; a great picture in the sunshine.
Manaus would be the base for our next venture in to the jungle, a trip we were relishing the prospect of after spending 72 hours on a boat...
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Alyse
non-member comment
Errr Miss i'm not that brown!!! No your black and uber skinny! Please loose some of the tan before we have our first night out!!