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As one of the previous blogs mentioned, we were a little dubious as to where our hammocks were going to be hung when on board the slow boat for the 7 day trip up the Amazon River to Tabatinga......and if, with all the cargo we saw being loaded on board it would not sink halfway through the journey.... as you can guess by recieving this email that we did in fact make it to dry land... and what a GREAT feeling that was!!

The boat journey went like this....

April 28; 8am we arrived early (as advised by our travel bibles) to get a spot on board the boat.. at 4pm.. the boat was scheduled for departure.. We departed almost 2 hours later.. and I lost a bet... but we were finally underway and commencing our cross country journey to the Triple Frontier.. where the border towns of Tabatinga, Brazil; Leticia, Columbia & Santa Rosa, Peru meet.

Having set my mind to 7 days of an Amazonian diet, cold showers and absolute bordem afloat on the Amazon with little chance of setting foot on dry land throughout the journey... we packed our dominos, cards, books ...and a little stash of food.. including nutella!! An idea to create a ´journey logbook' was something that we carried out for the entire trip.. In it we logged departure times, arrival times at ports of call, breakfast, lunch and dinner call outs, wake up calls, sightings of animals, the loss of dominos into the Amazon River on day 2 and the behaviour of our surrounding passengers... .. it is an interesting read and quite comical.. you will find it logged shortly on Owens blogsite.. (again his address is.. owenoleary.blogspot.com).

Being the only 'tourists'on board the boat with roughly 50 other passengers it was a very unique experience and we made friends with ALL the kids on board who thought I was a scary red-headed witch upon first sightings.. but in the end had every one of them hanging out by our hammocks .. much to the dismay of the reading time Owen was 'trying'to put in!..

The space between hammocks as you can see from the photos clearly shows that there is absolutely NO personal space!.. This didnt seem to bother the young lovebirds we named Romeo and Juliet (Juliet was 10 years Romeo's senior also.. 19 and 29 respectively!.. we didn't quite know which one to congratulate).. who still went about their business in their double hammock which hung about 10cms above Owens!.. or the family that was in this same spot prior to our lovebirds and the constant rocking of thier baby to get to sleep whacking into Owen at every swing!.. I had a pole on the other side of me so there was certainly less interuption.. even though each time the lady got out of her hammock she almost fell into mine!..
Another observation made that Brazilians are absolutly afraid of silence!.. if it wasnt the 5.45am bell ringing for breakfast or the 7.45am electronic blaring from the bar on the top level and waking up the cows, it was newly purchased televisions, dvd, and radios being tested at ALL hours of the day and night!.. with no regard for those parents that just got their children to sleep. The food on board was pretty good and better than i had expected, however, it was the expected rice and beans every lunch and dinner and a rotation between freshly caught Amazonian Fish (one that we dined on fed the entire boat load of passengers!! absolutly massive fish that would have been!), chicken and a beefy looking meat. Breakfast was consistently breadrolls and coffee / hot milk. We made hot chocolate from our Nescafe survivor kit.

We had left Manaus only for about an hour or so before we embarked on a bank somewhere and engine maintenance was carried out for a couple of hours. At this point we thought the journey may well take far beyond the anticipated 7 days! The first port of call wasn't made until about day 3 of the trip so the rear of the boat was sitting well below the waters surface for a majority of the journey. The cargo on board was varied.. as mentioned from what we saw being loaded.. there are photos attached. At each port of call the boys on board (about 5 consistent workers, others that helped out looked like those that were paying off their ride up the Amazon) worked extremely fast and hard for about 3-7 hours offloading items, upon which an inventory on EVERY box and item was accounted for before our departure to the next place.

After asking the captain the speed of the boat he answered 4-5 kilometers an hour.. this speed probably picked up a notch or two (literally!) in the last day and the last leg to Tabatinga when most the cargo had been offloaded. Another interesting fact about this particularly boat is that is the ONLY complete wooden boat making the entire journey between Manaus and Tabatinga.. all the others are the same shape but with more modern materials.. This was something we learnt not long after departure..

The scenery was pretty consistant with brown waters, green trees and blue skies.. however there was the intermittent shower or two (oh, our shower water was actually straight from the Amazon!.. and pretty chilly at times) and being on the water the skies were absolutley amazing to see!.. fantastic sunrises and sunsets. Because our boat was relatively small in comparison to others making the journey and heading up stream, we managed to be quite close the rivers edge for the entire trip. The only time when we werent was when the boat was zigzagging across the banks to avoid taking the bends.. this makes the trip shorter. Between the ports of call there were many wooden houses dotting the banks and several villages too... suprisingly not many houses were without a huge satellite dish on top and mobile phone reception seemed to be pretty stable throughout the journey also. From the boat we spotted heaps of birds!.. however not the much anticipated maccaw or toucan, several species of monkey and dolphins. Other things that were prevalent in the waters were massive trees and logs and entire grassy banks floating downstream which the captain was sure enough not to encounter too closely!

May 4; 11.15pm. We arrived in Tabatinga intact.. and caught a waiting taxi to Leticia, Columbia where we booked into a place that was sure to have hot showers and a mattress to sleep on!.. however comfy hammocks are to lounge around in through the day.. on a boat and sleeping in one for 6 nights it is lovely to be able stretch out properly... This was a trip that was full of new experiences and definetly not the comforts of home but one that i would do again in an instant!..

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