The Boat Ride

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The Lonely Planet guides all warn about how dull and uncomfortable boat rides down the Amazon are. Many travelers think that the rides are rewarding.

I viewed our trip as a way to get from the triple frontier to Manaus, where we could connect to a number of additional Brazilian cities. It takes three days to get from the frontier to Manaus.

I would never describe the boat ride as comfortable, but I kind of liked taking time off from everything, and getting to know our fellow passengers.

Most of the Brazilians on the boat did not speak English or Spanish, so the English speakers pretty much all talked to each other.

The first two days went well. I ate the surprisingly tasty, but not terribly nutritious meat, and Sarah ate the plain pasta. The boat also had a snack bar, who would always tend to my orders with a grimace. Was it because I am not Brazilian? He nicely made Sarah a vegetarian sandwich with an egg and cheese on one day, after I ordered twice.

Day three was painful. Because I decided to drink water that we thought was filtered, but was probably just cold, my stomach went nuts on the final night. Sarah had not eaten any vegetables for quite some time. The sleep on the boats and the hammocks isn´t of the highest quality. That, combined with the number of germs on the ship enabled me to get a fever, that went away shortly after we stepped off the ship.

We also had Rodrigo, a drunken 15-or-so-year old Brazilian teach us a new game while playing cards he continued demanding that we play this new, simple game, which I believe is called Spit in the states, but Rodrigo called ninety.

But we made plenty of new friends and we are here in Manaus. Tonight, we fly to Sao Paulo (and not to the airport with the plane crash in July), then take a connecting flight to Rio, and then after a 4 hour layover, connect to a flight to Salvador de Bahia, we we will spend some time.

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