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Published: January 13th 2008
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I arrived in Belem after a 35 hour bus ride from Natal, planning to spend a day there relaxing before taking a river boat up the Amazon to Manaus. The boats only depart 3 times a week, one departing the same evening, the next one beeing in 4 days. Belem is not the most of inviting of cities, so I decided to leave the same day, and luckily managed to get a space on the boat. The trip to Manaus takes 5 days, and there are two accomodation options onboard: hammock class or cabin. Being a man accustomed to my comforts, I decided on a cabin, as it was still good value for money.
So the next 5 days where spent cruising up the Amazon. Most of the time we were pretty close to the shore, so I spent a lot of time up on deck admiring the scenery, or reading a book (can´t be staring a trees for 5 days straight). There were roughly 200 passengers onboad, all of them locals, exept for me, 3 french, one german girl and an american guy.
Cruising up the river we passed suprisinly many houses (well, more like shacks) and the
first one or two days little kids took out their canoes when they saw our boat approaching, waiting for passengers to throw them some goodies (either food or clothes, wrapped in a plastic bag so they float). Closer to some villages, vendors would approach our boat, and latch on to it while still in motion, jump aboard and sell a either shrimps, peanuts, fruits or drinks. Once they concluded their business they just untied the knots and were off.
All meals where included in the price, and, besides breakfast, was always rice, spaghetti, beans and some meat. Us first class passengers had our own table, but the people from hammock class always had to stand in line for their food, as table space in hammock class was fairly limited. Hammock class is on the middle and lower deck. Basically ppl bring their own hammocks, and sling it up wherever they find space. And it gets very crowded. There is no such thing as personal space there. Your´re always touching your neighbour, and if you´re unlucky you´ll even have a hammock slung up ontop of you!
During the 5 das we cruised up some narrower channels, but a lot
of the time we spent on the main branch of the Amazon. And it is trully massive. Most of the time you have the feeling you're on a lake, as the distant shoreline is barely visible.
So after relaxing onboard for 5 days I arrived in Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas. It used to be a prosperous city during the rubber boom, and even has a very grand opera house, but in general is a fairly run down and depressing city.
The hostel I was staying at offered jungle tours, so thats what i did the very next day. After a three hour bus ride, and an hour by boat upriver, we arrived at the base camp. A pretty rustic place in the middle of nowhere. We slept on a covered porch overlooking the river in hammocks. Very relaxing.
We had a local guide who took us our on canoes to spot birds, and we even tried our hand at Piranaha fishing, which we then ate in the evening. Pretty tasty! In the evening we went out on the canoes again, to spot some caimans! Unfortunately we didn´t get to see any, but it was pretty
surreal conoeing through the trees at night. Our guide used a torch to search for the croc´s, but also had it off some times, so we would be floating through trees in complete darkness. I could just imagine spiders and snakes dropping into our canoe from the trees, but luckily that didn´t happen 😊
The next day we spent walking through the jungle, where our guide showed us different trees and plants which are used as medicines or poisons, poked into tarantula nests (no-one home), and made a blow-pipe.
In the evening we hiked even deeper into the jungle to spend the night there. Out jungle camp was a clearing with a shelter made of palm leaves, and trees to sling up our hammocks. Sleeping in the middle of the jungle was pretty cool. Lying in the hammock we could see the a few stars peeking through the leaves of the trees towering above us, and hear the jungle noises. Luckily no jaguars decided to visit us that night.
After the jungle adventure, it was back to Manaus, before catching a bus north to Venezuela..
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