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Published: August 9th 2007
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The Santarem - our Boat
Lisa and the boat we would spend 6 days on The aircon area in the boat was upstairs and this was where we spent the first night. There was an elderly lady who worked on the boat and we dubbed her ¨The Hammock Nazi¨- because if you didn´t have your hammock in the correct spot (males & females were separate) or where she wanted it - then you got moved. And we got moved!
Sleeping in the upstairs the first night was hell, the area was so jam-packed that each hammock touched the next and if you needed to change position during the night, then all the hammocks around moved in unison. I must of kicked the guy next to me in the head heaps because the first thing he did in the morning was to move downstairs.
I was keen on getting out of there myself so I paraded Lisa around the lower deck where there wasn´t many people because of all the freight. She ummed and ahhhed for a while and then the magic word ÿes¨- music to my ears. ¨But where will we go?¨she asked, I got the hammock Nazi to tell us where would be convient? - give someone a little involvement and it works wonders, before
The weather deck
This is were we lived for the boat trip The weather deck
This is were we lived for the boat tripwe knew it she was moving someother people over and we found ourselves with what we thought was the best spot on the boat.
The next morning we woke to a stale hotdog bun (which we would get everyday) and super sweet coffee, not exactly the breakfast I had envisaged but they believed it was the breakfast of champions! By lunchtime I was starving and you guessed it the standard Brazilian diet of meat, rice, spagetti and lastly the beans. Dinner would be the same, along with every other meal served (except B/fast).
During the day, kids would row up to the boat in dugout canoes and wait until the bow-waves had settled and then made their play with a grapling hook to attach themselves to the underway vessel. Many attempts were met with failure and the sadness showed. Those who did suceed brought food onboard to sell - it was obvious that for these kids, the only way to make a bit of money rested in the strength of their resolve in their trusty hook.
People would throw parcels out to the ones who failed with
Surfin the waves
This kid was attempting to hook on to the boat a little food in it to show their efforts were not
Surfin the waves
This kid was attempting to hook on to the boatin vain.
By late on the third night, the food had begun to take its toll. I was crook and Lisa was 6 hours behind, many people were the same, so I visited the toilet on numerous occasions to pay my respects........ We didn´t eat for the next two days and if we did it was a toasted sandwich made by one steward - if it was dodgy then he could be blamed. The toilets and showers on the Santerem were something special also (I can´t imagine how bad they are on the small boats) and I did get to know them on a first name basis.
The people we met on the boat were great, they all had character and I rate that. One of them was a cool Columbian named Juan, whom we asked ¨Is it safe to go to Columbia?¨he asked ¨Americano?¨We replied ¨No! Australiano¨which meant that there were places that we could go. We got out the Lonely Planet book that had a map of Columbia in it and asked Where?
- He went through it with us....... Aqui No! Aqui No!.... Aqui No!, Aqui, Aqui, Aqui No! - by the time he was
Typical Hut
done most of Columbia was crossed out, he did show us some good places to go and we´re still debating them.
Another random on the boat would come up, practice broken english with us and then go away to think, this went on for days.
We also had the pleasure of meeting a family of artistic hippies - the ones who make jewellery and travel and they were on their way to set up in Manaus. They had three little girls and the old man had the longest Dredlocks I´ve ever seen, John Butler would be proud. The girls proceeded to cause terror with everyone on board and it was great, they´d get into anyones hammock and swing as high as they could, they didn´t care if you wanted to sleep - that was tough shit!
Along the way we saw many huts and kids playing in the middle of nowhere but somehow they still had power and a TV - how they´ve been corrupted. Many of the little villages had a church and
even a more religious place, the futbol pitch. I saw one pitch that had a stand to sit on - at most the town looked
The Santarem
like it could drum up 50 people, so who knows, maybe a night on the beer was the catalyist.
Heaps of dugout canoes, passenger/freight boats lined the river along with the occasional ocean freighter running shallow - pushing everything aside. It truely is massive, sometimes you can barely see the otherside it is that wide. There was always something to see and I never got bored. When I was sick of looking at what the bank I read Ben Kozal´s book ¨Three men in a raft¨- a tale of how an Aussie, Canadian and South African traveled the full length of the Amazon - its a laugh and a must have on a trip like this.
For anyone debating on what type of hammock to purchase to travel up the river on I say this, you sleep, eat, sit, read and basically spend every waking moment in it. If your tall or would like to lie flat at night then spend the extra 10-15 reals and get a double. Don´t ask
why, just do it. Hindsights a wonderful thing isn´t it. Yes I got a single.
We didn´t get to Manaus in the expected 5 days, it
Amazon Sunset
took 6 and we arrived early in the morning. We couldn´t get over how big Manaus was, there were heaps of river boats everywhere, shopping (duty free zone) it truely is the heart of the Amazon.
1500km from the ocean and it´s crazy. It has a market area on the Wharf like Belem but heaps more action. It has a must see Treatro Amazonas built in the rubber boom. This place was once one of the most decadent places in the world, if only for a short time.
The first thing we did when we got of the boat was get into a taxi. ¨Take us to the hotel Ibis¨ - we needed to get clean. We did nothing for a day and it was bliss. A temporary splurge to recover from some of the dodgy experiences. In all, the trip down the river was awesome. A highlight for us, a must and an unexpected one for Lisa. She was well out of her comfort zone and would consider
The hippy kids
The kids ruled the roost on the Santerem doing the Peru side as well. We spent the next couple of days cruisin the streets of Manaus before our first flight since leaving Australia. A flight to one
The hippy kids
The kids ruled the roost on the Santeremof the worlds biggest cities, Brazil´s economic powerhouse - Sao Paulo. .
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