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Published: April 11th 2009
THE AMAZON
The Amazon River is big. Really big. The distance from one side of Brazil to the other is more than the distance from Brazil to Africa! So just what, might you ask, were we thinking when we decided to cross its entire length by slow boat? And not even a luxury boat, but a filthy boat full of locals who don't know what the word 'soap' means. Even the Lonely Planet guidebook calls this journey 'Hardcore.' Honestly, I don't know what we were thinking. Maybe we were imagining the Disneyland ride, or we thought it would be a cool story to tell our kids. But in any case we were now on one side of Brazil and we had to get to the other, and since flights were prohibitively expensive, we had but one choice.
We found the office selling tickets for the Amazon Star, which looked to be the best of the bunch. Immediately a salesman latched onto us like a sucker fish and would not leave us alone. He quoted us a price and stayed at our side as we asked the front desk if that was the correct price. He offered us an air
The Amazon
Actually pretty skinny at this pointconditioned room or non air conditioned. It didn't seem that much more so we chose the air conditioned room. The difference in price, we were soon to realize, was just the Stupid Gringo Tax.
As we boarded the boat we found our 'room', which was about the size of a football field. One small air conditioner adorned either side of the room, which I guessed wasn't going to do much, especially since people insisted on opening the windows. Instead of beds, there were only pipes overhead to hang hammocks by. People outside tried to sell us hammocks and ropes for a few dollars. But we had brought our own all the way from home that we had bought on E-bay. Not sure if we would be sleeping indoors or out we had bought full on military hammocks that soldiers actually used in Vietnam. They had roofs and mosquito nets on the side. Once set up we affectionately referred to them as the 'Flying Coffins.' We had lugged around these 6 pound monstrosities for four months and we were going to use them once. It took us an hour to remember how to set these things up, which was painful
because the people next to us set theirs up in two minutes. Afterwards we found out that pretty much everyone else but us had paid for the non-air conditioned room. There was no non-air conditioned room! WTF! I really wanted to go back and punch the stupid salesman but we were already under weigh.
Once everyones' hammocks were set up we realized just how many people there were. Roughly 800! It was the biggest dorm room we've ever slept in. Peoples would sling their hammocks not only next to each other, but in between diagonally. “You have two inches between you! You can fit another hammock there!” We've seen more people unabashedly breast feeding than I've seen in my entire life. Naked children ran around, sometimes peeing in the corner. The toilets didn't have any seats. The water from the tap was brown Amazon water. We had to pay for every meal, which consisted of beans, rice, and mystery meat. Just what had we gotten ourselves into?
What would we do for five days aboard this slow moving filth bucket? We found the hammock room claustrophobic, and spent most of our time up on deck. The fresh air
was nice, but they would blast Forro music 24/7, a mix of Dance and Country that made you want to stab an icepick in your ears. The scenery was nice. Not exactly what we'd expected. The river is opaque brown and the rain forest is usually so far away it's just a dull green haze on the horizon. Forget about seeing wildlife. That's basically the same view for 5 days. We quickly ran out of reeding material and switched to updating our journals, drawing, or writing. It's good every so often to get away from standard entertainment, because it forces your brain to come up with new ways to entertain yourself. When all else failed, however, we reverted to the tried and true method of realizing that it was five o'clock somewhere.
Every so ofter we'd pass a group of houses on stilts on the river bank. When the boat neared we'd notice some interesting phenomenon. Locals would usually paddle out on their dugout canoes and as our boat came close they would paddle as fast as they could in an attempt to attach themselves to our boat! They would try to sling a rope through the old rubber
Fiends 1
Sorry, FRIENDS. Thanks, Syd! tire attached to the side of the boat used for docking, and if successful, they'd have a free ride anywhere upriver. At any one time we might have up to 5 hanger-ons. You look off the stern of the boat and BAM wwwthere they are. When we entered a major branch in the river you'd see a bunch of boats detach at once. The only problem is this is harder than it looks. Most of them couldn't get close enough to the tire in time, or if they grabbed it wrong the canoe would capsize. We calculated about a 10% success rate. How long until the next boat for the next attempt? At least a few hours I would imagine.
If the locals in canoes didn't make an attempt to grab on, they would get close to our boat and just stare up at you with sad puppy dog eyes. It took me a while to figure out what they were doing but I finally realized when locals from the boat would toss clothes or shoes or food wrapped in plastic into the river. If we had known this we would have brought some ourselves. It made me wonder
to what extent the locals are dependent on the passing boats for survival. And what would happen if for some reason they stopped coming?
After 3 days we really needed a shower. I mean REALLY needed a shower. Why didn't we use the showers on the boat? We're not so prissy that we object to using river water to bath, we see locals swimming in the river all the time. I see people on the boat brush their teeth with river water. But we met a few people from Ecuador and Peru and what they said gave us pause. “In Ecuador I know what they dump in the river. The big corporations all dump their waste in the river. The mines dump all kinds of mercury into the river.” It's not worth being clean if we grow a third arm somewhere down the road. I'd always assumed that it was Western countries doing the damage to the planet and everyone else was just suffering in silence. It's really sad to see the mentality that people develop in Latin America when it comes to trash. We see people all the time standing right next to a trash can and throw
their trash on the ground, forcing everyone to wade through the muck. I don't know if they are rebelling against 'The Man' or what. I didn't realize before this how much throwing that one piece of trash can add up. It's just one piece of trash, right? Someone will see you throw that piece of trash, they in turn will throw trash, and before you know this mentality is so ingrained that it's irreversible. I've seen beautiful rivers that someone has obviously dumped chemicals in because there are six foot piles of gray foam floating in the eddies behind rocks. I've heard that the trash people throw in the oceans all get collected by the same currents and gather together to form giant islands of trash that can be seen on Google Earth! Don't believe me?
Check this out. I really didn't expect to be affected this way, but we vowed never to throw trash on the ground again. So imagine our delight when a freak rain storm blew in and, being the lateral thinkers we are, decided to have a 'natural shower' up on deck. We didn't get super clean, but it was nice to get the majority of muck off.
We got the weirdest looks from the locals as we strutted downstairs sopping wet.
We met some interesting people on the boat. We played UNO, trying to explain in seven languages which color we changed to. We met some guys doing the Che Guevera motorcycle ride across South America. They averaged 10 hours a day on their bikes. They were so tired by the end of the day that they would always stay in the nicest hotels just to rest and didn't end up saving more money than taking a bus. We met some Columbians who didn't seem to mind telling us that everyone in their family marries their cousins. It makes for interesting family reunions I'd bet. We met a cool Canuck who told me about FindACrew.org in which he hooks up with sail boats and hitches rides for free, working a few hours a day and then fishing or snorkeling the rest. I have to admit I salivated a bit when I heard that one.
We had booked a hostel in Manaus, a major city in the center of the amazon. The only problem was the five day journey had taken us six days. OOPS. We'd
missed our reservation. Luckily they only charged the deposit and not the full amount. We had the option of getting another place and taking a shower, but we would miss the 'fast boat' that only left once a week. We could fly but the tickets were even more expensive than they were a week ago. We could stay in Manaus for a week and wait for the next boat. Or we could go north to Venezuela and hope they liked Americans more than the Bolivians do (not likely). Or we could take another week long slow boat. Hmmm. Decisions decisions. We found the fast boat which was scheduled to leave in an hour. It sat in dock glinting like a knife. Not surprisingly it was sold out. However, the lady asked us to wait and see if there were any cancellations. Just when we thought it wasn't going to happen she waved us over at the last minute. We were getting on the boat, but in that moment I remembered something. I took a whiff of my armpits and somehow managed not to vomit in my mouth. I had surpassed my previous notions of what it meant to be smelly
and was now cruising into a new, uncharted realm of super funk. If I wanted to I could have seriously used it to fight crime! How popular would we be on this boat considering the people aboard looked wealthy and clean? We were about to become 'those people' that sit next to you on a plane and don't have the common courtesy to shower first. Quickly thinking I changed my shirt and Ammi put a sweater on. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.
The 'fast boat' was under weigh. In what would have taken us 5 to 7 days we would now be doing in 30 hours. I'd say we were traveling around 50 m.p.h. The only downside was every so often the boat would ram a floating log producing a sound like an explosion. The other downside is the chairs are extremely uncomfortable, making sleep impossible. People were actually sleeping in the isles, making the crew's job that much more difficult.
However, 30 sleepless hours later we arrived in Leticia as promised. We were on the border of Brazil, Peru, and Columbia. We found a hotel and I took what was without a doubt
the best shower of my life. I watched as thick tendrils of brown gunk washed off me and circled the drain. Afterwards I lay on the bed for a good hour, unable to move. I just wanted to lay there forever and experience the sensation of being clean and having a mattress under me. It was amazing. We liked being able to say we crossed the Amazon by boat. It's one of those things that are good to HAVE DONE. But would we do it again? Probably not.
Being in a South American border town is...interesting. I'd read that 25% of the world's counterfeit dollar bills come from Columbia. I was just unprepared to walk up to a money changing booth and watch the man unselfconsciously cutting up sheets of hundred dollar bills with an Exacto-knife. “I think we'll go somewhere else.” Maybe I should have asked for some hush money. Just kidding...sort of. We were so tired in Menaus that we took way too much Brazilian money out of the ATM and forgot that we'd have to change it into Columbian Pesos. Given the poor exchange rate we ended up loosing about $40.
To get out of
Leticia we'd have to take a flight. There was no other way. It was just guerrilla controlled jungle between here and Bogotá. We had crossed the whole of South America TWICE by bus or boat. This would be our first flight. Part of me wanted to hack our way through the jungle just to get our 'No Fights' merit badge. But in the end I relented.
Next stop: Bogotá, Villa de Leyva, and San Gil. Stay tuned! Chao!
***TIPS FOR TRAVELERS***
-Amazon Star is probably the best company, but you have to pay for food. Don't buy the 'air conditioned room'. There's only one room and it's air conditioned already. Really the extra fee is the 'stupid gringo tax'.
-Bring some soap, toilet paper, and maybe 5 liters of bottled water. it's better to have antibiotics and not need them than need them and not have them. Medical attention could be days away.
-Everyone says Manaus is a pit, and you don't see much in the Amazon wildlife tours. The Pantanal is better in my opinion.
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Sydney
non-member comment
friends or fiends?
I have a question. in the fifth picture...you know, the one with the three handsom and well tanned men...are these guys friends or fiends? I don't know, it looks like it could go either way, but you have them tagged as feinds. I don't think they would appreciate that very much.