The Boat

Here begins the second post of my trip in the Amazon which is set (mostly) on The Amazon Star!

Day 1 We started bright and early (as usual for our mornings in Manaus) so that we would be able to get to the boat before many of the other people had arrived so that we could snag the best sleeping spot. We left all of our things in the hotel, other than our hammocks, so that we wouldn't be walking around all over the place with huge bags on our backs all day. I think we got to the boat at about 8:30 AM and to our surprise there was nobody there except for the few people who had already set up the day before! I think that we had all expected it to be a mad rush of people racing to get their stuff in their first; I was very relieved to find out it wouldn't be a war to get on. We got to our boat/home for the next five days and met up with two of our favorite people - Gorete and Nalto. Gorete showed us where we should put our hammocks (close to the windows on the same side as the girl bathrooms) and Nalto tied them up for us. Once we had chatted with them a little bit more and felt confident in our location we left our spot to go do some grocery shopping and to grab the rest of our things. The boat was not scheduled to leave until 12 that afternoon and it was only 9 at this point so we knew we had enough time for some last minute organizing.

Since we had no idea what the food would be like I was a little scared that we would want to have something else with us just in case. We loaded up on crackers, some fruit, a few gluten-free snacks for Tracy, and of course tons of water (a 5 litre jug for every day to be exact). Once we purchased all our goodies (which is always an experience in itself - the lines in that supermarket were guaranteed to be ridiculous!) we lugged our snacks and water back to the hotel. Luckily Silvana wanted to say goodbye to us again and offered to give us a ride with all our stuff to the boat. Tracy and I shared a bag, Vanessa had one for herself, we had our massive amounts of water, and then we had a giant box for us to store our food in (initially we got it for taking our hammocks on the plane home without knowing it would come in very handy during our trip). We barely fit in the car! We arrived back at the docks and Silvana helped us carry our things until where you needed to present your ticket and we all said goodbye with many thank-you's for everything that she and Marcus had done for us during our stay. When Gorete saw us walking in with our stuff she started laughing and joked that we had brought all the water of the Amazon River on board with us. I'm not sure what time we got back with all of our things but we were already thinking about what we might do for lunch that day. The boat was supposed to leave at 12 and then arrive at another port shortly after in the same city to load more passengers and leave Manaus for good at about 4PM; because of this there was no lunch scheduled on the boat that day. However, like it often is in Brazil, we didn't leave at 12.

We hung out in our hammocks for a few hours watching other people slowly pile into the boat and started thinking up a game-plan, later known as "The System", for each time we dock at a new port. At this point we had only decided that at each stop, once people started to load, we would all go to the hammocks so that we could watch our things. Rule 1 = Watch your stuff. Not many people were boarding at the same dock that we had but we found out that the second stop in Manaus was for foot passengers, thus less expensive, thus more people. A lot more people. At that stop the number of passengers easily tripled but it was less people than we had been expecting. We had done some research before looking at other peoples blogs of the trip and at pictures that Vanessa's brother took from when he had done it (he stayed in one of the individual rooms but had pictures from the hammock area as well). Vanessa's hammock was positioned beside a pole which protected her from getting too close to her neighbors (although it did attack her a couple times in the night), Tracy was in the middle, and I was on the other side next to a fairly big open space. My first neighbors were a young couple who were sleeping in the same hammock - since it was a double wide they took up a lot of space when they were both laying down in it but they were still not close enough for our two hammocks to hit when laying down. Seeing how much more space they took up when laying down led to the creation of our second rule of the system; when at our hammocks during loading times we would all stretch out as big as possible making people think that there wasn't enough space for them (occassionally swinging side-to-side when someone did start to look, hopefully making them think twice). Rule 2 = Look big. Another strategy we had to make it look like there was no room was to put the bags, water, and food box between me and my neighbors because it was less likely that someone would want to have to move a lot of things to get a spot. Rule 3 = box location. To prevent people from going in between us was another thing we wanted to avoid and probably the easiest one to accomplish. All we had to do was talk really loud with each other (no one wants to be neighbors with three obnoxious foreign girls right?), clearly show that we were a threesome of friends (as if our appearence and our matching hammocks didn't clue them off), and finally glare at people when they looked at spaces around us. Rule 4 = be bitchy.

That evening we were excited to hear the dinner bell (literally a man walking around the boat ringing a bell) and eat our first meal on the boat. We didn't know that you needed to buy tickets upstairs first and then come down to eat so it was a little disorganized for us in the beginning, but we caught on fast. After our second attempt of getting dinner we succeeded! I was very pleasantly surprised with the food: beef, salad, rice, beans, and noodles all 100% recognizable!

Day 2 The first morning bell comes around at 6AM sharp and we were all groggy after our first, somewhat unsuccessful, sleep in our hammocks. None of us had mastered how to sleep comfortably yet and on top of that the air conditioning seemed to be on full blast all night (and of course we didn't bring blankets to the Amazon... I mean really!). It was made a little extra awkward because everything really important (like cameras and passports) were kept in our purses which we slept with. The best thing that we did last minute was all thanks to Vanessa who thought to grab pillows when we left the plane; without them it would have been an even more interesting sleep. That day was spent doing a variety of things: making up stories about our neighbors (we had a very suspencefull soap opera on the boat), reading, cross words, snacks, lunch, dinner, but most of all making new friends. We went to breakfast which consisted of a huge plate of fruites, a bun and a slice of meat and cheese with optional pre-sugared coffee or juice from mystery water. Overall a good breakfast. I can't remember details from this day but I will tell you about our little friend Duda. She was living down the hall a little ways from us and in the beginning of the trip would just stare at us as she walked by. Eventually she started to get a little braver and would stand and watch for a little bit and run away after a few minutes. Then she got brave enough to talk to Vanessa a bit and eventually we were all great friends. I think she may have spent more time at our hammocks or with us than she did with her family. Her mom, another Silvana, was a really nice lady. When they had first arrived on the boat they didn't have enough rope; Gorete knew that we had extra and pointed her in our direction when she asked for some. Our extra rope was another thing that made us a lot of friends on the boat. It didn't take long before we were getting to know all of our neighbors.

At some point during this day we had a stop to pick up some more passengers. We followed all the rules of the system but unfortunately there was a flaw; the couple that slept next to me weren't in their hammock and the size of the gap between us was impossible to miss. I was not too excited with my new neighbor at first and tried very hard to make her not want to be there, even after she had put her hammock up, but eventually came to terms that I had a spooning partner for my second night. By the end of the trip however I was sad to see her get off of the boat before our destination in Belem!

Dinner that night was made a little extra exciting. We were into the habit of sitting and chatting in the dining room for a while after we ate dinner; it was a nice change of scene and was good to sit in a really air conditioned area sometimes. This night however I all of a sudden had a really sharp pain in my stomache and about 10 seconds later I was making a break for the bathrooms. Which description of the bathrooms: usually no toilet paper, the doors don't lock or even stay closed on their own, it is always really hot and steamy in there, and to top it off there are no toilet seats. Not exactly the place where you want to be having stomache issues. Luckily I had brought along some medication for times like these left over from Sri Lanka; I didn't wait long before taking one that night.

Day 3 We all slept a little better for our second sleep but did notice that the boat was a lot hotter - I thought it was just me and my close quarters with my neighbors! We were arriving at a new port in Santarem that morning to load some more goods onto the boat meaning that it would be a longer stop. We had planned to take a chance with our stuff and our spot to catch a cab to go check out a beach near the port. After getting ready and dealing with a still unsettled tummy we packed some snacks for the road and got stoked for some good old fashioned beach time. The beach we went to was about a 30 minute cab ride away and was called Alter do chao. Our cab driver had given us a deal to go both ways with us because she had a friend who lived by the beach who she would visit with while we were there. We only had a few hours and they went by so fast. The water was so nice and fresh and the morning was absolutely gorgeous. It felt very similar to hanging out near a lake at home so it was hard to believe we were actually on the Amazon River. Unbelievable. I hope that the pictures will capture even half of what it was like there because words can't describe.

It was sad to have to leave so soon but we couldn't risk missing our boat. When we arrived back at our stuff people had hung their hammocks all around me in every way. So many people had come on board and the boat was buzzing. Luckily some of my neighbors packed up and moved away when we came back - I'm not really sure why they did but I didn't really mind. That night however was the most crowded night that I had. I would open my eyes when rolling over and my neighbors but was right over my face. I even woke up because I smacked her a few times from below (her hammock was higher than mine). It was really funny and by this point I was used to having neighbors and it was actually the best sleep that I had yet. I was so comfortable I never wanted to wake up!

Day 4 Tracy had started to have stomache pains as well during the night and around 4AM I had woken up to go to the bathroom and saw her just sitting in her hammock looking forward to nothing. She seemed so sad but there wasn't much I could do for her. We stayed up for a little while and I told her the stories of my night with my neighbor which seemed to cheer her up a little. The next time I woke up things were a lot crazier. I heard some moving around happening and opened my eyes to check it out. Tracy looks at me in a panic asking if she can take my towel and then just tells me that Vanessa is messed up. I had no idea what she meant by this but then she hurried off to the bathroom and left me in charge of watching the purses with all our stuff. I was almost falling asleep there when I heard a little more commotion going on. One of the other girls from the boat was going through Vanessa's bag and needed help finding her new clothes. She tried to explain to me what happened but she was talking so fast that I could not understand anything other than that she had fallen down. I thought that she had a concussion and it was so bad that she was throwing up and imagining all these terrible things that could be going on. I wanted to go and help but I knew, especially in the morning, that there would be a lot of people in there already and I would not be of much help. So I sat.

A while later one of our neighbors, a wet Vanessa, and Tracy all walk by. I tried to figure out what was going on but all I could determine was that she was going to a room somewhere. She was walking and talking so I figured it wouldn't be long before she was all better and I could talk to her myself. While I was sitting there everyone even remotely close to us was trying to talk to me about her. Asking me questions and telling me things that happened but I wasn't there and I was still half asleep so Í don't think anyone was too satisfied with my answers. After a little while I decided to venture out to find them so that I could get the scoop first hand and not be worried any more. Luckily Tracy was coming back to get some water for Vanessa and I passed her on my way otherwise I would have gone the complete different direction of where they were. I followed Tracy downstairs to this little medical room where they were trying to hydrate Vanessa and get some vitamins into her through intravenous. At this point Tracy filled me in on the details and everything that happened in the bathroom. The basics of it is that Vanessa had woken up to go to the bathroom and had fainted while in the stall. The story is really a lot more exciting when you hear it in person with all the details so I'm going to save it for later.

So now that we had this big drama happen we were even more of a spectacle on the boat. Vanessa was practically famous! People we had never even seen before would come up and ask us how our friend was and if they saw her they would stop her to see what happened. All three of us now feeling a little sorry for ourselves because of our stomaches were comforted a little to find out that it wasn't just us that was sick. Other people on the boat had been doing the same trick as we were - so it wasn't just a gringo thing.

That evening was the part of the boat trip where the river starts to get a lot narrower. When this happens the people who live in the villages on the edge of the river canoe up to the side of the boat to get gifts from the passengers and to sell shrimp and other goods to the boat. It was so interesting to see the people on the boat all throwing food, clothes, and other goods to these families when they themselves don't have a lot to their name. It was even cooler to see them come to sell things though. Since we went so much faster than them they would paddle up so they would meet with the nose of the boat and then they would hook onto some of the tires that are on the side of our boat for when it docks. Once they had caught on they would pull up tight to the boat and tie their canoes on to stay there as they came on board. Oh - and these are all kids younger than about 14 years old doing this. Pretty much our whole day was dedicated to watching them as they came on and off or sitting and watching the vegetation go by.

That whole day it seemed that my neighbor was constantly changing. By night time I ended up having a ton of room because my closest neighbor had put his hammock so high that I could move freely under it no matter how I layed down. By this time we couldn't believe that we had practically finished our boat trip and that night would be our last. Truly an experience like nothing else.

Day 5 Our last day on the boat was mostly watching as the boat was slowly emptying more and more at every stop. We hung out on deck for most of it watching as we could see Belem get closer and closer. We even got to have a special tour of the cock pit and see the kind of equipment they were packing. This is when we found out Naldo wasn't only a super nice guy who would help us out but was also the captain! No wonder we didn't see him much while we were travelling. We got to our stop at about 10 in the morning and were going to get a cab driver who was the brother of one of our friends on the boat but it didn't work out. We said goodbye to our boat neighbors and new friends and started on to the next part of our journey in Belem!

To be continued...