I will try to put some pixs up ASAP.
March 27, 2010….on board the Itaberaba (503 passengers) this ship leaves Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon, on Sunday afternoons for a 6 day trip up the Amazon to the western border of Brasil and the borders of Peru and Columbia. We will get off at Tabatinga, the last stop in Brasil. I am travelling with a boatload of Brazilians, 2 Japanese, Chin Chin, and his fiancé Connor, Cedric Lassagne, from Paris, Christina Stefanita, from Washington DC, via Romania and Deirdre Hayes, from Ireland. The bottom part of this boat is loaded with food, building supplies and all the other things you need to live. There are no roads connecting these people, just the river.
It is amazing how I meet and become friends with excellent people from all over the world. They are doing what I am doing. Travelling the world as far as we can go, seeing new things, learning every day, and putting up with really minor small things along the way. The stories and pictures I get to hear and see from my fellow travelers are simply amazing. When I see some of the places they have gone, and when we talk about the things they have done, I get envious.
They all have excellent educations and most have, or will have, excellent jobs back home. I believe we all represent the best of each one of our countries. I am now on the road for the past 6 months. Some of the people I meet have just begun and some are coming to the end of their world trips and back to jobs and job searches.
We are on the road to learn and enjoy the places and people we meet. Some of us speak several languages. I know about 30 words in Portuguese, but I try… I always try learning the basics… Hi, thank-you, how much… a smile goes along way with the people you meet. It took me about 2 weeks to say “Ho dough V aria” that is the bus station.
The motor, on this relatively new ship, has no muffler and is very loud. I wish I could say I got use to the constant noise of the engine as it chugs up the Amazon. I never did. This ship is much nicer than the 11th of May ship which I took from Belem to Manaus. That lasted only 6 days and will be covered in another story when I write it.
I will have crossed the entire country of Brasil by boat when I get to Tapatinga. A jet would have been much faster, then I would have missed all the sights of the Amazonia people who live and work along this river system. How can you put a price on witnessing how people bring their little power boats up to the big ship and get aboard without the ship stopping. The people mostly live in small houses along the river, there are some small towns too, but the river is what connects everybody. It brings the people to school, to the doctors, to their jobs…. People and things move up and down the river on these passenger ships. The people who live along the water put their kids into the little paddle boats and hurry out to catch the waves of this big ship.
I am here surfing the Amazon for fun.
On this ship, the food is good and is included in the price of a ticket (300 rials, about $180 US). When it is time to eat, a bell rings, and people line up to get into the air conditioned dining room. Sometimes there are some announcements in Portugese. No one seems to listen to them and I have no idea what they are saying.
Some of the passengers bring their own plates and bring the food back to their sleeping area. For breakfast, we have coffee which is way too sweet, with hot milk… the only other thing to eat in the morning is some soft rolls and margarine. Lunch and dinner are similiar… some white rice, some spaghetti, some yellow stuff (grit), meat, sometimes chicken, sometimes beef and of course some nice brown beans…
Unless you pay a lot more for your ticket and get a “cabin”, you have to bring a hammock with you when you get on the boat. First come, first served when it comes to the location of where you put your hammock. Sleeping in a hammock does take some getting use to. Sometimes your neighbor will put an elbow or a foot someplace on your body… not complaining though. You keep your stuff under you hammock. The hammock is a great place to just lay back and watch the Amazon shore and people go by.
The action on these boats takes place up top. These ships have little bars up on the top deck. These is where you go to watch the river, drink cold beer and for some, to smoke cheap cigarettes. This boat has a satellite tv dish and a large HDTV and every so often you need to go and move the dish a little when the picture gets fuzzy or lost. The Brazilians love their soap operas and of course the place is full when football is on the TV. We are very close to the equator and all of the tv satellite dishes are pointed straight up to catch the satellites which circle the equator in geosequenence orbit.
We are all reading, taking pictures, the ladies have big SLR (single lens reflex) cams which are very heavy but take excellent pictures. We all have laptops except Cedric. At nite, up on the top deck we gave slide shows to each other. Christina showed us her pictures from New Zealand and Australia. She does it all, bungee jumping, skydiving, snorkeling, walking on glaciers. Her pictures are fantastic. She seems to have been many places on this earth. She spent plenty of time with her computer, editing her pictures, organizing them and it takes hours. With her encouragement and good example of what hard work can do, I started to organize my 6 months worth of pictures into slideshows. Last nite I showed our little group pixs and videos from Romania, Turkey and of course Brasil. They really perked up when their pictures showed up in the slide show.
I still need to organize my pictures from Greece which I took in October 2009.
Chris, Dee, Cedric are exceptional people, they have all accomplished a great deal in life and we are lucky to spend 7 days together on a boat. We all will arrive in Peru and most go separate ways, never to see each other again, but we had our time on the Amazon heading to Peru…
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