Boating Down the Amazon

Sounds great, doesn´t it? I thought it did, and I am glad I did it, but it was most definately a once in a lifetime experience. Not the kind that you think `oh my god I can´t believe I got the opportunity to do that´; but the kind were you think `well I did that, and I never need to do that again´. Should I ever end up in the Amazon again (I really liked Manaus -- so not an impossible thing) I will be flying out -- none of this 4 days on a packed boat thing. (town viewed from the boat)It was a very interesting ride though. First things first. We paid for a 1st class hammok space, but there were so many people that the hammoks were litterally strung one on top of the other -- it was crazy! Very tight sleeping conditions. I also slept with my money belt, passport and camera on me at all times, just in case. I was lucky not to lose anything, I didn´t sleep with my ipod -- but I also never took it out of my bag, so no one knew I had it. There were a number of foreigners on the boat and 2 or 3 lost cameras and mp3 players.

The bathrooms on the boat did not appear to have flush toilets, but the stuff never overflowed, so there must have been some sort of mechanism -- who knows? But that wasn´t the really wierd part, the really wierd part was trying to shower in those little bathrooms, that smelled worse then any of us did, (does that really get you clean?) while not geting all your clean clothes wet. Now keep in mind -- I should be pretty good at handling small bathrooms (after Korea) -- but this was exceptional.

So that was the bad stuff -- now the good stuff. The food was ok -- but not enough veggies. There was a bar with beer and Brazilian rum! The sunsets and sunrises were impressive. So was watching the rain. We got to see Amazonian Dolphins, which are only found in the Amazon river (sorry no picture, they were hard to catch on camera ´cause the water is so sandy you could not see them until they were up, then they dissapeared too fast). A group of small bats flew beside us for a while -- they were fun to watch. We started the trip on the Rio Negro (black river -- the water is black) and only a few hours later joined the Amazon. Where this happens you can actually see the sandy mud coloured Amazon running beside the black water of the Rio Negro in the same waterway, since the don´t instantly mix. That was quite cool.Also near the end of the ride some indigenous people used canoes to get out to the boat (we were moving) caught us, and tied their canoes up so they could sell fruit and a strange grassy/woody kind of drink. (Sorry it didn´t get turned -- I couldn´t get it to work on this computer) In addition people on the boat had brought donations for them and some of the indigenous would not try to catch the boat, so the people on the boat would throw bags of used clothes and snack foods to them. It was really cool to see, but after many groups the people on the boat ran out of stuff, so then those later people didn´t get anything -- that was a bit sad. However there are many ships that go up and down there, so I imagin that everone do gets stuff sometimes.

Generally there was a lot of time for reading, playing cards (when not too windy) and otherwise meeting new people.