Soaked in the Amazon

Hello all, we arrived in Manaus last night after our long 6 day boat ride along the Amazon. The starting port, Belem, was a fairly non-descript town, the usual colonial type buildings, with generally nothing to do at all. However, the boat ride from Belem to Manaus was really good - the lonely planet gave it a poor rating, warning of discomfort, bad smells and security issues... I couldn't disagree with it more! We put hammocks up on the bottom deck which was half passengers and half cargo - economy class - open to the elements from both sides, and pretty much just lay there for 6 days! Hammocks took a bit of getting used to but after a while we were sleeping really well. It was the first time we've really had to chill out properly since we've been out here, as up until this we had spent all our time in big cities, and so it was great to just be cruising along the Amazon watching the endless jungle pass by, playing cards (mostly Shithead), reading books, listening to music, etc. In the days it was hot hot hot but at night it was surprisingly cool, even a bit chilly a couple of nights.

I bought some small padlocks for the zips on my pack before we left and after the first day on the boat two of them jammed up and I was locked out of my bag! Fortunately the guy next to me, who rotated between sleeping, singing and swinging violently on his hammock, pulled out a handy hack-saw and cut them off for me in about 30 seconds! Helpful indeed, but made a mockery of the security of my stuff!! On the second night of the trip we pulled out our stock of Caçacha (don't think that's spelt right) and limes and started making up Caprinhas - being ignorant foreigners we hadn't noticed the sign that said no alcohol (unless bought from the bar) and subsequently the captain confiscated our booze... well, one bottle of it anyway :) Fair enough I suppose, I can't imagine they want their customers getting smashed and feeding themselves to the pirannas! As usual I managed to make a fool of myself at least once, leaping onto my hammock which subsequently spun around, dumping me with a thud onto the metal deck - much to the delight of Heather and several Brazilians!

We have been travelling with a group of other people this last week, a Danish couple,a Brit and an Ozzy. It helped to make the boat trip great fun and it's a little bit of a shame that we now go different ways.

So now we are in Manaus and it's raining like there's no tomorrow... We're leaving the Amazon behind now with the possibility of doing jungle tours later on from maybe Peru or Bolivia where you can do all the same things but much cheaper ;)