So we may have gone on the most interesting cruise ship of all time! After finishing our death ride through the middle of the trail we caught River boat in Santarem and headed up the mighty Amazon. This wasnt your averege cruise ship though. We made friends with the captain and boared the ship a day early. Instead of having rooms this cruise had thousads of hooks and one big open floor. there we´re 10 or so hammocks hung up on the second floor so we followed suit and placed our hammocks three feet apart and spread all our muddy packs, rain gear, tarps, and dirty clothes over our ten foot territory. We slept great the first night in the port. We woke up early to go see the city which was supposed to have "the most amazing fresh water beach in the world." As we were on our way we stopped for some breakfast and to wash our bikes. Lo and behold, here came our arch nemisis from this whole trip, Rain!!! And how it rained. Seriously, the roads became rivers in the matter of 5 mins. We waited out the rain for like an hour, grabbed our now clean bikes, Nian and I bought some food, and headed for the boat to meet Dave with our tickets.
Upon arriving at the boat we were greeted by 4 policemen that were very unhappy with Nian and his broken licence plate. They started giving us some serious guff which was not good because our boat was to leave shortly. I soon learned that three of them were in an english class and we were soon laughing and having a good time talking about guns. Needless to say we made our boat. We lifed our bikes onto the bottom level of the boat and then hoisted them down into the gallows for the two day ride.
As we boarded we discovered that a few more people had joined us for our two day river trip. By a few people I mean like 350 more people! We pushed our way through a colorful rainbow spiderweb of hammocks and people and finally found our stuff. Nian´s and my hammocks were now a foot apart, and a family of 7 had squeezed in between Dave and I. The lady right next to me was way bigger than I am and her 90 year old feeble mother was right next to her. Our stuff was all over the place getting trampled. We all looked at each other and thought to ourselves...."awesome".... Here we were ready for a confortable boat ride up the amazon and suddenly it felt like it was packed inside a crowed city bus. We all laid down in our hammocks and sort of settled in for a long ride.
Nian and I fell asleep. We woke up with people jammed up touching us on both sides of us. I was honestly shocked with the situation. It was like 7 pm and everyone was hustling around for dinner. The three of us went up to the top deck and enjoyed our dinner of cookies and guaraná.
After a while I found out that somepeople could go down to water level and sleep around the cargo so I jumped right on it. Down on the cargo level the whole back was full of crates of Mangos (which we were free to eat i guess) (and were DELICIOUS), bananas, mamão, lemons, many other fruits and vegis, chickens, and a dog. The front of the boat was open and quite fresh. I hung my hammock so I could lay there and watch the Amazonian jungle pass by. We spent almost the whole first two days searcing for sloths and jaguars but we mostly saw cows, chickens, and river people. Still very interesting. The river is almost overflowing so the shorelines are full of trees falling in the river and the effects of erosion were everywhere.
At most times along the two day trip we were surrounded by fresh water dolphins that ranged in color from black, to grey, to blue, to pink. We also saw some pretty amazing sunsets, sunrises, moonsets, and moonrises. All of which occured over the river. Night one I dont think any of us slept at all. Turns out I had hung my hammock under a night light. Dave and Nian both got up to go to the bathroom and were confronted by an unfriendly scene. The guy with his hammock right next to the bathroom door had thrown up chuncks of dinner and rice all over the place. The guys found out that it was throw up by walking though it. The worst part is.... Dave was barefoot. I still think Nian was grossed out more. The whole next day we spent sleeping, playing cards, and watching the jungle pass by. Night number 2 was a lot more relaxing. We arose the next morning and soon we were pulling into the port. A few mins before desembarking our friend rain showed up in full force and made things complacated again. We rigged a pully and hoisted our bikes out of the gallows of the boat. Lifting them out of the boat was a lot eaiser that we had expected.
Upon arrival in Manaus we got some lunch and took care of some bike repairs that were nessary after the Shortcut trail ride. Once repaired, we road an hour or two to the other side of the city and found one of Nians old mission areas. We visited a couple familys and the second one we visited invited us to sleep there.
We all took bucket showers in front of their house, laid down on mattresses and were soon fast asleep. After almost two weeks of only sleeping in hammocks it was great to sleep on a mattress! We are all completely out of clothes, we all have a rancid plastic sack of wet, muddy, sweaty, dirty clothes! Tomorrows tasks... 1. Wash clothes, 2. Find some Jungle to explore! 3. Relax for a bit..... We´ll be in touch..
i´ll put up some more pics later
Love you all
THE GUYS
