Blog: The Mighty Amazon

“The Mighty Anus of the Amazon”,”Let me start by saying the tourist infrastructure in Brazil is light years ahead of that which exists in Bolivia. We crossed the river from Boilivia to Brazil, and allthough it was only a 7 minute trip, it was like going 100 years into the future (okay, im exagerating, but i had just gone through the worst bus trip of my entire life). So we made it to Porto Vehlo, 3 hours in from the border, and after the humanizing experience of an extended man shower, was finally ready to take a crack at Brazil. Our first and only plan was to book tickets for the first leg of our River Cruising Adventure, which would take us from the Bolivian border to Manaus allong the Rio Madiera – where this river converges with the Rio Negro is the official starting point of the Rio Amazonas. It was suprisingly easy to get tickets, as a few operators attacked us and within 20 minutes we had bought tickets and the nesescary hammocks for the 4 days trip. We found ourselves standing, somewhat confused unsure if we had just been scammed or if it really was that easy. It turns out it was. We spent the remaining day and a half wandering the city, and with no real interesting sights, were more than happy to take our places on the boat.

Now, we had set up our hammocks in an empty room 2 days before the boat was sheduled to leave, and we returned a few hours before the departure to find that the space was now filled with close to 200 hammocks now, leaving Stewart and I inbetween 2 different families, with not enough room to swing side to side without banging into our new 4 day neighbours. Somewhat confused, we decided to go sit on the upper deck before the boat left, and before 10 minutes had passed, “”””Moshman”””” invited us over to drink with him. He spoke probally 10 words of english – which went allong well with our 10 in portugese – and within 3 drinks, somehow we were all friends. Him and his group of friends (collectively known for the rest of the boat trip as “the Band” – they had an air of “rockstarness” that couldn’t be shaken), along with “the Guru”, we’re our main associates during the 4 days on this boat. We spent the majority of our time on the boat either making attempts to communicate with the Band or in our hammocks reading. As the trip went on the “”””annoying kids”””” which kept staring at us whenever we tried to read, became the “”””kids we made attempts to talk to””””, and by the end of the first trip we had these kids mezmorized simply due to the fact that we were the only white guys on the boat, and we made attempts to communicate. The best part about this boat trip was that it ended, as the constantly distant forsest that made up the coast of the river lost its appeal, and we finally arrived in Manaus, smelly and in need of a solid grounds sleep.

Manaus is a city midway down the Amazon river (its not acctually call the Amazon in Brazil until after Manaus, but in Peru where the river starts, its called the Amazon, and for all intents and purposes, its the Amazon…) and its main purpose was a port from which the newly discovered rubber – deep in the Amazon Forest –  in the late 1800’s found it’s way to to the Atlantic, and as a result Europe. This made a few Manaus-ians – namely the “Rubber Barons” – very rich (who actually used 100 bills to light their cigars, and in a way making them trailblazers for the rappers and MC’s of today). The city was a mix of early 19th Century buildings – very European-esque – and really ugly skyscrapers with giant adds for clothing and other consumer related goods. The two sights we did – and in reality – wanted to see was the Opera House (Teatrus Amazonas) and a zoo!! The zoo was highly disapointing, and the only 2 redeming factors were A) it cost $1 and B) there was a excessivly silly otter, that upon seeing us come towards his pool, went absoloutly insane for 10 minutes as we watched. The opera house was beautiful, and unless you have an intrest in 100 year old opera houses, its not really worth describing. But it was really well preserved and the highlight was the symphony was practicing as we entered, so we were able to sit and watch for 10 minutes before the tour began.

Our 2 days off quite successfully wasted, we headed back to the port to catch our second boat, which would take us to Belem, just in allong the delta of the Amazon, and less than a 100km from the Atlantic Ocean. On this boat, the hammock room than we chose (1st class hammock room – which had A/C – and cost 5$ more than the anarchy class) had hooks, which regulated the distance between hammocks, and gave a little bit more room for comfort – allthough, not much. This time, we wernt the only white kids on the boat, and had a family of German Backpackers, two Norweigen girls, and a girl from New York (allthough, she currently lives in Ecuador) to keep us from being the spectacle. Being as these were the first travellers we had met since somewhere in the middle of Bolivia, we were quick to make friends. As well, we met a Brazilian who spoke amazing english – especially considering he learnt it strictly from watching movies, reading books and playing video games – and the second night on the boat had the “worlds most awkward party”, strictly for the fact that it was along the side of the boat and everyone who wanted to go from inside to the upper deck area had to squeeze by us. Regardless of this, we got pretty wasted on the beers the sold on board($1.25 each) and the bottle of Vodka that Frank (our Brazillian friend) had with him.  This broke the ice nicely, and we had a fairly large posse to hang with durring the 5 night boat trip. Our newfound posse came in handy when, on the second night of drinking (we had a port day and we went to buy more vodka – which was unreasonably good for $5 a 26.) and to our suprise, all of our liquor was taken away by the bartender. Aparantly it was well posted in Portugese that no outside liquor was allowed, and for the rest of the evening we plotted ways to steal back our liqour. Our plans ranged having the girls hit on the bartender and his friend who was seemingly standing guard while the bar tended went to break a 50 – which was truly HEROIC, as this guy continued to hit on Kat for the remainder of the trip – and went as far as Stewart, armed with the 4 Portuguese words “Bar, Liquor, Storm, Scared”, attempting to convince the captain that the storm was scarring him to the point of needing his liquor back. When all of our best laid plans failed, the bartender eventually left his post, and Stewart in a mad dash searched the place, but the bottles had already been moved, making our hours of plotting useless in the end.

In the end, our Amazon adventure ended much sooner than it seemed it would, and the long days of finishing nearly all our books and staring out accross the imense river at the far away coastline was more of a drag than anything else. Its one of those things that in retrospect will seem like one of the best ideas of all time, and this wonderful memory will last until the next time i string up my hammock in hammock class and get all the wonderful flashbacks of elbows to the face in the middle of the night, and long days stuck inside while the rain pours down (did you know the Amazon was a “rain” forest.) The Amazon River itself, while massive, and impressive both in size and name, really is the Anus of the Amazon, and i mean this both in its muddy appearance and the fact that everyone who lives remotely near this river finds it to be the best place to throw the garbage that you figure someone downstream should have to deal with.  In all the ports we stopped in the banks were littered with garbage, and it just seemed like people respect the river because it takes what they dont want away. Dont get me wrong, the trip is definatly worth taking, and somthing that i will never regret doing, but the glory is all in the memory; and the shear fact that ive navigated down the worlds greatest rivers.