TRAVELING ON THE AMAZON BY BOAT

5. May - 7. May 2011

From Belem we took a boat on the Amazon river. We decided not to go all the way to Manaus since five days seemed a little too long. Instead we went to a town called Santarem only two and a half days upriver.
Before leaving for the trip we had to do a little shopping for almost three days on the boat
Hammocks (most important thing); bread, tuna and avocado for dinner; bananas and cereals for breakfast and Cachaça, lemon and sugar for Caipirinha.
We got on board a few hours before the boat was scheduled to leave to assure good spots for our hammocks. Of course the boat left late (four hours late) because it took rather long to load everything on board. We were surprised that there was only one other foreign backpacker on board (and of course he was German). Most of the people were very friendly and tried to communicate with us. Unfortunately with our very little Portuguese it was rather difficult. Still, people brought us fruits to try and told us about the towns that we stopped at. Some people were curious as well and looked (and sometimes stared) at us with wonder.
There was not much to do on board besides looking at the landscape, lying in our hammocks and read. Besides studying the people around us, the most interesting parts of the trip were the stops in small towns along the river. People left the boat and others came on, and a lot of wares were transported by boat as well. It sometimes took a couple of hours to unload the frozen chicken, fresh green tomatoes, large plastic pipes, a motor bike and lots of other stuff. I spent several hours observing the logistics (or lack thereof) of the loading process and it was very interesting. Bine spent most of the time in her hammock reading a thrilling book.
At one part where the river was fairly narrow, many local people (mainly women and kids) in little canoes come near the boat. Some people threw plastic bags (probably with clothes) out to the river for the locals. Other times there were people with canoes coming to the boat to sell things like fruits, cheese or shrimps to the people on board. We didn't know that there was always a supply of fresh products on board and otherwise would not have bought that much food before.


There was also a little restaurant (more a canteen) on the lower deck which opened exactly for one hour for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast time was from 6 am to 7 am and every morning a man came around with a whistle to wake everyone for breakfast. Good that we brought our food and didn't have to get up that early. Relaxing in a hammock is always nice - day and night. And although there was absolutely nothing to do it never was boring and I really enjoyed the time on board.