I´m on a roll now, trying to get back up to speed with my journal entries!
Today is Thursday, and I arrived this morning at a sleepy little town called Yurimaguas. I got here by boat from Iquitos, which left on Monday evening. Quite an adventure!
Having learned from a couple of days earlier, I reserved a cabin on the boat the day before and arrived at 4pm, well ahead of the scheduled departure time of 5:30pm. The port was absolute chaos, all kinds of cargo being loaded onto the ship and people swarming everywhere. The cabin was on the third floor of the ship, and was TINY. More like a metal box, there were no windows and no ventilation, just two bunks and a plastic chair, and no room for anything else! I chained my backpack and bags up and went to sit on the deck, where everyone was hanging their hammocks. I decided that sleeping in the cabin would be miserable, so hung my hammock on the deck too, confident that my bags would be ok in the cabin.
The first night was strange to say the least. My hammock was right under the tv and speakers, which blasted out salsa until the speakers screamed, and then started to blast out Celine Dion, "my mouth will go on". Ohmygod, hell on earth! People around me started chatting to me, even when they realised I didn´t know much Spanish, they were friendly and kept talking to me, offering me sweets and food. I soon realised it was like one big happy family; by the next day, kids and babies of one family would be happily sitting with other families, all the children played together, the adults sat in small groups chatting to each other. It was so friendly that I really didn´t feel lonely at all, even though I couldnt really hold a meaningful conversation with anyone, except the big Peruvian guy William who helped me put my hammock up, he spoke some English and set about trying to teach me Spanish.
They served us three meals a day: breakfast was chopped spam and bread rolls one day, fried rice and fried egg the next day; lunch was rice and salad, minus the meat for me; dinner was soup with vegetables (hold the meat) and on the last night, spaghetti with rice - carb overload! I had taken loads of snacks having been warned that I should take lots of food, but actually I didn´t really need it and ended up eating too much, and giving some of it to the nearby kids.
Sleeping in the hammock was great fun; being woken up by the loudspeaker announcing "Buenos dias" at 6am was less fun but you got used to it. The long days were broken up by the frequent stops at small villages and houses along the way to drop people off and pick people up. Quite funny to see at first, as the boat was so big yet it acted like a "colectivo" and just stopped off for anyone that needed it.
On the third day, we arrived at a small town called Lagunas which was the last stop before Yurimaguas the next morning. Boys from the town sat at the river edge and threw water bombs into the boat, apparently a tradition from the Carnival which is coming up in a few weeks. I heard words being spoken in English behind me, and turned to find two American lads called Jeremy and Jeremy had hung their hammocks behind mine. It was good to have someone to talk English to at last, and even better when they said they´d just met two American girls that day called Lynsey and Gretchan, who also hung their hammocks near ours... so a proper little English speaking contingent all of a sudden. Its amazing how things can change so quickly! We sat up playing cards and drinking rum and coke for a couple of hours, and realising that we were all heading in the same direction, at least for now, decided to travel together for a bit.
So here we are in Yurimaguas, and we have a car booked to take us to Tarapoto at 5pm tonight - the road is closed during the day for maintenance. Its about a 2.5 hour journey, and depending what time we get there, we may try to push onto Moyobamba whichs is another couple of hours journey. We´re all keen to get to the coast and not hang about at places where there is nothing to do, but there´s not much point trying to make firm plans here as it just doesn´t work like that in Peru!
