After Carnival I travelled by the usual means of
transport, on the bus to Recife and Olinda.
I decided to stay in Olinda
as according to the guide books and travellers in the know it is a lot more
attractive than its very large neighbour Recife
and so it is. UNESCO must like towns with tiny cobbled streets and multi
coloured cute little houses as this is also a World Heritage site.
I stayed in Olinda for two days wandering
aimlessly around the streets, relaxing by the pool at the hostel and taking
advantage of their cheaper than most pay by the kilo buffet. Pay by the kilo is
very popular here in Brazil
and I usually treat it as an all you can eat.
As Olinda
also had a Carnival and I arrived a couple of days after it finished the town
was really quite. But on Saturday morning just before 12 I heard the sounds of
drums and music so I went to investigate and ended up following a group of
party people to a local hall and although it was 30 reals to get in they
didn’t charge.
The weather is very bad here at the moment and
most days it rains very heavy for long periods but it is still warm
From Olinda I
travelled further north to Fortaleza.
The surrounding areas are blessed with some of the best beaches in South
America so I’m told but as the weather was so bad I got to see only a couple.
After another 27 hour on the bus and I made it to Belem, the main port at the mouth of the Amazon River.
I met Julie from France on the bus and we decided to find
accommodation when we got to Belem.
We ended up staying in Hotel Fortaleza which I would highly not recommend; it
was cheap but not very cheerful. The little old lady that owned the hostel was
seriously grumpy and would totally ignore us, which was soon reciprocated.
I also noticed that
there were fewer mosquitoes around when she was in the vicinity.
Nothing much happens
here on Sunday and most businesses are closed apart from some markets and
museums which we took the opportunity to visit.
On Monday morning it
was off to find out information about getting the boat to Manaus. We visited two agencies offering much
the same packages but as the guide books and a little research on the internet
warns you’re guaranteed a different story from each agency.
We decided to go with
the second agency that we visited, Amazon Star as their office was much nicer, they
eventually matched the price that the first agency offered and it was raining
outside J
I know some people that
follow this blog are off to South America soon and for that reason I have
included some more info at the end of this blog when getting the boat from
Belem to Manaus and vice versa.
After booking the boat
it was off to the markets to find a hammock and as in most places in
south America all shops selling the same products are usually in the same
street, which is great as a customer as you can easily bargin between the shops
or stalls without having too far to go.
There where four
recommended hammock shops right beside each other and as Julie wanted to buy 5
hammocks, some as presents, she went on a 1hour bargain hunt which involved me
holding up many hammocks and getting very bored.
I was much more easily
pleased and chose a cheap green hammock to be my back breaking buddy for the
5day trip to Manaus.
The rest of the day was spent buying supplies, packing and we made a visit to
the cinema.
The next morning we got
a taxi to the docks with another Brazilian from the hotel that was also going
to Manaus.
We got to the boat at 10am and found a place to hang our
hammocks but it was clear that some people had stayed the night on the boat and
the hammock deck was pretty full even at this early stage of the day.
We returned to the boat
at 3pm after getting our
last internet fix for 5days and our backpacks.
We were due to depart
at 6pm but the boat was
still been loaded right up to our eventual departure at 8 pm.
The main produce that
was loaded on the boat during the day was flour, pet foods, hundreds of boxes
of tomatoes, toilet roll and school desks.
Someone said that there
were also pallets of vodka onboard but they were well hidden, probably in among
the thousands of tomatoes on the lower deck.
I had a really nice
spot for my hammock and was relaxing and getting to know some of the locals and
the backpackers on the boat when a local and his wife and three kids started
hanging up their hammocks around me. Mammy planted herself
to my right, daddy on my left and a smaller hammock across the top of my
hammock for one of the kids. They had three girls,
one was about 6months, one was around two years old and the other was four.
The first evening was
spent in the bar on the top deck, actually everyday was spent there, having a
few beers and playing cards.
When I returned to my hammock around 11pm I had to crawl under a line of hammocks
to get to mine. I squeezed into my hammock in between mum and dad. Mum had the baby in her
hammock and Dad had the older girl in his hammock while the two year swung like
a pendulum above my head.It was so uncomfortable and I was afraid to move as I
didn’t want to wake the baby
Every time the pendulum
baby would wake up which was every ten minutes Dad would give her a push and
send her on her way again.
I lasted about two
hours and couldn’t take anymore. I went for a walk on the deck and watched with
interest every time the captain would put on the spotlight to scan the water
infront and the jungle around us.
I went back to my
cramped sleeping quarters and got an hours sleep before everyone got up at 7am for the very exciting breakfast of
a cup of coffee with a bread roll and a choice of butter or no butter.
This time of the
morning is the best time to spot some wild life so I spent sometime gazing into
the trees and jungle to see if I could spot anything.
Some people spotted some
of the pink dolphins which are only found on the Amazon but I was unlucky this
time.
The first full day on
the boat was filled with making new friends, with the locals and the gringos.
The nations represented
on the boat other than the many Brazilians where Ireland of course, England,
Scotland, Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, France, Spain and the USA.
On the second and third
day we were kept entertained by the locals that live along the river as they
would come out in their canoes as the boat passed by.
I think some of the
ships and boat that pass must throw out supplies to the locals as a lot of
canoes would come out as if they were waiting for something to be offloaded
into the river.
Some of the kids would
paddled out and catch the waves that the boat created as it passed for fun and
others would use a long iron rod with a hook on the end to attach themselves to
the boat and hop aboard.
As they hooked on to the tyres along the side of the
boat the canoe would be yanked forward and if there was someone at the back of
the canoe they would get a good soaking.
It was mostly kids that
would board the boat and they would be selling shrimps and fruits from the
jungle before unhooking, some an hour later and heading back down stream to
their homes.
Of course some of the
less experienced kids would be desperately attempting to hook on and if they
missed on their first attempt they would have another go before the boat passed,
but some just didn’t make it close enough to latch on but they took it all in
good spirits and would get a big cheer from us.
One boy would was maybe
10 years old and two girls around the same age boarded for about an hour. When they were
unhooking their canoe the boy fell in and the two girls went off to rescue him,
we all got a good laugh after he was successfully rescued a couple if minutes
later.
I was surprised at the
amount of homes and people that live along the river and even more surprised to
see large developed towns at various points enroute to Manaus. I expected just to see non stop
Jungle for the 5days.
Back in hammock class I
swapped places with Dad and he moved his Hammock beside his wife. I was
thinking that this would be the solution to my sleep problem. It gave everyone else a
good laugh when I explained my hammock situation and of course I had to pose
for photos surrounded by my new family :-)
The pictures don’t
really do justice as how cramped and close the hammocks actually where.
I arrived back to my
hammock on the second night, very tired as I didn’t get much sleep the previous
night. I also organised my
hammock so that it was higher than Mum and Dads hammock which meant that I was almost
at the same height as pendulum baby.
I hopped in and tried a
few positions to make myself comfortable but without success. As I lay there I
got a whiff of something not very pleasing to my sense of smell and realised
that the pendulum brat had peed in her hammock, thankfully she didn’t pee the
night before or it would have been baby overboard.
She was very restless
and kept waking up and as Mum and Dad where sleeping I would give her a push
now and again which helped to settle her.
Soon that wasn’t enough
and as she thought I was her Dad she made a couple of attempts to climb into my
hammock.
On top of it all she
had taken off her probably soaked pyjamas and was just about to land herself in
my hammock when I pulled my hammock out of her way.
She disappeared into the
night and landed safely in beside her Mum and sister in the hammock below,
while I was killing myself laughing above.
The older sister
replaced the pendulum baby and I moved to the other side to get away from the
smell which meant my ass was hovering above Mum.
After a few head butts
and a baby rescue, as when Mum was taking the pendulum to the toilet, the baby
had woke up and nearly fell out of the hammock, I decided to go walkabout again
and accept the fact I wasn’t going to get any sleep again.
Thankfully the rest of
the nights on the boat were different and I managed about 6 hours sleep per
night. As we continued up the Amazon people would move their hammocks to better
spots as space was freed up by people getting off the boat at the various
stops.
Another night the boat
was infested with Locusts which was funny as people would frantically jump
around or let out a scream trying to offload a nice big locust which would join
them in their hammocks.
Thankfully we didn’t
have any mosquito problems as the boat was too fast for them and we weren’t
close enough to the shore for them to get onboard
On the third day the
two engines cut out and the flow of the river had carried up back down stream
and the boat ended up stranded up against the shore with a nice big tree into the side of the boat.
We did get to see a
baby anaconda which thankfully was in another tree a safe distance from the
boat. No damage was caused
and a passing tug boat with a platform full of containers pulled us out and we
got on our way again but we were on one engine for the rest of the journey.
There was also two
Brazilian who showed a few of the gringos how to make bracelets and then within
a couple of days a bracelet making craze had swept away the boredom and a
production line had taken over in the bar.
We were suppose to dock
in Manaus on
the Sunday evening but been on one engine that changed and the captain
announced that it would be early on Monday morning.
About 3am on Monday morning we could see Manaus in the distance when
the other engine finally had enough and gave in. So the final couple of miles
we had to get a tow. Everyone stayed on the boat for the rest of the night as
the breakfast was too good to miss :-)
Boat info from Belem to Manaus:
The boat that we went
on was the N/M Santarem, which according to some blogs on the internet was a
good boat and this fortunately turned out to be the case. Always good to google
the name of the boat and read some reviews.
1st agency
started at 200 for the aircon hammock deck on the boat or 600 for a cabin which
sleeps two.
2nd
agency started at 230 for the aircon
hammock deck or 660 for a cabin.
By the time we left the
1st agency the aircon hammock deck was 180.
When we told Amazon
Star this they dropped to the same price after a phone call to the boss and the
reason was that it was the low season.
The 1st
agency said that we could sleep on the boat the night before and although food
wasn’t included in the price all meals would cost 5 reals apart from breakfast
which was free.
Amazon Star said that
only people staying in the cabin had access to the boat the night before which
turned out to be false as some people where staying onboard two nights before
the boat departed.
Food according to this
agency was 5reals for breakfast and 10 for lunch and 10 for dinner. The 1st
agency was correct on the food prices.
Food on our boat was always rice,
pasta and meat everyday for lunch and dinner.
Amazon Star can be found at Rua Henrique Gurjão, 208 - Belém - PA
