…drinking in flipflops

Saturday morning we got up and headed off down to our prearranged meeting place with our boat ticket vendor, and along the way we picked up some fruit as we had been told that the food onboard can become kind of monotonous, as well as dimish towards the end of the trip.  We arrived on the boat about 11am and promplty strung up our hammocks with everyone else onboard, maybe about 120 people in all.  (The boat also had cabins, but as well as being expensive seemed to take away some of the romantacism of traveling down the Amazon by boat).  We waited about 2-3 hours before everyone was aboard and the ship finally departed.

Our first day was filled with excitement of the new and unknown, but after that we pretty quicky established a daily routine…  The trip essentially went like this:

We would wake up at 6 am for a breakfast of rolls with cheese and hot coffee.  After that we would have a morning shower then lay in the hammocks and read until lunch was announced around 10:45 am.  After lunch Dusty and I would play a game or two of cribbage and have a few beers.  Then it was off to the hammock for a nap, reading and the afternoon shower.  Dinner was announced around 4:30 pm.  After dinner we would lounge on the upper deck and have a few beers and some rum and coke that we brought with us.  After the first day we started to see the occasional river dolphins, some were pink and looked strangely different from their oceanic cousins, and some were normal grey colored.  We also made several stops atsmall river towns along the way to unload a bunch of supplies; some stops lasted a few hours, some almost the entire day.

Towards the end of the trip the routine varied a bit as we met a Brazilian who we taught how to play cribbage (this was a bit difficult as he spoke no English, and it had to be conducted in our limited Portugese and Spanish).  We also met the other several gringos onboard: an Irish couple, a Russian, and a French couple in their 50’s.

On the sixth morning we arrived at the Brazilian town of Benjamin Constant which was only about 30 minutes from Leticia, Colombia , our destination.  However, the boat was going to be in port all day, so we decided to take a small water-taxi boat into Leticia.

Our day in Leticia amounted to going to Brazilian immigration to get stamped out of the country then off to Mahatu Jungle Hostel, which was quite nice although it sounds like the owner is opening a newer, bigger place in a week.  We then headed off to get some money and then to the airport to get stamped into Colombia, as well as purchase tickets for a flight to Bogota.  Other than a river boat the only way to get out Leticia was to fly.

We arrived in Manaus at about 7am, to the hustle and bustle of morning traffic.  We decided to head to the only actual hostel we knew of Manaus and ended up with quit a shock.  There were backpackers everywhere.  It appeared to us that once again we were back on the gringo trail after having lost it in Venezuela.  We saw more backpackers in this one hostel than we did in all of Venezuela combined (granted the hostel had something like 70 beds).  The only spots available to us were 3 dorm beds.  So we took them.

The sign in the hostel said that the boats leaving down the Amazon River to Leticia, Colombia left every Saturday and Wednesday.  It was Friday so we headed off down to the docks to see what kind of arrangement could be made.  While we didn’t really want to hop right on a boat the next day, we also didn’t feel like sticking around until Wednesday.  It was hot!  But what should we have expected being on the Equator in a town on the Amazon River?  After checking out a few vendors we settled on a guy that actually took us out to see the boat we would be on (all the vendors sell tickets at the same price for the same boat; only one boat departs each departure day).  He then helped buy hammocks for the boat ride, as these are what we would be sleeping in for the5-6 nights on the boat.  After arranging the boat passage we headed back to the hostel for a rest.

Later that afternoon we decided to take a stroll around Manaus.  Manaus has some pretty nice architectural relics, as it was once one of the richest cities in the world due to it being the sole exporter of natural rubber (before smeone snuck some rubber tree seeds to SouthEast Asia where they were able to start plantations).  The main site being the huge Teatro Amazonas near the city center.

Yesterday, without any hassle, we picked up our 1-year, multiple entry visa for Brazil, then we really didn’t do too much other than rest.  Today we headed into our third country of the trip.

We hired a cab to take to “La Linea,” the border between Venezuela and Brazil.  He got us the the Venezuelan side where he waited for us to check go through customs and immigration.  While this border may be rife with smuggling and other illicit activities, apparently Venezuela isn’t all that concerned with what leaves.  In customs the guy looked at our passports and then asked me to open up my backpack so he could look through it.  I guess it’s just a ploy to see what people do (I suppose if you’re smuggling something you may hesitate?), because no sooner than I had my bag opened did he tell me to close it and move on.  Next we proceeded across the road to Venezuelan immigration where we waited in line and we stampedout of the country without a question asked.  Now, off to Brazil!

We piled back in our cab and he drove us across the no man’s land that appears between two countries.  The car queued up in line and a customs officer had the driver pop the trunk and he gave the backpacks a cursorary look.  Apparently Brazilisn’t all that concerned with the smuggling either…  Once that was overour cab pulled over and let us out to wait to get our entry stamps.  This proved to be a long process, and I’m not really sure why, other than it was pretty busy.  After 20 minutes or so our driver told he wouldn’t wait any longer unless we payed him more money (we foolishly paid him when we arrived at the Venezuelan side of things as we didn’t realize it was some distance between the border points).  As it was just a short walk from Brazilian immigration to the buses we grabbed our bags and continued waiting.  Eventually we got in and recieved 20 days in Brazil.

Out of immigration we made our way to a bank to get our hands on some Reais (Brazilian currency).  Then, as we were walking towards the bus station we passed a taxi stand where they offered to drive us in a minivan (it looked almost new), all the way to Boa Vista (our next destition from where we could catch an overnight bus to Manaus) for the same price as a bus.  After some debate, we weren’t sure if it was legit or not, we decided to take the taxi.  It turned out to be a rather nice, comfortable ride, and in considerably shorter time than the bus would’ve taken.  He dropped us off right at the bus terminal.

In Boa Vista we bought our bus tickets and then proceeded to wait about 4-5 hours for our bus (which ended up arriving about an hour late).  And thus we were travelling in Brazil.