Down the Amazon (8-11/Sep/06)

Belem, Brazil

Well, we've had it easy up till now with the lingo, but in Brazil this is all set to change. By the time we got to Manaus we knew we'd have to do a short Portuguese course to do a bit better than "just get by". However, we think we are better students when on the beach, so we'll leave the lessons until then.

In Manaus we had ditched the idea of a jungle tour as they are crap. So when we realised that if we didn't get today's boat we'd have to wait another 5 days we headed straight to the docks to book a place and buy a hammock. By late afternoon we were onboard with a large cache of sweeties and swinging in our hammocks on the deck with everybody else (nearly everybody travels this way - cabins are expensive and for wusses).

The 4 days down the river is quite an experience. Not much t see as the river is very wide except on rare occasions, but you spend your time chatting with the various peoples and characters onboard, reading, swinging about in the hammock, and queuing up for food. Not a care in the world. Next to us we had a crazy 50-year-old rasta hippie. At some point during his life he must had decided that his Ronaldo-style teeth weren't visible enough and had encrusted the front ones with some random blue gem. He was an absolute laugh. We had about 3 other international people onboard, and the rest was pretty much locals (one little girl became our unofficial Portuguese teacher) until an Irish film crew arrived. This was after customs, so they missed the bit where we all got searched and they caught a mercury smuggler (mercury smuggling is a very serious offence - mercury is used in illegal gold mining in the area) and we swapped him for 2 guys the had caught on another boat with 25kg of cocaine (the Amazon is a prime route for the Colombian trade to Europe via Galicia in Spain).