River Boat up the Amazon

Our hotel in Manaus drove us to the dock to catch our riverboat up the Amazon River around noon. At the dock we took a water taxi in order to get to the actual boat. On the lower level of the boat it’s all cargo stuff and on the upper level it’s filled with people in hammocks. There were so many, they were practically on top of one another. Thank god we got a cabin! Our cabin was way nicer than expected; it was pretty roomy, with a double bed, dresser, our own bathroom with shower (even though the sink and shower water was basically brown, river water), AC, and a TV. The TV only had one channel all in Portuguese, but without it we would have gone insane! At least we got a chance to get up to date on all the Brazilian soap operas and talk shows. We were also able to watch one bad American film dubbed in Portuguese a day. There was a dining room where we had our meals, but to get there we had to crawl over, under and between people in hammocks and their luggage. On the top level there was an open area, which had a little store where we could buy some food, drinks and toiletries. Everyone else on the boat was a native, we were the only gringos there. So everyone stared at us, especially the little kids! They were probably wondering what the heck we were doing there, because it definitely was not on the regular tourist circuit.

We were on the boat for 5 nights and 6 days. Our days consisted of breakfast at 6am, lunch at 10am, and dinner at 5pm. We had to make sure to get in line at least 20 minutes early, because all the ¨hammock people¨would get there super early. They would only let twelve people at a time in, so we had to wait until each group finished their meal. The food was mostly cold spaghetti, rice and some sort of meat. Between meals we would sleep a lot, watch TV and try to sunbath (weather permitting). At night we’d have a few drinks of rum. We bought a fifth of rum in Manaus for only $2.50!! It was amazing how cheap it was. Since we had to entertain ourselves, after our cocktail hours we would have makeovers, photo shoots and dance parties. We were pretty bored, but the week actually went by fairly fast. We finally arrived in the Triple Frontier (the triborder of Brazil, Peru and Colombia) where we had to go onto another boat just to get to land. It was definitely an interesting and different experience to have, but probably our last time on an Amazonian river boat for a week.