Road to Tabatinga
Trip Start
Jan 29, 2008
1
20
63
Trip End
Ongoing
Tabatinga, State of Amazonas, Brazil
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Manaus itself is a big city, known for it´s trips in the Amazon and as we speak they are holding free Operaconcerts in town for a week (of which I saw one in the town square!).
Since I only wanted to get the hell out of Brasil (which I now feel ´Saudade´ or homesickness for) my only reason for coming to Manaus is to get a riverboat out to the Brasilian-Colombian border. I stayed in a lovely hostel with great breakfast (one of the top priorities in picking a hostel) and befriended two Israeli´s who wanted to go the same way and booked a boat that would leave in two days which would give me ample time to explore Manaus.
Manaus has lovely colonial buildings (the old Theatre being one of the highlights), great Amazonion food like the guarana juice, NOT the soda but the actual juice and a big stinky port. In those two days I also saw the film Ironmen (BRILLIANT; Robert Downey jr is the man) and read the book ´Dona Flor and her two husbands´ (good read albeit a bit ´flowery´ like Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s books). By the by, saw the movie Streetkings in Salvador, avoid it, it´s crap!
I was on Red Alert, or Code Red if you will, after hearing stories of boats sinking, captains being drunk, stuff being stolen on board of the boat. Me prying the guy who sold us the tickets with questions if the boat was made of wood or steal, if the captain likes his firewater a bit too much or if it is verboten for poor people to enter the boat was replyied with a stern and serious look and Ticketguy declaring that his is a serious business although he heard such stories as well, this would not happen on our boat.
Me being reassured to Code Orange was ready to buy my 4th hammock (have 3 back at home. Why? I don´t know...) for the boattrip, hang it next to her fellow gringobuddies with new reads ( Book Thief: MUST READ, beautiful and Hocus Pocus; alright, funny and entertaining at times) and fresh music on my newly repeared mp3 player! The boat had three levels, the lower level with al the food and crap, the midlevel were a 100 people hung their hammocks and were the food was served and the toplevel or roof where you had private cabins and a bar.
Our seven days on the boat revoveld around eating (much like my life;-)); breakfast at 5:30, lunch at 11:30 and dinner at 17:30. The food was simpel but good, beans and rice for lunch and dinner with either chicken, meat or fish. In between feedingtime we would sleep, read, sleep, eat fruit that we bought for barely nothing from Amazonion people in between stops, sleep some more, listen to music, sleep some more, watch tv and snooze in between. Us being the only gringo´s and me being the tallest on board of the boat resulted in a lot of staring, but the people were very friendly (eventhough I was referred to as ´Big Legs´...)
Unfortunately I didn´t see any jaguars, anaconda´s, alligators, monkeys or riverdolphins on our trip but we did see beautiful sceneries and amazing sunrises and sunsets!
On the seventh day we arrived at Tabatinga, the bordertown, and were kicked of the boat at 4 in the morning (!!?!!), mugfree I´d like to add, and made our way to dark and dangerous Colombiaaaaa!!!
