Into the Heart of Darkness & down the river

Sao Paolo, I spent a day there waiting for my flight, I wandered around the center in the rain. It is a huge concrete jungle before heading for the real one !! I can't say there is too much for the visitor to do in Sao Paolo, because there isn't. The scale of the place is incredible though. The new & efficient subway whisks you around so fast it actually feels dangerous ! nothing like the plinky plonky ancient creaky London Underground. Next day I take a plane to Manaus.

Manaus is not quite what I expected. It's a large, very industrial town right in the middle of the Amazon ! How did that happen ? There is an enormous HONDA plant here (and others), apparently sited to make the most of the cheap labour (I'm told just $300 a month) and raw materials arrive by ships sailing up the Amazon (Manaus is an international port, 1500km from the sea !)  At my hostel is an older British couple I'd met previously in Chile in August last year, a remarkable coincidence because they are on their second holiday since I saw them last !

Manaus's most famous landmark is the opera house (right), otherwise it is very busy, noisy and pretty dirty, very humid, and unlike other places in Brazil, tourists come in for some attention, staring children etc...
When it rains, it RAINS !! I got caught out and was soaked in seconds, I forgot my passport was in my pocket, it got a little soggy.

I bought my boat ticket for Santarem for the next day, and made a mistake. The "official port" is not the place to buy tickets (LP is wrong), buy them 300m down river at the floating "unofficial port", on the actual boat, I paid R115, I should have paid around R80.

Next day I'm at the official dock at 0630 (missing my hostel brekkie), the boat is there but no-one else is, even the crew, the 0800 departure looks unlikely. Sure enough, when the crew turns up, our ETD is 1200 !!  I've got 5 hours to wait ! The "official port" ticket office gave me totally the wrong time. On the positive side I am the first person onboard so I get a good position for my hammock . I leave for 20 minutes to get some breakfast, return and have a heart attack !! The boat has left, there is an empty space at the dock, ALL my stuff is onboard ! I can't see it anywhere   Don't Panic !  After some very confused conversation I am told it has moved around to the unofficial dock. I try and sprint there but it's too hot for that, and 500m down river, there it is.....it's a relief to see it, and my stuff is where I left it. After a couple of hours more hammocks are appearing....(pic below)

At 1220pm the "Ana Beatriz III" is as full of people & baggage, on 3 decks, as can be imagined. We cast off and noisily head down the Amazon, with the current.
I've mostly lost my good hammock position as people have crowded in from all sides, but not below and above as I'd heard previously.
I was pleasantly surprised by the conditions on the boat, the showers and toilets are OK, the food was pretty good, though not that cheap.

typical Amazon passenger boat (not mine)

The 36 hour trip down river to Santarem is not the best for tourists, as the river is wide and the boat goes down the middle, it becomes significantly more interesting after Santarem. There is one other backpacker on the boat and we get chatting, he is called Rami, from Germany. That night they play "Forro" music (Brazilian folk), until very late, it's quite a party atmosphere as there is a bar on the top deck. I did not perfect hammock sleeping that first night ! I think it takes a while to adapt...




I spend most of my time on the boat giving English lessons to an enthusiastic 18 year old Brazilian guy, his English is really terrible ! but I think I've done my best for Anglo-Brazilian relations. Actually that surprised me in Brazil, a lot less people speak English than other parts of South America.

After we arrive Santarem, me and Rami head straight to "Alto do Chao", an hour away by bus, where there is a most amazing river beach, right in the Amazon, it looks like a 5* resort. We arrive in the black dark and the rain and have a bit of a game finding accommodation (it's all pricey). In the end we go for more hammock swinging spaces at an Albergue, frankly it's the last thing I wanted after a sleepless night on the boat, but it's all there is. It's strange, lying in a hammock, right in the jungle, there are no mosquito nets, I thought we were in for big trouble !  but, strangely,  the multitudinous insects did not bother us. In the kitchen there are pickled snakes in 5 litre water bottles, ominously all caught in this Albergue ! All are poisonous, one is a beautiful multi-coloured coral snake.

Alto do Chao

After stringing our hammocks we went for food. There was a stall selling BBQ kebabs. They looked good but I shied away after previous bad luck with street food. There was also a shop selling burgers, for safety I had one of these (I feel that vendors in solid, unmovable structures cannot poison their customers....). Completely the WRONG DECISION as it turned out.....