Tabatinga to Manaus, part 2

The boat itself was a little smaller than I had expected...under 50 meters end to end, with three decks; the were passengers crowded in on the lower two decks, the top deck being reserved for the bar area, with plenty of open space to stand around up there and watch the river go by. I would guess that the boat had roughly 200 passengers on board at its max, though that number would diminish over time as more passengers got off than got on after the first couple of stops just after Tabatinga. With the help of his GPS, the French-Canadian figured out that the boat was making about 26km/hour on average. Given the current of the Rio Solimoes (the Amazon proper does not actually start until Manaus) at about 5km/hour, the boat goes roughly 20km/hour. Not too bad, but would not want to be on board when she’s going upriver.

The boat staff kept things pretty clean, and the bathrooms and showers proved to be enough for everyone. Even the food was pretty good, with a good balance of vegetables, meats, and grains. We were served three meals a day. The cooks would blow a whistle and everyone would line up outside the dining room to eat. Roughly 20 persons would enter at a time to eat, eating in the style of a family with plates of food being passed around to each other. The meals proved to be a good time, and the whole eating experience generated a nice feeling of camaraderie among everyone. I can only imagine what the local travelers were thinking as we (the eight backpackers) practiced bad Portuguese amongst ourselves and sometimes with the local travelers (always with Viktor’s help).

My time on board was spent napping, reading, planning the rest of my trip, conversing with the other backpackers and some of the other Spanish or English speaking travelers, and drinking, playing cards upstairs at the bar, and just looking at the beautiful scenery. The first couple of days had intermittent rain, but the last day was just perfect with huge billowing clouds towering over the thin green line of rain forest along the banks of the muddy brown river. With such uniform flat ground and such a clear day, we were able to take in the huge horizon with the big river and bigger sky, with the layers and layers of clouds visible for many miles outward. The river itself varied in width from several kilometers to several hundred meters I would reckon. When the river got narrow, this was often the result of us passing by one of the great many islands, large and small in the river. At different points where the river would link back in to another part of the river after we passed a large island, the immensity of the river would really strike you. It almost seemed more like an inland lake than any kind of a river.

We did not see much other boat traffic out on the river, and saw no wildlife to speak of on the river itself…and by the way, mosquitoes were thankfully not a problem, though at night playing cards under the lights we would occasionally get ambushed by moths, crickets and other insects.