Traveling up the Amazon River

January 30, 2012:  For the past 4 days I had my first trip of many more to come as I left Belem and headed up the Amazon River on a riverboat, taking myself and tons of tomatoes to my first stop, Santarem.  

I arrived over 5 hours early at the dock and I still somehow found myself next to where you don’t want to be…the bathrooms.  My mistake was that I hesitated for just a moment while there was confusion on where some people were setting up there hammock, squeezing me out.  It is numerically amazing on how many people they managed to fit in such a small area when we started and even more amazing on how many more hammocks they added after each stop to pick up cargo and more bodies.  It would have been nice for a little more room, but others had less than me so I shouldn’t complain about a set of questionably clean feet that were only 1 foot away from my face – I should be use to this by now you would think since my memorable bus trip to Jericoacoara.  As the days passed I mastered my ability to move like a monkey on all fours as I would go in between the hammocks to reach mine.

My goal on this boat trip was to think about important yet mind draining items and to study Spanish, preparing me for reentry into the Spanish speaking parts of South America.  But when traveling through what seemed to me, one greatest places in the world…I was overwhelmed with observing the way people live on Amazon River along with watching what was taking place to the right, left, above and below me, as we slowly moved upstream.

I didn’t see many animals besides 1 turtle, 2 parrots and what was inside my bag of animal crackers that I purchased before coming on the boat.  I didn’t expect much though so this was good.

One evening I was a bit startled when I heard kids screaming.  Our boat seemed to run into a wall of insects.  Beetles were falling from the sky as if they were being dropped like bombs landing on you and sticking like napalm…causing a panic amongst the children and those who suffer from beetle phobia.  The spiders that lived along the ceiling caught the mosquitoes and other smaller flying insects like commercial fisherman in there webbed nets filtering them from the wind, but the webs were not strong enough to handle the Beetle bombs

The days evaporated faster than anticipated.  Arriving at the dock in Santarem I was shocked.  The city seemed huge.  I am glad I didn’t look on Google Images at this destination, as I quickly left by taking a bus to the town named, Alter do Chao.