Journey with Christina

As I write this I am sitting clean, fed and comfortable in my new hostel, however that was not the case less than 24 hours ago. When we went to book our next river boat we encountered a dilemma. We were informed that the Saturday boat was bad and there was no Sunday boat. Our dilemma was that we really wanted to see the Olympic torch that was to pass through Alter do Chao on Friday at lunchtime but to make the Friday boat we would need to leave town 2 hours before the torch would pass through. We decided we wanted to move on so opted for the Friday better boat and miss the Olympic torch.

We arrive to our boat, the Luiz Afonso, with our new French friend from our pousada who would be traveling with us to Manaus, and to our horror discovered that it was half the size of our last boat and looked pretty old. The female bathrooms all had something horribly wrong with them. In one when you flushed the toilet water came gushing out of the bottom leaving me running to the door to try and get out, another the water would flow from the button and in another you didn’t need to even press anything. Water came pouring out of a pipe onto the floor all on its own. Shower in there? No thank you. I preferred to remain sweaty and dirty for the duration of my trip.

Our boat in the docks of Manaus and our hammock spot.

We again were on the top deck, however, this time right in front of the bar which blared, from 7 am to 10 pm, top US hits sung by Portuguese artists with voices similar to Mickey Mouse. The same track over and over. At least I could whistle along to Miley Cirus’s “Wrecking Ball.”

We hunkered down for the 48-hour journey figuring we could survive on the food we purchased before and sustain that with grilled cheese and cup o noodles from the bar. Have you ever tried to eat grilled cheese and cup of noodles for every meal? I do not recommend it and left us no better than eating the kitchen food.

All was going well until our first night. We happened to be in a very wide section of the Amazon when it started pouring rain and lightning along with strong gusts of wind that blew anything not secured away, including the trash. They pulled the tarps down which left me more terrified feeling that we would be trapped if the boat were to be toppled over. The entire night I could not get the image of the 80-year old captain behind the old wood steering wheel we had seen earlier that day, thinking my life was in his hands.

We did get to see the meeting of the waters where the Rio Negro which is black and the Rio Amazones which is brown collide and remain unmerged for miles.

Meeting of the waters.

Our journey was not all in vain. Tired, dirty and famished we arrived to the street after our long walk on the dock and to our amazement there was the Olympic torch. Right there directly in front of us on the street.

The back of the Olympic torch in Manaus, Brazil, I was slow to get my camera out.