We have arrived at our penultimate destination! And with only a couple of weeks left before we return to the shores of mother England, we’re intending on making the most of the Caribbean sunshine and taking a week relaxing in Isla Margarita, Venezuela. Next week we do a quick island hop to Grenada, where we spend another week before finally arriving at Heathrow on 10th Feb, British Airways staff permitting of course.

Well, what can I tell you, we haven’t posted a story for nearly 2 weeks now, mainly due to the fact we were held P.O.W. for a week, well, it kind of felt like that on our Amazon River Boat. 130 hammocks crammed into an area the size of a football pitches 18 yard box, cosy, as you can imagine. and for 7 days as well, should have been 6, but we ran aground twice on our way up the Amazon and ended up being a total of 24 hours late! Needless to say, when we got into Manaus in the middle of Amazonia we didn’t feel much like doing a jungle trek anymore, and decided to ditch those plans and head north to the Caribbean as soon as possible.

We needed passage from Belem on Brasil’s North East coast to Manaus, which is a city in the middle of the Amazon, flight takes 1 hours, a boat takes 137 hours, and is half the price, hmmmnn. But again, it’s the experience we wanted, and boy did we get it. Certainly an experience neither of us will forget. I spent the first night in my hammock touching arse cheeks with the guy in the hammock next to me. Waking up and both realising this we both adjusted our hammocks to different levels and spoke about the “great game last night”, all be it in Portuguese! A bit like that scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, “Those aren’t pillows!!!!” Dolly suffered a similar fate, some blokes foot in her face for most of the week.

To say the hammocks were close together is a complete understatement, even when no one was in them, you couldn’t squeeze past without moving them, and that didn’t stop some brazillians thinking “look at all the space between these ones! I’ll put mine here” which wasn’t fun at 3am in the morning when you wake to find another arse cheek in your face. I said to the guy, “No, not here” in Portuguese. and he smiled and said “I don’t speak English” to which I said “that doesn’t matter my good man, as there is nothing you can say in any language that will convince me that it’s OK for you to put your hammock there. I bid you good night sir” then about 3 hours later I found him in his hammock by the toilets, and when I mean by the toilets I mean, you couldn’t get in without smashing the door in his face. This turned out to be a daily and nightly affair.

We thank Travel Scrabble for our survival in our P.O.W. camp, we must have played at least 8 games a day, we did have one mishap though late on the evening of the third night. I was attacked by a flying beatle just as I was choosing another 3 letters and as I jerked out of the way screaming like a girl I lost an “O” and an “E” overboard, and they sank to the bottom of the Amazon. Every time we played we drew a crowd of onlookers which we’re used to by now, whenever we end up somewhere like this we always hold a celebrity like status with the passengers for a least the first two days, “look Dad! Gringos!” eventually the novelty wears off, until we pick up some new passengers and it starts over again, and we have to smile and perform back flips, do impressions of the queen and tell knock knock jokes again.

We did make a few friends amongst the local passengers, there weren’t many fellow gringos on the trip, a few french, but hey. One of our best friends was Bruno, a 9 year old Brasilian chap who didn’t speak that much English, but we managed and he became our number one Scrabble fan, consistently coming over to our hammocks or our place on the deck asking who was winning, not that he had a clue what was going on. But he seemed to be amused by Dolly’s occasional victory dances, (nb: occasional!).

Ok, well, there are a few photos up as usual, of life aboard our floating P.O.W. camp and below you can also watch our latest video from the Amazon Nightmare!. speak soon. Rick.

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Permalink | Travel, Photos, Video, boats, nightmares, jungle, Brasil | 1 Comment