Nicaragua to El Salvador to Guatemala to reality

As seemed to be the pattern throughout our trip we found ourselves travelling from Costa Rica to Nicaragua on a Sunday, but not just any Sunday. We had arrived at the Nicaraguan border on the Revolution Celebration weekend meaning there were no local buses travelling onward and the taxi drivers lurking about were charging way over the odds to get anywhere useful. Afterng, so we spent the night in Rivas, which turned out well as we were able to get a great streetside BBQ for tea. The next day we hopped on a chicken bus (an old American school bus converted for public use by doing absolutely nothing at all to it, apart f hanging around "umm"-ing and "ahh"-ing for a while a super-mega-bus on its way through stopped and we managed to convince the driver to let us hop on for just a few dollars. We were too late to complete our journey to the coast that evenirom occasionally giving it a lick of paint and covering the driver's window in various stickers, stuffed toys and/or pictures of Jesus) over to the Pacific coast of Central America and the Nicaraguan surf town of San Juan del Sur. We spent a couple of days recovering from our journey while swinging about in hammocks, but the beach isn't that great so we hopped back on a chicken bus through Rivas to the port town of San Jorge.

Our destination was the lake island of Ometepe, formed by two volcanoes joined. An hour long rough ride in a wooden lancha boat took us to the main town where we got straight back on a chicken bus to Charco Verde, a small collection of hotels on a black sand beach. As soon as we checked into a hostel a heavy downpour started meaning we couldn't do much for the rest of the day. After a night being woken up by (the creepiest) bugs (ever) crawling over us we decided to escape and move to a different part of the island. It turned out to be a wise move, as we stayed in a place set in a garden full of butterflies with a private stony beach. We chose to stay in hammocks in an open sided hut in the garden surrounded by nature. There were wasps building nests in the ceiling and one night we were visited by a tarantula, which left after being poked with a stick.

We spent a few days lounging around catching up on some much needed rest and un-bending our knees after all the chicken buses in our hammocks. We visited the local restaurant for a meal of tipico (meat, chicken or fish with beans, rice, fried plantain and salad) as the sun went down behind the larger of the two volcanoes turning the sky into a brilliant rainbow of reds. We visited this restaurant a couple of times, but our first was the most entertaining. As we approached we heard someone greeting us with a chirpy 'Hola!', although we couldn't see where it came from we returned the greeting only to realise once it was said over and over again that it was a talking parrot. While we were waiting for our food a woman brought out a monkey on a chain who ran around doing flips off the fence, followed by a puppy chasing a kitten all over the place. We returned to the hostel and lay in our hammocks sipping rum enjoying the evening and the millions of fireflies lighting up all around us.

I had grand plans of climbing the closest, and smaller, of the volcanoes but after deciding every morning to set off that afternoon, rain would come in after lunch and I would put it off for another day. Finally on our last full day, after a morning of rain, the afternoon was clear and, although there wasn't time to climb to the summit, I made the two hour hike up to a viewpoint about halfway up. It was a muddy walk through some jungle but once it opened up I was afforded with great views over the entire island. Making my way back down I spotted lots of monkeys playing about in the trees, dawdled to look at some ancient monolyths and once back at the hostel went for a swim in the lake.

The following day we were back on the bus, boat and another bus to Granada. The buses were pretty hellish, the first one stiflingly hot that went all the way round the island before heading to the boat terminal and the second was ridiculously crammed. They were forcing at least 3 adults onto a seat designed for American schoolchildren, Nikki was being repeatedly kicked by a baby and having her arm whacked by a guy outside before we set off, while I shared a seat with a woman and her 3 children. At one point we went through a town holding a rodeo which made progress slow as they were using the one through street as the parade ground.

Granada is a pretty colonial town on the north shore of lake Ometepe. We spent a few days wandering the tree lined streets, relaxing in the park and exploring the market. One night there was a music festival in front of the bright yellow cathedral and we hung about to watch for a while and witnessed a booty shaking competition. We also saw a school drum band rehersing in the plaza one day with accompanying dancers. One of the best things about Granada was the amount of street food on offer; snow cones, BBQ sweetcorn, tortillas and some of the best hotdogs ever - topped with various sauces and jalapenos.

Unfortunately as its a pretty touristy town there are a lot of beggars around which can start to grate after a while, especially when they come up asking for food while you're sat in one of the may pretty outside restaurants. We eventually got around to sending our huge stack of postcards home which we had been picking up along the way. After a few days we moved to Managua where it rained lots trapping us in our room and after a couple of days we were on a long distance bus to El Salvador.

We had made the decision, due to the recent political unrest in Honduras, to get a direct bus through the country to El Salvador, and due to the ungodly hour we had to set off from Managua, we ended up sleeping through most of it. Once we arrived in San Salvador Nikki drove a hard bargain with a taxi driver to get us across town to the local bus terminal. Annoyingly in Central America there are numerous bus companies, each with their own terminal and usually they are scattered all over the place. We were catching a chicken bus out to the coastal village of El Tunco. We asked the conductor to let us know when we were there but after about an hour we got worried when we started driving past signs for El Tunco. We asked the conductor if we were supposed to get off, but he said something about the road being windy and just to wait a little longer. Eventually he told us we had arrived at...El Zonte. We told him we were supposed to be in El Tunco and he told us we'd passed through and should have got off earlier. He mumbled something about crossing the road and catching a bus back if we really wanted to. We waited for 45 minutes but no bus showed so we thought we'd better find some accomodation as the sun was dropping quickly.

We asked at a couple of places and found a nice looking resort within our budget. We waited a couple of minutes to be shown our room only to be led out of the resort and down the road to a grotty little shack full of giant spiders, ants and a in house bat clinging to the ceiling. We were too tired to care by this point so went and got some tea the fell asleep on our (surprisingly comfy) bed held up by breeze blocks.

We spent the next day playing in the resort pool and on the amazing black sand beach with huge crashing waves that was used by only a couple of small resorts. We had planned to head up to Guatemala after a couple of days but hadn't had enough beach action. We eventually caught a bus back to El Tunco and checked in to a hostel run by two Salvadorian surfers happily living up to the surf dude stereotype. The beach at El Tunco wasn't as nice as El Zonte and it was a lot busier, with lots of locals coming here on holiday. Every building in the village was dedicated to supporting the tourist boom, with surfing as one of it's main activities on offer. Mark decided that he was going to become a Surf God in the next couple of days so booked a one hour lesson and hired a board for the day. He wasn't as bad as we both thought he would be (he trips up on flat surfaces a lot so balancing on a moving board seemed like a no no) he managed to stand up the first few times and caught the waves right into the shallow waters. Boyed by his success we returned to El Zonte beach where we'd been told the waves were good for beginners. When hiring the board the surf shack convieniently forgot to mention the huge waves that had come in that day and were promptly swallowing even the most seasoned surfers. After being thrown about washing-machine style for a while Mark admitted defeat and we spent the afternoon splashing in the pool and sipping fresh, icy lemonade. We'd found a nice restaurant back in El Tunco that hadn't completely sold out to the tourist trade and sold good, cheap food that we'd visited for the past couple of nights. With the image of a nice prawn cocktail in mind this evening we'd decided to try a 'seafood cocktail'. A cold dish of snails, prawns, bits of fish and other unidentifiable creatures swam about in a murky brown liquid that was, for some reason, accompanied by a packet of crackers. The crackers were nice.

By now it was our final week and we thought it best to get moving but not before a spot of early morning surfing. We had pretty taxing journey up to northern Guatemala involving a bus back to San Salvador, a taxi to the bus station, a bus across the border to Guatemala city, a 10 hour, icy air-conned over night bus to Flores, a mini bus into the town centre and a collectivo out to Tikal: a large area of Mayan ruins and our final desination that day.

We were having a pretty rough time already as we were so exhauster and everything was costing a lot more than we'd previously been told (entry to the Tikal park was now three times the price we'd expected). We were in need of a cash machine and the driver out to Tikal had said he would take us to one on the way only to forget and drive the hour our to Tikal leaving us penniless. After his steadfastly refusing to take us to the promised cash machine and us steadfastly refusing to be left here without any cash he agreed to lend us the entry money to the park and helped us find some cheap accommodation in the form of hammock space. We whipped out our Amazon hammocks once again and set them up under the open sided hut and promptly fell asleep.

That afternoon we bought our (extortionately priced) tickets after 3pm which allowed us to go into the park that evening and again the next day. This worked out well as all the shuttle buses herded the tourists who weren't staying in Tikal back to Flores at about 2pm and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We'd decided to explore the Grand Plaza that evening and left the outlying temples for the next day. The Grand Plaze consists of two temples facing each other surrounded on either side by smaller but more splayed structures. We were able to climb more of the structures which gave us views of other temples poking out above the deep jungle. We strolled back through the jungle to our accomodation and got some tea before crashing back asleep in our hammocks, but not before we shooed another huge spider out into the jungle. The next morning we returned and wandered off along a different path which took us past Temple V with it's rediculously steep steps and Temple IV which is the highest in the complex and gave great views for miles around. We caught the bus back to Flores, with the driver remembering to stop at a cash point this time. We were dropped off at the bus station where we had a six hour wait, in the most uncomfortably designed bus station ever, for another icy air-conned over-night bus back to Guatemala City.

We had been advised by many people that Guatemala City wasn't a nice place to spend our last few days. Luckily, we'd be able to get a 45 minute shuttle straight to the airport on our day of departure from the near by pretty, Colonial town of Antigua. We caught a shuttle straight from the bus station to Antigua and once we found a room and inspected the strange rectangular shape in the corner, decided it was the long forgotten sight of a bed, and collapsed for a few hours (we hadn't slept in one since El Salvador four nights earlier).

One of the main activites in Antigua is strolling aound the cobbled streets and taking in the artisan markets which flow readily into the towns local food market and make for some interesting sights and excellent street food. We spent a day wandering through the markets looking out for small gifts in lieu of birthdays we'd missed and looking at dramatically ruined churches from an earthquake in the 1700's. We found a cafe with an extensive book swap and traded our huge stack of six books for two and sat sipping fresh lemonade and relaxing in the cafes pretty atmosphere. Mark had heard of the near-by active Pacaya volcano which was possible to climb with the help of a guide. The loose volcanic rocks made for a difficult up but a fun slide back down. He saw lava flowing freely out of the side of the mountain while trying not to melt his feet or singe his leg hairs of the red hot rocks that were visible in the cracks of the earth. At one point the guide decided he could manage without his walking stick and shoved it deep into the 700ºC lava where it instantly burst into flames as it travelled along with the flow of lava.

Today is our final day and after an amazing, unforgettable year we board our flight tomorrow morning with mixed emotions and an eight hour layover in Miami.

See you all really soon! x

San Blas, Panama & a night in Costa Rica

The first couple of days on the yacht were fairly uneventful as we powered our way across the Caribbean towards the San Blas archipelago, just off the coast of Panama. Everyone was feeling a little sea sick from the rolling waves and spent most of the night, if possible, trying to sleep out on the deck away from the hot and sticky cabins that only served to increase the nausea.

During the day we sat out on the deck enjoying the sun, chatting with our fellow travellers and watching amazing lightning storms that surrounded us at night. On the second day our designated fisherman, Eric from Sweden, felt a tug on the line we were towing and after a bit of a struggle pulled in a 12kg dorado fish. The fish put up a tough fight and with a bit of a thrash and a cry of "Ah, Fack!" from Fritz, our Austrian captain, the hook had pierced the skin on his knee. After managing to subdue the fish (by hacking through it's spine) Dimmy the deckhand cut it into steaks using a large knife and a hammer to get though it's inch thick backbone in preparation for that nights meal.


The second night was noisey with Fritz's screaming and shouting at the deckhand (he did this a lot, and not just at the deckhand, anyone who was near by while he was annoyed!) during a storm while trying to cover the cockpit. We awoke on the third day to calm seas, beautiful turquoise waters and deserted tropical islands. Our neighbours were two other yachts floating off in the distance and one recently shipwrecked boat on a reef off an island. After breakfast, during which we all recovered our appetite without the sea sickness looming over head, most of us on board grabbed snorkels and masks and headed off to take a look at our surroundings. We swam to a nearby islands and walked, swam and paddled around it collecting coconuts we planned on filling with rum later that night. We snorkeled a little more and saw lots of little fish and a couple of rays buried in the sand. When we got tired we headed back to the yacht to throw ourselves in the deepend by flinging ourselves off the dive platforms at the front of the boat.


After lunch we headed off to another spot and pulled up between two islands, we all suited up again with flippers as well this time as the current was really strong, and swam off to the near by reef. Testosterone was running high with all of the guys wanting to fulfill their urge to be hunter-gatherers so had brought along spears and snares in the hope of catching a crab or fish to supplement the evening meal. We swam along the reef moving between the reef and a steep drop off while spotting lots of bright fish, corals, sea anemones and more rays. We reached one end of the reef which ran along the length of an island and only one of the spear weilding guys had bagged a fish, a pretty pink and purple fish about 5 inches long with barely enough meat to feed a cat. He looked sheepish but carried it all the way back to the boat in his shorts pocket to use for bait for the bigger game. We walked around the far side of the island as we didn't fancy swimming against the strong current and we were all tired from all the tropical life spotting and spearing we'd been doing. Arriving back at the boat after a long swim against the current that just wouldn't let off we all chilled out on the deck and ate mangos and oranges which were not in short supply. That night we were all really hungry after the long swim and were ready for a hearty meal of something delicious only to be rewarded with an Austrian speciality of weird lumps of thick pancake type mix with bits of toffee and a rare sultana hidden deep within. Fritz and Hans, the other Austrian on board, both tucked in heartily as we nibbled a bit and nudged it around our plates while dreaming of a huge pan of floured, fried chicken (what the stuff actually looked like!) Luckily some one asked Fritz to bring out the bread and we all made sandwiches of ham, cheese and tomato with Fritz's delicious homemade mustard to fill our grumbling tummys.


Mark had spent an hour earlier that day hacking open the coconuts to get the milk only to find out that one of them had been bad and had ruined the whole batch. That night we sat around the table late into the night downing rum and coke with fresh limes. After a while a few of us went out onto the front of the boat to escape the Irish banter (8 people of the 13 were from Ireland) and fell asleep under the stars until a storm came in and threatened to soak us. We moved inside for another hot sticky night while the rain poured outside.

The final day started with a crab fishing excursion and a lot of hungover Irish people. We were supposed to be given lessons by a local Kuna fisherman about what to look for and where but after half an hour on his narrow boat he dropped anchor, jumped into the water and swam off leaving us to figure it our for ourselves. We snorkeled around a coral reef for a while until he called us all back to the boat and headed off to another location where the whole exercise was repeated. By the end of the morning the Kuna fisherman had two crabs and a crayfish while of the 10 of us on board Mark was the only one to have spotted a crab.


That afternoon Fritz realised the next day was a Saturday and the passport office would be shut on the day he planned to drop us off in Panama. We spent most of the afternoon powering over to a more inhabited island to get our passports stamped while local Kuna people came over to our yacht offering local wares as well as crayfish and a huge crab. We decided to buy the lot, 8 crayfish and the large crab for a grand total of $12 which Fritz said he'd cook up for dinner for us that evening. We spent the evening in the same spot and just chilled out on the boat playing cards while the Irish tentativly sipped more rum.


The next day we set off to Cati on the Panama mainland where we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere for a 3 hour 4x4 ride to Panama city.

On our third day on the boat I had picked up bad cold-chest infection so I spent the next few days trying to recover while Mark went out to visit the Panama canal and wandered around the city. We caught a bus and a boat out to another island in the Caribbean sea called Bocas del Torro where we spent a couple of days lazing in hammocks (and doing more recovering) on Isla Bastiamentos. Mark went out to see a local beach on the other side of the island which involved a half hour hike through knee deep mud and a soaking when a big thunder storm rolled in.


The following days were spent trying to travel as fast as possible over the Costa Rican border and out the other side to Nicaragua. We arrived two and a half days later to the coastal surf town of San Juan Del Sul where we are at the moment. We're heading off tomorrow to Isla Ometepe a island formed by two volcanoes in the middle of a lake.

Colombia

After a day in Leticia we said farewell to Tom (and ran away from Mr. Strange) who were continuing on down the river to Iquitos, Peru. Ian, Sinead, Rick, Nikki and I were flying out to Bogota. It was a pretty dramatic flight, with views over the rainforest until the Colombian Andes popped up out of the clouds. There was a fair bit of turbulence and a bit of a nose dive landing and all of a sudden we were in Bogota at the dizzying height of 2640m above sea level. Rick headed off to find a connecting flight to Cali and the rest of us caught a taxi to La Candeleria to find a hostel (Musicology Hostel). La Candeleria is the oldest part of Bogota, with lots of pretty cobbled streets looking down over the rest of the city.


We spent a couple of days taking it easy and wandering the streets taking in the sights. We had heard about a cathedral built into a salt mine, two hours out of the city and decided to go and investigate. We had to take the transmilenio (a bus network that is Bogota's answer to a subway system) out to the bus station where we switched to a collectivo heading to Zipaquira. We thought the driver was an aspiring rally driver as we swerved in between traffic and went up on two wheels around corners. There was a small display showing the speed that never seemed to drop below 85mph and there was much screeching of brakes as we almost ploughed into the back of a Landrover.
We arrived in Zipaquira and, after getting a little lost, found the Salt Cathedral. The Cathedral has been constructed by mining the salt, leaving large cavernous halls, a walkway showing the stations of the cross and prayer station all made of salt. One of the most interesting points in the cathedral were 3 staircases, one for sinners, one for angels and one for people somewhere in between, and we were told to choose which we thought to walk down. Although the structure itself is pretty impressive, it was slightly dissapointing that they had lit it up like a nightclub with neon lights everywhere. We also found out from our guide that it had been built as a tourist attraction that was only used as a cathedral once a week. This took away from the celestial, spiritual feeling most religious places have. It was spoilt further as the guide kept pointing out the shops and we were shown into a cinema at the end of the tour to watch a 3D film (complete with stupid glasses) about the production of salt with a big robot presenter. We headed back to Bogota and rewarded ourselves with a HUGE pizza from PizzaPoli (about 18 inches and that was a medium!)


The next day we decided to have a walk around a different area of the city and visit some museums. We wandered down to an Andy Warhol exhibition, but there was a huge queue, and as neither of us are massive fans, we skipped it. We visited the Plaza Bolivar and then decided to go and get some lunch. As we were walking down a street just outside of the old town that we had been warned about we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by people. Everything happened very quickly, but basically someone spat into the left side of my face to distract me, then unbuttoned a pocket on my right side and took my wallet. We didn't realise what had happened until we were another 10 metres down the road. We immediatly decided to get off the street and headed back to the hostel until we thought that maybe the theif had just taken the money and dropped the wallet on the ground near by where it all happened. We walked back to the area and looked around but to no avail, we headed back to the hostel wondering what we were going to do for money (our only free withdrawals bank card was lost). We told the staff at the hostel who immediatly phoned the police and helped us get things sorted, we cancelled the card and headed off to get some lunch (bought by the hostel owner) before heading down to the police station to get a statement for our insurance claim. The police, as one might expect of Colombia, were of no help at all and wouldn't even let us write down the amount of cash we lost on our claims form as well as making us write everything in Spanish. Luckily the hostel owner had come along with us and managed to translate all this and then helped us write the form. We were leant some money to last us the day and we set to work trying to get all our money into an account with a card we could use in Colombia. We got chatting to various people around the hostel and everyone we spoke to had their own horror story of being robbed which made us feel very lucky as the majority of them were a lot worse than ours - people had been held up by guns and knives and had a lot more stolen than we did. It was a definite annoyance, mostly just loosing our debit card, and has made us a lot more cautious around the big cities (which mostly involves Nikki sticking all our cash withdrawals in her bra until we get back to our hostel and the safety deposit box!)


A couple of days later we went to Villa de Leyva, a pretty town 4 hours outside of Bogota. The Lonely Plant had advised not to visit during weekends and holidays, throwing caution to the wind we arrived on a Sunday of a bank holiday weekend to a lively interesting town where everyone was relaxing and enjoying themselves. We found a hostel with ease and settled in before heading out to get some asado (various meats cooked on an open fire) that we had seen when walking to the hostel. That evening we and the couple we had travelled with called Sarah and Carl (with an Irish spelling?) sat around the plaza sipping cold beers and wine with the other Colombian holiday makers that were visiting the town for the weekend.

The next day we strolled around the town and took in the sights. The day after the four of us got a taxi out to El Infernito (or the more aptly named "Penis Park") containing lots of large stone formations to represent fertility, which had just closed for lunch. Next we walked out to see a large dinosaur skeleton, gaining two rowdy young labrador dogs on the walk. With ominous clouds looming we tried to finish our trip quickly with a visit to an ostrich farm where we got to see the chicks and feed the adults before we fed ourselves with a delicious ostrich steak and salad!



Nikki and I said goodbye to Sarah and Carl and caught an over night bus to Taganga via Santa Marta on the northern coast of Colombia. We stayed for two nights where we spent the day playing around on the beach called Playa Grande and eating delicious BBQ fish for lunch. Next stop Cartagena. We arrived and tried to check into the hostel we'd booked but they were full so were moved to another round the corner. We checked out of the 12 bed dorm we were in as soon as possible and managed to get a cheap double room for only 2000 pesos more (about 60p). We've been in the hostel for 8 nights now and have arranged with lots of ummming and ahhing to get a yacht (Fritz-the-Cat) to Panama which will stop at the San Blas archipelago for 3 days along the way. We're both really excited and looking forward to seeing the Caribbean paradise, that we've been seeing in pictures since we arrived in Colombia, in person.

There's not much to tell about Cartagena itself other than it's VERY HOT - about 32°C and about 95% humidity - which is the killer! When we first got here we met up with Ian, Sinead and Rick for an improptue night out in Boca Grande accompanied by bottles of rum and a local salsa band at a small street bar. We've enjoyed walking around the pretty old town where our hostel is situated (Casa Viena)and sampling the street foods and snowcones on offer - "maracuya y limon" all the way! (passion fruit and lemon). Now that we're finally up to date with the blog (sorry it took so long!) we're going to go sail off into the Caribbean sunset for 5 days. We'll let you know how we get on in paradise!

Floating down that big river.

We found it really hard to find reliable information about trips down the Amazon, so the first part of this blog is just for other people who are looking for similar information. This is a rough guide though, as things can change from boat to boat the information here was based on our boat and our trip from June 2009.

The cost

- Quoted luxury cabin price (for 2 people) from Hostel Manaus (double bed, tv & fridge in room): R$1000 (Brazilian Real) bartered down to $950
- Quoted normal cabin price (for 2 people) from Hostel Manaus (bunk bed): R$750
- Hammock space price from Hostel Manaus (for 1 person): R$270 (stated as R$300 on ticket, otherwise we would have had to pay the extra R$30 once on board)
- Price for hammock space direct from the boat, or bought once on board: R$300
- You need your own hammock, ours cost R$25 each, including the rope (don't forget rope!)
- The price included all meals (breakfast, lunch & dinner) plus fresh, ice cold drinking water
- It is possible to sleep on the boat the night before departure for no extra cost
- Despite there being a loading jetty out to the boat, we had to get a small water taxi to the boat at a cost of R$5 each

The boat


- There are showers on board that are cold and are cleaned daily
- Toilet paper was supplied
- There is a shop/bar on the top deck that sells normal priced beer, sweets, hamburgers, toasties & toiletries such as shampoo, toothpaste & sanitary towels
- The sides of the hammock decks are open to the elements, although there is a tarpaulin that can be pulled down to stop wind/rain, but it can still get a bit chilly so bring at least a sheet
- Security isn't really a problem as long as there is someone keeping an eye on things when docked
- It was possible to strap backpacks to the ceiling bars
- The boat is 3 decks, the bottom for cargo, middle for hammocks, cabins, kitchen, dining area & bathrooms, top for leisure area, more cabins, bar/shop and more toilets.


The trip

- We went from Manaus to Tabitinga
- The trip took 6 days & 5 nights leaving at 4.30pm and arriving at 11.00am
- Breakfast was at 6.30am with two sittings and consisted of bread with cheese & margarine and very sweet, milky coffee.
- Lunch was at 11.30am with 2 sittings and dinner was at 5.30pm, both always consisted of some kind of meat (varying between chicken, beef steaks, hunks of some kind of meat, dry mince and once we had pirahna), rice, beans & cold spaghetti
- Meals were served at a communal table in the dining room, where serving bowls of food were spread out down the table and you help yourself
- There was also another kitchen on the cargo deck where it is possible to take your own tupperware box/plate for the meal and then you can find a space somewhere on the boat to eat.
- Mosquitoes are not a problem while the boat is moving, but can be an issue when docked

Our journey


We awoke after our first night to a still fairly empty boat, which we found odd as we had heard that it can fill up quickly and get pretty tight for space. We arranged with Ian & Sinead to watch their stuff so they could get some more supplies from town and then when they returned we would head out. We had been told by someone the day before at the airport that the boat would be setting off at 6pm. Just to make sure we asked a member of the crew what time they we would be setting off and they told us 1pm, which caused a bit of a panic as we had to pick laundry up from Hostel Manaus at 12pm. We asked someone else to try and confirm it, and they told us 2pm. To try and save time I went up to CarreFour supermarket to get some extra supplies (flavour sachets, cookies, fruit & nutella) while Nikki guarded our belongings. When I got back I spent ages arguing with the security guards to let me walk back down the jetty to get back on the boat, but they said I needed a ticket, which I had left on board. Eventually I think they just gave up and they let me through. Sinead & Ian had returned, so Nikki & I went back into town to get our laundry and send e-mails letting people know we would be out of reach for 6 days. We got back on the boat just after midday to make sure we weren't left behind and the deck was now starting to fill up with hammocks. At 4pm we still hadn't set off and with the arrival of 2 German guys (Phillip & Stefan), an American (Rick) and another Englishman (Tom) who had set up next to us, we now had what we dubbed a "Gringo Corner". Elsewhere on the deck were 4 more English guys (Dom, Teddy, Hope & James) and a rather odd Belgian chap (we shall call him Mr. Strange). About half an hour later, we were eventually on our way.


Over the next 5 days we got to know some of our fellow gringos quite well and settled into a nice routine. We usually got beaten by Nikki at Uno in the morning, conversed about what we thought lunch/dinner could be (Burger King, lasagne, a nice Ceaser salad...), ate lunch/dinner (always some kind of meat with rice, beans & cold spaghetti), played Top 5... (- celebs you'd like to punch in the face, - historical figures you'd like to have lunch with, - injuries, - travel stories, etc.) and played a guessing game of when we thought we might arrive in Tabatinga. Occasionally our routine would be interrupted when we docked into a town, at which point Rick would go off to find women and occasionally Tom and I would get off to have a look around the town, but most of them were pretty similar, small dirt road places with run down shack-houses that had brand new plasma screen TVs in.


The scenery along the way was quite surprising, we had been expecting non-stop jungle, but were rewarded with quite varied landscapes. We would go from quite narrow points in the river, close to jungle and all of a sudden the river would widen out, with the opposite bank just a thin line on the horizon. A lot of small towns were dotted along the way, some had been built so they floated, rising as the river did, but some had been built on stilts and all that remained of them were rooftops poking out the top of the water. We also managed to glimpse some wildlife such as monkeys and lots of parrots. Relatively early on Tom & I think we spotted pink dolphins and from then on everyone was on dolphin watch. None were spotted until the second to last day when I was out on the top deck by myself and suddenly loads of them started jumping out of the water and there was no one around to confirm my sighting.


One evening we were all sat on the top deck of the boat watching the world go by as some of the crew members fired up a BBQ next to us. We got chatting to one of the guys called Raimundo and he showed us what they were planning to cook; a huge tray of various fish - we didn't know what they were but we managed to gather than none of them were pirhana. We had already eaten our meal earlier but Raimundo asked us, in a very conspiratorial manner, to dine at the Captain's table with him and the other staff. Due to the language difficulties we weren't sure if he was asking us to join him for definite so left it until at the last minute he waved at us to follow him downstairs. Nikki and I were each given some of each of the different fish to try followed by some unusual fruit that involved karate chopping to open. We said our thanks and left them to the rest of their meal (which was a lot more varied than ours!) and headed back to play more Uno. The next night one of the crew who worked in the kitchen came running upstairs to find Nikki and I and made us follow him downstairs and into the dining room where he showed us a huge moth/butterfly that had landed in there. He picked it up for us to photograph it and handed it to us to take back upstairs to show the other gringos. Bemused we said our thanks again and left with a flapping, frantic bug in our hands.


Over the trip we became friends with many of the children on board the boat. They would pull up a chair and watch as we played either cards or uno and smile until they got bored and disappeared off into the hammocks. Eventually they worked up the courage to ask to borrow our spare pack of cards so they could play their own games. One day there was a commotion near our hammocks and a bat, that we had seen flying around the deck durning the night, was kicked across the floor towards the edge of the boat. We all crowded around to take a closer look as it lay jerking on the floor. Apparently it had been roosting in the rafters over someones hammock and had woken them by emptying it's bowels over them. It was sharply removed by a flying flip-flop and then was about to enjoy a plunge into the Amazon but our curiosity had saved it. As we stood around debating what to do with the twitching creature it shuddered one last time and breathed it's final breath so Tom gracefully flung it over board. During this a young girl who worked in the kitchen had come by and joined in the scene, later that evening she came upstairs and sat with us while she taught Nikki a magic trick. Later that night she and two other boys taught us how to play a card game, they taught us their names - Priscilla, Fagner and Delei and we taught them how to play Uno. Tom, who speaks Spanish, managed to translate the basic rules for them while they rolled about laughing, we eventually managed to find out that they found Tom's pronunciation of the Spanish word for "blue" hilarious. In European Spanish the "s" sound is lisped where as in Latin Spanish it isn't. Tom had pronounced "Azul" as "Athool" - the kids giggled and repeated the word over and over until it became Tom's new name and he was known as Athool for the rest of the trip.


We had some good fun along the trip, mostly attributed to the good people that were on board. We were sad, in a way, to get off the boat at the other end but we were deleriously happy to have proper beds and a choice of food in various restaurants! We said our goodbyes to Priscilla (Delei and Fagner had got off at other towns earlier that day) and the other staff and thanked them and said bye to the other four english guys while the rest of us (Sinead, Ian, Tom, Rick, Nikki and I and Mr. Strange who tagged along) headed off to Leticia to find a hostel and showers as the weather was incredibly humid and warm now we were in the heart of the Amazon.