Well folks, I have survived the Amazon boat trip – only just. I am now in Manaus, a large city in the rainforest of Brazil. Today I collapsed, twice, due to dehydration, lack of food, extreme heat and no sleep. There were talks of bringing me to the hospital but eventually I came round to find myself with a bloody, ripped knee after I fell out on the road in front of a car. I will start from the beginning.
Last Wednesday we flew from Bogota to Letica which is a town right down in the south east of Colombia. Leticia is surrounded by Amazon rainforest so the only way to reach it is by air. Upon arriving in Leticia we got stamped out of Colombia and caught a taxi across the boarder to the town of Tabatinga in Brazil. Here we went to immigration and got stamped into Brazil by the most beautiful, sexy man I have seen so far in this country. He was heavenly with muscles the size of rocks. I almost fainted as he winked at me and said "here is your passport, you have 30 days in Brazil".
So it is in Tabatinga that you organize the riverboat to Manaus. Can all backpackers who read this please take my word that the guidebooks and the blogs written by annoying travellers about how the sun glinted off the Amazon into their eyes are nothing but flowery bullshit that do not tell the full truth about this trip. I am here to tell you the real story, no frills, no pansy bullshit but straight to the point fact so listen and listen good.
To book your ticket get a moto-taxi in Tabatinga to the Manaus riverboat port (a 7 minute motorbike ride to the dock). The boats go on Weds and Saturday. You can book your ticket the day before. The person selling the tickets will be there from about 9:30am. It looks a bit dodge but they are legit and have a laptop and a little receipt printer which you need a copy of when boarding the boat.
You have 2 options. Pay 170 Riel for a hammock space (buy your own hammock and rope) – horrendous in my opinion as you can see in the pic below how crowded the hammocks are or you can pay 850R for a cabin which is what we did so it worked out 425R each. Make sure to go to the actual dock to buy your ticket as the agents in Tabatinga tried to charge us 600R each for a cabin. Slippery snakes. The cabin also in pics below, had air con, bunk beds and our own toilet. If you go the hammock route you have to spend your 3.5 days in the company of about 50 other people, risk getting your bag robbed as you sleep, sleeping in 30+ degree heat, and risk getting bitten by mozzies in a malaria ridden area, however the bites I am told are not that many as the boat is constantly moving and only stops once or twice a day to pick up more people.
So, the Saturday morning arrived. If you book a hammock get to the dock very early in the morning to queue before the 3:30pm departure so you can get a good hammock spot, stay away from the food area and the toilets if you do hammock it. We arrived at about 12,30 to a scene of chaos which we are still trying to figure out is the norm or whether or not it was a one off. I am not joking there were guards with guns everywhere, lining up passengers like they were being rounded up to be sent to a concentration camp. All bags had to be laid in a separate line for sniffer dogs to check for drugs. Because this is the only way to get out of the Colombian rainforest (bar flying) the drug searches are horrendous. The guards were not too far removed from what the Nazis of Germany may have been like. They started yelling at us in Spanish to which we had our usual blank faces as we didn't understand a word so one of them steps forward and yells "Open your bag NOW". Right Adolf, keep your 4 strands of hair on. So we opened our bags, the dog came and sniffed and walked right on by. Each bag gets sniffed about 4 times before you can pick it up and join the queue to go through the door leading into the dock building.
So, after that we queue agan inside the building and this time have to empty our bags so more guards with knives and guns can rifle through our backpacks and yet again search for drugs. Again they found nothing interesting so allowed us to pack up and move on. So we are thinking 'my goodness that was a bit much' when the biggest butch dyke of a guard dressed in, get this – skin tight cycling shorts steps in front of us and points us into a room behind her. This huge wench had the greasiest hair pulled right back so tight it was stretching her eyes giving her the appearance of a fat Chinese woman. Being extremely puzzled we go in to find ourselves being spun round, hands forced up against the wall, legs spread and a vigorous pat down taking place by the butch dyke and another female guard. My breasts were felt up like she was trying to tear them off, then her hands moved down my body, down my legs, up the inside of my thighs and finally she grabbed my crotch so forcefully I started yelling "Get your greasy hands off me you big ugly dyke. Do you know where I live. London, yes that is LONDON, NW3 in fact, Primrose Hill is practically my back bloody garden you big ugly trollop, I rub shoulders with the celebs, how dare you treat me like a common crim………..
Before we knew it we were were being forced into a toilet, just off the room where we were molested by the dyke. She turns to Lilly and motions for her to pull her shorts down. I kid you not, the big butch dyke was demanding to see our private parts!!! Can you believe it??? So I turn my back to Lilly saying "Don’t worry Lilly I wont look" and Lilly is whimpering "No, noooooooo I don’t want to show her my flange" and Im replying, "Don’t worry Lilly, just a quick flash and its all over, you can do it". So Lilly shows the woman her special place. She looks closely, no hands lucky for her or I would have beaten the trollop silly and nods to Lilly to leave. Then she turns to me and the same inspection occurred. I spit venom at her and she shouts back "Il necassario" - or however they say it, and nods to a local woman slouched down in the corner, hands cuffed behind her back, sobbing away. Cocaine in the flange no doubt. But still, I dont give two hoots that she considers it necessary. NECESSARY??????? lll tell you whats necessary. What's necessary is that instead of the drug police being called in its the fashion police that are needed instead to arrest your fat lard arse for wearing those hideous cycling shorts that show every inch of your vile cellulite. The state of you, you rotten wench. Then I grab my bags and storm off down to the boat - the peasant carrier as we have now called it.
So the boat. Well thank heavens we got a cabin. I do not know how people sleep in hammocks in that horrendous heat. The heat is damp and heavy. You are supposed to get fed on the boat and we could only stomach the food on the first day. This led us to having no food bar a few tins of tuna and some chocolate wafers for 3.5 days. We were sick from the boat food the first day so could not keep any food at all in our bodies. I will not go into the toilet stories but it was not pretty. The journey itself was not too bad - few pics below.
Last night the boat finally docked in Manaus at midnight. We were exhausted. Again I cannot imagine what the people who had to live in the hammocks for 3.5 days must have felt like. Something close to death perhaps. So we pick a hotel out of the guidebook and get a taxi to take us there. They let us in and the only room they had with two beds only had a fan which hardly worked, there was no aircon. But we had no where else to go so we took it. I have never felt so sick in my life. The room was practically a sauna with no air getting in at all. My sheets were soaked with sweat and I was still suffering from the food poisoning on the boat. At 6am we got up and went round the corner (having had no sleep at all) and asked in another hotel if they had a room. Lilly was talking to the guy and I stumbled out onto the footpath and collapsed right onto the road in front of a car. The car didnt hit me but I totally blacked out and ripped my right knee into shreds. I crawled back to the door and fell on the step. All I could say to Lilly was I needed to get into a room with aircon quickly. I literally could not breathe in the stiffling heat. They managed to stand me up and give me water but I collapsed again. Luckily this time the guy was there to catch me. He wanted me to go to hospital and Lilly thought about it, knowing from the food poisoning I had passed all liquids from my body and that perhaps a drip might be necessary. She took me to the room and lay me down on the bed and thankfully after about 15mins I came round and managed to drink more water and eat a bread roll. My knee is killing me and I am still feeling weak but all I need is to keep hydrated and to get a very good sleep tonight.
So there you go. The riverboat on the Amazon - the journey itself was actually OK as we had a cabin but it was the before and after that has been an absolute joke. I have had a butch dyke stare at my privates, I have been poisoned, I have nearly been runover, my knee is hanging off and now I will have a scabby leg when I was meant to be a beach babe in Rio. I am a good person, where is the justice in this world I ask you, WHERE IS THE JUSTICE?????????????
Other than that tomorrow we get a flight from here down to the very south of Brazil to Foz de Igauzu to see the the stunning Iguazzu falls. I cannot wait to get out of this horrid, humid, deathly heat. Adios!
25 °C
25 °C
