"The Endless Jo ..." a Estado do Amazonas Travel Page by LuisGuimaraes

Previous stop: Manaus

You like to travel because it's an escape from reality. That's why a coffee tastes so much better in a foreign square, or average people make up such friends, when you're abroad: nothing's the same, when you go beyond your boarders.

It all ends up to being able, through travelling, to create our own, ephemeral parallel World.

Being 4 nights in a passenger boat floating down the Amazon River is where this materializes into an absolute truth.

The engines start in Manaus and keep working, for days and nights, every hour, every minute.

Each inch of water is passed and after a few minutes is just a lonesome point in a bygone past; so are the trees, the clouds, the small canoes and the giant cargo ships that wave their friendly hands.
So are you not, as a passenger.

Because, as a passenger, you are voluntarily condemned to a moving existence, where time and space are one pointless issue. You are part of a moving body which you don't control and you can't escape of.

There's no point imagining you are free: the hot wind is free to make your hairs and immagination dance, the sticky heat is free to make you sweat, the tropical rain is free to soak up your skin..but you, you are not free; you can't go beyond a certain border created by the boat's limits, you can't go beyond a social system created by the fate that joined those passengers in the same journey as you.

When you are 4 days in a boat that doesn't stop, you get a share of small floating world of its own, which you help to create and which you help to survive.

Fellow passengers gradually become you're only World, the other elements of a small and unique ecosystem that drifts away in the wild scenery of a living river..

Passenger boats covering large distances in the brazillian part of te Amazon (I don't know about the peruvian ones) usually have three floors: the first two for third and second-class passengers (hammocks) and the upper one for the cabins, where there is usually a bar selling beer, soda and cigarettes.

The social structure is remarkably strict: third-class passengers aren't allowed to go to the upper stages of the boat, and second-class passengers themselves won't relate much with third-class ones. Second and first-class passengers can move freely. The boat, though being a world on its own, has its model in real world: and real world in Brazil is as stratified as it gets.

Boats can either be made of wood or iron, whereas wooden boats are reputedly dangerous in stormy weather.

The base floor is like an iron box just a meter above water level, a huge space to hang hammocks and keep luggages. The middle floor is about the same, but with a balcony all around. The upper fllor has all the cabins and a balcony all around too, as well as free space in the front and the back of the boat: that's where stars and sunsets are best to be seen. The boat I went in had the a small bar and some river-water showers in the upper floor too, ideal to cool from the hot sticky mid-day sun.

Between Manaus (where we boarded) and Belem, near the Ocean, a few thousand kms ahead, there is a 5 days and 4 nights journey, with a few small stops in harbour towns around the river and usually one major stop in Santarem, one of the biggest cities along the Amazon River. ("biggest city", here, rather means "average small town").

You can either get a hammock and sleep in the common room for hammocks, or pay a small extra fee for a privat cabin, with actual (though small and uncomfortable) beds, air conditioning and private bathrooom. Sleeping a few nights in the hammock is quite an experience, for the human warmth created by all kinds of people sharing a room in the middle of a journey down that endless river, people with different origins, objectives, conditions and motivations. Handlers, singers, robbers, couples, drifters, grandmothers, children, couples, prostitutes, dreamers, away-runners, rich, poor, travellers..if the boat itself is an echosystem, imagine what the dorm-floor is..

But anyway, we did pay for the cabin, so I spent some nights there too; in my opinion, the cabin pays off for its private bathroom and for the air conditioning, if it gets hot during the day, as well as for you being able to keep your luggage in a safe place. Don't expect luxury, though: it's not even comfortable.

The day starts early, as the light and the moving boat usually won't let you sleep too long. Someone calls for breakfast, and we enter in turns, until the last passenger has eaten his share of bread, fruit and milk. Considering the hot and steaming "dingin-room" has room for about 10 people at a time, I guess lunch time starts right after the last ones have eaten their breakfast!

Ok, bad joke..! But moving on..

Activities on board include (and are limited to) socializing and admiring the views. Days pass by sitting and chatting under the sun in the upper deck, watcHing the river go by, exchanging ideas, hearing stories about indians that make love with dolphins, explaining that you can't reach Europe by bus; The hours lazily pass by, and the only two decisions one has to make during the day are who to talk to and where to do it.

Indeed, after a few days I remarked a certain padron in the passengers' habits: sitting down near a group, talk for half an hour, standing up, going to another part of boat, admiring the view, joining another conversation round, leaving again to some other spot, buying a beer, reading a book..

It is not unusual to meet someone you had seen one hour ago and cheering her with great affection, as if it was such a big surprise to meet someone that is confined to the same small space as you are! The truth is, though, that you gain a lot of affection for many fellow passengers, as personal contact is one major ingredient in the journey.

It's hard to explain the whole feel to it: there is a certain amount of impotency towards fate, as everything you make and every decision you take isn't fully independent: you are on a boat which you can't leave. So, you gradually become aware of how innocent and powerless you are, and how ridiculous your decisions are: there is sometinhg bigger limiting you and your actions, and that bigger entity is space (or the lack of it).

So, you get more and more laidback, accepting your tragic weakness, and end up loving the fact that - for 5 days - you're not responsible for absolutely nothing besides living and breathing. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't produce or decide any radical or destiny-changing decision.

Maybe, just maybe, that's the most beautiful of the whole journey: you live in a parallell line to the real world, a parallel line with the shape of a a living boat.

Next stop: Belém

or go back, to my Brazil intro page

or go even further back, to my South America intro page