Boat people

We got up this morning, had some breakfast at Ari`s Burgers (a huge 50s, Mel´s Diner type place owned by Gerald´s (from the Texas place) brother-in-law, then went back to the hotel to pack up our things and gather our stuff for 5 days in the jungle. Since check-out wasn´t until noon, we spent the rest of the morning in front of the fan in our room watching MTV. I think this is the first English language TV we´ve had since maybe India, so we indulged ourselves. At noon, we reluctantly checked out of the hotel, dropped our bags at the office of our jungle company, and wasted some time on the internet. We grabbed some sandwiches from the Yellow Rose of Texas for our dinner on the boat, then went to our tour office to wait for our ride to the big boat.

I think I'm probably the only person EVER to have started their Amazon trip with 44 mosquito bites already, and I haven't even left town yet! The bites from those tiny black bastard bugs on the top of Machu Picchu are still raging and it´s been 5 days. When we got to the ´port´, we saw that our cargo ship was just docked along the muddy banks of the river, and there were tons of people moving like ants, loading their stuff onto the boat. Most of it comprised bananas, sacks of who the hell knows what, and crates of who the hell knows what. Why were bananas travelling from the city to the jungle?? No idea. But it was exciting to watch.

We pushed our way to the top deck of the tri-level boat (with the help of one of the guys from the tour company office) where our hammocks were already strung up, hanging from pipes along the ceiling. How we found our hammocks must have been a miracle because there were already at least 100 hanging up, their owners lounging around or still on land. And that was only the top deck! At least the sides are open to the air. The middle and bottom decks seem more like compartments on a slave ship. After a while our guide for the next 5 days joined us. Gary (it´s actually Moises Jr. or Moises the 5th or something, but he hates it) is a 20 year old who grew up in the jungle. When he was a baby his parents sent him to live in the jungle with his grandma, and he only moved back to Iquitos when we was about 14 or 15 to finish school. It seemed like we´d be in for a great time. We chatted as the boat slowly filled with more passengers and their cargo.

Almost at 5:00 p.m. exactly, the boat´s horn beeped and we were off. The cargo ship would be taking us about 14 hours upriver (west). We spent the first 30 minutes or so watching the sun set over the water, and retired to our hammocks as soon as it got dark. We played some cards (the cards were precariously balanced on our legs as we swung from side to side in our beds), read, and then went to sleep for lack of anything else to do.