Amazon Things

The Amazon leg of the trip was a pretty fun and exciting leg. There was lots of drama, nuns, beetles, spiders, hammocks, and pure jungleness. We had a few days left before our flight to Dallas so we decided to go chill in the Amazon because, you know, it’s one of South America’s most famous features. A long time ago, back when we were in Alaska, my mother read to us about this ferry service thing that takes people up and down the Amazon. It was decided that we would take the ferry from Yurimagaus to Iquitos.  The coolest thing about the ferry was that you got to sleep in hammocks (ah!). But before we could chill down the Amazon, we had to get to Yurimagaus first. Since Yurimagaus doesn’t have an airport we had to fly into this town called Tarraputo that was a three hourish car ride from Yurimagaus. The car ride there was the one of the coolest car rides I’ve ever been on. I didn’t really know that jungle cliffs were an actual thing but they are.

After our car ride ended it was kind of late so we bought some hammocks and went to the boat but then there was a twist and the boat was gone. There was lots of yelling and boat stuff going on and then we got a hotel room for the night. Hotels are always exciting because they offer tiny soaps.

There were other boats at the port, one was being filled with cows when we were there and the other one was being filled with canned milk. The milk barge would also take us to Iquitos so we decide to ride that one. In the end, the boat didn’t work out but the time spent on board was exciting. Almost all the bugs are nocturnal because the day’s so hot, so as soon as it becomes night there are beetles the size of fifty cent pieces flying every which way and that. A really cool thing is that there’s tons of tiny, apparently harmless, spiders that hide in nooks and crannies during the during the day and make giant webs come night fall. There are also tons of bats.

There were vicious fish that eat anything as soon as it falls into the water.  It was scarier than it sounds. Some dude caught one with a fishing hook. It was not a piranha, just to clarify.

The barges were being filled up with cows when we arrived.  Other boats were being filled with hundreds of pounds of grain. Guys unloaded like seven trucks of grain by hand. There weren’t any cranes or carts or things of that nature, they just ran onto the boat and threw them down a hole. The guys also unloaded a bunch of really heavy looking hardwood. It was fun to watch. Our boat was taking on some loads of bottled water and we weren’t supposed to leave until it was all on board which takes a long time due to having only kids to unload the water. We had to get off because otherwise we’d miss our flight, but while we were leaving the boat, a gang of Haitians rose up and started to unload the truck which resulted with a ten minute long burst of cooperation where almost everyone joined in and unloaded the truck. The people didn’t really care for the water bottles so a lot of them broke. Eventually everyone stopped except for the three kids who finished unloading the truck. Everyone was angry at the captain and he was somewhere else in town. We were hoping to get our money back from the captain but since he didn’t show, we left and rented a hotel room. My dad left early  to retrieve our money the next morning. We took a really awesome trip on an Amazonian feeder river that was pretty cool. We saw birds, snakes, and piranhas.  I think the most exciting part of the tour was the food because it was fish.