The Amazon

It's muggy, but the breeze makes it rather pleasant during both the overcast mornings and the clear, sunny afternoons. The river stretches as wide as the Columbia on either side of the boat I've spent the last three days on.

My Amazon adventure began on Saturday - no, before that. Thursday I flew from Bogota to Leticia, and my time there was just as much as an adventure as my time aboard this vessel.

I landed on a hot afternoon. When the plane dipped below the clouds, I saw it - the Amazon and its rainforest. Trees uninterrupted, like nothing I've ever seen. So vast an expanse of life climate is moved by it - clouds hung up in the branches of towering green. Unreal.

Stepped off the plane and began the task of immigrating. Office number one was next to the airport. Leticia and Tabatinga are the border towns of Colombia and Brazil, respectively. I first got stamped out of Colombia then - after checking in with Gustavoh, the owner of a Letician hostel - I was given a bike to ride to office number two - that of the Federal Police in Tabatinga. There my visa was approved without a problem, and I biked back across the border and, interestingly, an hour in time.

Spent Friday biking with a German boy, Onntej. We walked the grounds of the local university before breaking for pistaccio icecream. Also biked to pick up dinner. Gustavoh lead the way. Fresh fish head to tail, rice, and boiled yucca - a kind of potatoe common to Central and South America.

Early Saturday morning woke to go to the market, where I reached my limit for eating native cuisine. Gustavoh pointed to a bucket. What was inside was moving. Huge larvi. Their fat white bodies riggling behind their black heads. Gustavoh bought some steamed and explained that people ususally do eat them raw. The woman selling them started to laugh - I could no longer hide my disgust. Never in a million years.

Later, I climbed pack and all onto the back of Gustavoh's motorcycle and we drove o the dock. I was heading downriver to Manaus, Brazil - Gustavoh knew the captain, negotiated for my ticket, and helped me string up my hammock on the upper deck. The journey will take three nights and four days.

Thus far, he scenery has been spectacular. Yesterday, I saw the Amazon's freshwater dolphins playng while we were docked at a small town taking on passengers. I had gone ashore and bought an icecream, which I was licking back on board while watching fishermen sell their brightly colored catch when a gray and pink body came leaping out of the water. I turned from the rail and shook Conn - the Irish feller, who's lived in the UD - in his hammock next to mine. We watched the river together until the sun set fire red over the water.

I have no complaints. Meals are served hot and there's always plenty - usually pasta, rice, beans, and meat. The showers are refreshingly cold, the hammocks relaxing, and - for the fist time I can remember - I have purposefully sat and done nothing at all but watch the world pass by. The only unpleasantries are the large winged black beattles that come aboard at night. Those and the police checks where men are arrested for smuggling cocaine.

Today is Monday - the last full day. Tomorrow we pull into Manaus, where Rio Negro meets the Amazon.