THE AMAZON RIVER!
Parrots, Tarantula, and me in the jungle!
sunrise on the river
-Welcome to the Jungle!
We were sailing in the Amazon River for a bit and then we arrived in Belem. One of the first things we noticed when we were there is that there are torrential downpours multiple times a day. Probably because it is the rainforest! Before we could get shore leave on arrival day we had to sort through all out trash that we have been hauling around with us since Dakar. We had to go through everything and separate the papers from the plastics and do all the stuff. The stuff that was plastic we had to wash. We sorted through trash accumulated over 3 weeks from 60 people= not very fun! But we got it done and we got shore leave around six! We then realized that there was a hild up at the port gate. We all had to get out crew cards verified. It took about two hours. Our whole crew was basically waiting at the gate until each member of our group had their cards. We eventually got out at around 8. We had two hours until we could be back at the ship. I was with a group of girls form the ship and our main goal was to get food not from the ship! So we hunted around for a while to find a good place to eat, and we came across a place called Giraffas! It is kind of like a Brazilian version of a Mcdonalds. Between 6 girls we accumulated about nine full trays of food. We were very hungry and were desperately craving fast food, or any food that is advised as not being good for you! That is kind of what everyone does during the first few hours of shore leave. After we had to run back to the ship to get Erin back for gangway watch on time. WE got there with like 3 minutes to spare. And we stopped back at Giraffas multiple times in Belem
The next day I had gangway from 4am to 6am, normally having watch at that time of night was torture, but a special event happened that night. We were chilling on the deck box with Johannes (the AB on watch) and all of a sudden this bird like thing swoops down and almost smokes me in the head, I ran away out of fear of what it may be. I don’t think I have every run that fast in my life. Then I came back to see what it was. It was a huge bug almost as big as my hand. I have never seen anything like t before. It looked evil! We had to kill it because we didn’t want it leaving eggs on the ship and then us having to deal with an infestation of roaches. We didn’t know what to do the thing was so huge. So we threw a bucket over it so it couldn’t get away. Then we went to the paint locker and grabbed Thinner17 and trapped it in a bucket of it. It worked, it died and we named it Jimmy, at colours the next morning we announced his presence. He stayed with us on the ship until we left Belem J
We also had a captains clean that morning. Morgan and I were assigned to the Captains Pantry. It took us five hours, but we managed to remove everything, sanitize it, and then put it all back in. Extra thoroughly! After shore leave that day, we came back and the lights were out. The power was out due to the dang air conditioner acting up again. On the sail to Belem we were in the southern Atlantic Ocean and our air conditioner was breaking down so we didn’t get to use it. It got so hot, the outside temperature was like 35 degrees and the banjer and aftships was even hotter. It was not a fun time of endless sweating and no sleeping because it was so hot, some people even slept on the boat deck (which is against the rules muahaha) but at least they slept for a night. It was constantly hot except for when we pulled out the kitty pool and put it on deck to cool off in, we were innovative and found alternative methods of cooling down J including a swim call in the middle of the ocean. There was a fish that looked like a small shark under us when we were swimming, the swells were pretty fun to swim in, but there was a current so we had to be careful. Swimming in the middle of the southern Atlantic Ocean is a pretty awesome experience.
The next day in Belem was one of the best days by far! We were going on an amazing river expedition! We got up bright and early and made our way to the dock where the riverboat was waiting for us. We hopped on and sat up on the upper deck to get a good view of the Amazon. We sat on chairs and off we went. We moseyed down the river for a bit. The water really looked like it was chocolate milk, it was brown and you couldn’t see anything, other than branches floating on the surface. A bunch of us laid down on the deck and we all fell asleep and were awoken when we had to go to lunch. Lunch was some Amazonian catfish, onions, rice, and really good yellow fried flour that you would put on rice. I ate so much of that stuff! We then moved along on the boats and got ready to go for a hike through the jungle. We started by stopping at some local’s house in the middle of the jungle. He was cutting up Brazil nuts with a machete. Did you know that the Brazil nut shell only contains odd numbers of nuts, never even ones! And one Brazil nut has the protein equivalence of two eggs or a serving of meat. They also taste really good. During our hike we had to run at some points because it was dangerous to stand underneath the trees because the Brazil nuts fall from 50 meters. While we were gathered outside of this place, there were wild parrots in a tree. A bunch of people tried to hold it, so did I but it didn’t stay, it flew away and squawked. Animals just really don’t like me I guess. But one of the parrots was on my teachers arm and then it started crawling up and it landed on here head, it was quite comical. Then we kept walking through and another local who was an old man began to climb up this tree like 30 feet up, and then he began to swing from tree to tree. He had this woven grass thing around his feet, which he wrapped around the tree to help him climb. His dismount was so impressive. He let go of his feet and slid down with his hands and a few feet before the ground his reestablished his feet to the tree and friction slowed him down. It all happened in less than a second. This was coming form an old an. We got to try and climb it too, I could barely get up, but one guy climbed up pretty high. While all this was happening our guide picked up a tarantula and started passing it around. A wild tarantula! I got to hold it and it started crawling up my arm. It was awesome!
There is a lot of fruit in the jungle too, there were mangos and star fruit everywhere and we all ate so much of it. Then we came back to where we started and we had an opportunity to buy this acai berry puree juice thing. It had the consistency of really thick juice or really thin pudding, which is the best way I can describe it. It was so good if you put sugar and tapioca in it. Not a lot of people liked it, but I thought it was so good. It is a specialty from the jungle, homemade in the Amazon!
We then moved spots to where we were staying for the night; we had another empty boat join us because since we were staying overnight we needed a boat for the boys and a boat for the girls. Once we got there we had an amazing opportunity to swim in the river. Wherever you go in Brazil everyone says to not swim in the river, but we did! The water actually looks like a latte. I jumped in and I couldn’t even see my hands at the surface of the water. The water was so warm though. Since I couldn’t see anything I didn’t know what any of the creatures below me were, for all I know that could have been an anaconda that touched my leg while in the river! It was so so so awesome!
When bedtime rolled around we had established our sleeping spots. So many people claimed the hammocks that were available. Two girls and me claimed this cabin like room inside. Most people were asleep except me and my friend Erin found it to be way too hot, so we took our sleeping bags and slept on the ground outside. It was a wonderful sleep up until about 4:30 am where everyone was awoken by a huge flock of parrots emerging from the trees at dawn. It was cool to watch but it was so loud and their squawking lasted for like 10 minutes!
Our boat went back to the dock and we continue on with shore leave for the day.
We headed out to the market for bit to so some shopping. So many people bought hammocks, including me and the banjer was loaded with hammocks for a few nights. Hammocks were what seamen usually slept in and our banker used to be hammocks until the put bunks it. My hammock is a two person one so its huge! At sea its awesome because when the ship rocks you don’t feel it because the hammock counteracts it. So I bought a lovely hammock! But doing wakeups at night was a nightmare because during night watch when you’re trying to wake up the ongoing watch, you don’t know who is who and it’s confusing! It’s just a cluster of hammocks hanging from the overhead hooks! The hammocks were awesome and so was Belem, end of story! :) Now off the Caribbean :)
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