We spent our last morning with Sarah (Tues 30th Oct) gift shopping. The time she has been here has gone so quickly and it´s a shame that we had to spend most of it on a stinky boat! At 12pm, Neil and i got a taxi to the airport, Sarah is flying home today also but not until later on. Neil and i waited in the airport for most of the afternoon and then at 4pm we boarded the tiny Rico plane to Tabatinga.

We arrived in Tabatinga about 2 hours later. The airport was tiny, and arrivals was literally a room from where you collected your luggage with an exit door which lead straight out to a taxi rank. As soon as we were through the door we were approached by three men asking if we wanted a fast boat into Iquitos, Peru. When we told them that we wanted to fly, we were told that we couldn´t, we had to get to Iquitos first! They said that they would sort us out with accomodation, immigration and a boat to Iquitos so we got in a taxi and went to the hostel. When we got to the hosel we dumped our bags and were then told to go back downstairs. George was going to take us to the immigration office at Santa Rosa in Peru to get our passports stamped. When we got outside there were two motocycles waiting for us so we hopped on the back and got a ride to the dock. We had to get a boat from Tabatinga accross to Santa Rosa in the pitch black. It was obviosly out of hours at the immigration office because the official was wearing jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt with some sort of rock band logo on it, however we got what we wanted and headed back to Tabatinga. Back at the boat dock in Tabatinga we had to get on another motocycle, we thought we were going back to the hostel but George ended up taking us to a place where he wanted us to buy tickets for the speed boat. There was another guy here who had been at the airport, he wanted R$150 each for the tickets. I wanted to have a look around because i thought we might be able to get it cheaper so i told him that we needed to wait because we didn´t have enough money. He replied with ´just ring your father´and a smirk. This really annoyed me, they were so ignorant. I think they got the message and we managed to get the tickets for R$20 less. As we were getting on the bikes to go back to the hostel George turned and said´what about my tip´. We gave him R$10 which he scoffed at but i didn´t care, i didn´t like the guy!

We were taken back to the hostel buy the guy whom we had bought the boat tickets from. When we got there Neil asked him if he knew of anywhere we could get some tea. He mentioned something about Columbia and so we just assumed that all the nice places were there. We went upsatirs to get changed and within minutes he was knocking on the door asking us to follow him. Again there were bikes waiting for us which took us into Columbia. When we got off the guy started showing us things and giving us a tour, we told him we didn´t want a guide, we just wanted somewhere to eat. He took us to a fairly nice restaurant but he sat down with us while we ate. We told him we´d buy his drink for showing us where to go. With this, he ordered another drink and didn´t put his hand anywhere near his pocket when the bill came. Afterwards he said he wanted to take us somewhere to try a drink and so he took us to a bar where as soon as we sat down, the barman arrived with three beers. When we had finished those, he came out with another three, he then got on a motocycle and returned 5 minutes later with a bottle of liquer. The alcohol was nice but very strong so i didn´t have much. At about 10.30pm Neil told the guy that we would have to leave soon because we had to catch the boat at 4am in the morning. He pointed to the bottle and said "when we have finished". So, i sat and watched this guy get rather drunk and then he tried to get me to dance! We paid over the odds for the drinks that we had, and i think the guy was a bit dissapointed when we said we were leaving. I got the impression that he does this with tourists alot....cheap nights out! He shoved us in a taxi and sent us back to the hostel.

When we arrived back at the hostel at about 11.30pm everything was locked up and for a minute i thought we were going to have to sleep right there on the street but Neils shouting managed to grab someones attention. The guy who let us in asked if we needed a transfer to the boat dock in the morning, we said yes because we didn´t know where it was plus the guy told us it was dangerous to walk around at that time. He told us it would be R$20 and when i gave him a R$50 he said that was fine because it was R$30 for the room. But we´d already paid for the room before we went out earlier that night!He argued for a while that the guy we had paid didn´t work at the hostel. It all got a bit confusing until he accepted that we had actually paid and we went to bed for all of 3 hours sleep!

The walk to the dock was literally two blocks away and there was nobody about. When we got on the boat to Santa Rosa (from where we were to get on the speed boat), he wanted his money and we had to pay the boat driver too so, we hadn´t actually paid for a transfer, we´d paid to be walked down the street. Once again we had paid someone just to add lining to their pockets, you can´t get help here without a price!

We got on the speed boat at 4am on wednesday morning. The ride was pretty uncomfortable and there wasn´t alot of room to move around. We must have been on the boat for at least 12 hours and it was dark when we arrived in Iquitos, Peru.