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Six days travelling up the Amazon by boat was definitely worth the experience. It takes quite a bit longer to travel upriver, but it also means that the boat travels closer to the riverbanks and you get to see a lot more than you perhaps would otherwise. We stopped in ports along the way, some really small, others bigger, most accessible only by river, picking up and off-loading passengers and cargo - cotton bales, televisions, mattresses, onions, all sorts!!
I think what most surprised me was just how many people live on and survive off the Amazon, in homes on stilts, some with land (growing bananas and other fruit) and livestock (cows from India, buffalo, wild pigs), with satellite dishes(!), boats, all fishermen... and often in communities with churches, schools and mobile phone masts!
There was always something to look at, and friendly "Brasilieros" from the Amazon among the passengers to point out things we wouldn't have seen otherwise - Paulo pointed out my first parrot flitting between trees, and we'd see dolphins flipping in the water... lots of herons and another more hawk-ish looking bird...
We loved it. With each day, familiarity with the other passengers grew (although I suspect it would have done even more had we been in hammocks) and we enjoyed talking to other backpackers, Brazilians and some of the kids who took a real interest in the pictures on the back of the digital camera and in Simon's binoculars! Great fun...
I really enjoyed talking to a woman who worked with communities on the Amazon teaching them about the importance of looking after the environment. Her next project was going to be planting fruit trees with school children. Travelling in the cabins was a little like travelling first class (but then not at all), and we had a special 'cabin lady' who looked after us, coming to get us at meal times, and seemed to eat better food (fruit in the mornings which the hammock passengers didn't have), which I was relieved about but felt awkward about too!
So, fantastic, and despite looking forward to something to eat other than rice, beans and meat, and to having a proper room to sleep in and being able to walk around and a bit further than from one end of the boat to the other... it was quite sad getting off...
We stayed the first night in Manaus on the boat because we arrived so late, and have been here two days now in a nice hotel (splurging!). We think we've decided on a four day trip into the jungle to do, and thereafter we'll fly to Tabatinga on the border with Peru and Colombia.
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