5 Days on the Madiera River

Just to backtrack a bit. Here is how they load the bikes onto this boat.

Boat life this time is a bit different than the first time mostly due to length of travel time, the first was 24hrs, this was 5 days and 4 nights. We were hoping for some English speaking people to be on board with us and we are rewarded with a couple of young guys from Venezuela who become translators for our trip. Diego is travelling to Peru as is Junior. Neither one of them has any amount of money, Junior doesn’t have much more than a towel and friendly smile. Diego is a few years older and has travelled before so he has the basics, including his guitar which is his main source of income. They are travelling or at least hanging around with a missionary family that has been travelling for 25yrs. They survive by making and selling jewelry and their strong faith helps them when they need Him the most. 

I will admit that we usually avoid the backpacker crowd as they are usually in a different mindset than us, but given the closed quarters we inevitably see them and get to know them a bit. Diego is the real helper and turns into our translator most of the time. He also sang a few songs to us after supper on our  21^st anniversary and the missionary family gave us a special blessing to protect and guide us on our journey. 

Our Anniversary serenade. The boats motorman played a makeshift bongo to accompany Diego.

This seemed to open a door we did not expect as we were invited the next morning to join in a prayer circle. Willing to try most things at least once, we figured a Portuguese prayer circle is likely a one time opportunity. One of the other passengers, who we were referring to as the photographer, gave us a Spanish bible to follow the scripture which helped a bit because it is easier to read than understand the pronunciation. After that, the passenger we named the Bible lady decided it was her turn to give us a prayer and blessing, she was smart enough to bring Diego along to translate. 

The Brasilian Missionary leading the prayer circle, all unscripted. Her husband played music while she spoke.

So all stocked up on good energy and such, it seems that now some of the other passengers have gotten brave enough to approach us with the usual questions. The first is always, Americano? To which we politely reply No, Canadiense. To which they reply, “oooo, mucho frio” (ooo, very cold). Then they machine gun us with Portuguese, to which we shrug our shoulders and tell them we do not speak their language. They seem confused because after all we were in the Prayer circle.

In any event this boat ride is much more enjoyable than the first one, even though our closet is very hot during the day, our hammock provides a place of rest and a good vantage point to watch the scenery go by. We are surprised at how many little yards and villages there are along this river but it is a main trade route between Manaus and Porto Velho. It is explained to us why the dirt road has never been upgraded or even maintained. If the road were in good enough shape to use as a reliable transport route then the shipping business would not be needed and there is not enough money in passenger service only.

The only other regular visitors we get are the numerous children that are curious enough to make eye contact and smile. This is the ice breaker and soon they are sitting beside us, or just standing and staring at us. The binoculars were a big hit with them; they looked through them both ways and then would giggle like crazy. They are rewarded with some Canada stickers.

We pass many barges transporting Soya beans from Porto Velho to Manaus and from there they are shipped to Japan. The hull of our boat is filled with staple items that it will drop off in P. Velho and restock with produce like limes, rice, corn, and oranges. We enjoy the food as best we can, breakfast is at 6am and is what they call a typical Brazilian breakfast of very sweet coffee and bread or crackers. It is not very filling but the sweet coffee gets us going. Daily lunch and dinner is the same menu; rice, spaghetti, fried beans, and meat (chicken, pork, beef all cooked with the same recipe). Also, because we are not doing anything all day our appetites are not as big as usual. The joke with the other passengers is eat-hammock-eat-hammock. The mornings are cool compared to the afternoon heat so we take advantage of the 6am wakeup and sneak in a basic workout of chin-ups, push-ups, sit-ups and a few burpees. The kids get a kick out of this and the adults just watch and smile. Brenda gets a lot of compliments and questions because the ladies here have zero muscle definition.
We drop off a couple of passengers along the way but for the most part people stay onboard until the second last day when they disembark at Humatia, which is a two hour drive from Porto Velho but an extra day on the river. We stay on the boat all the way and the last day is just as enjoyable. People are getting excited about reaching the destination and like any confined group setting people become friendlier just before separation.

It is difficult to summarize 5 days of boat travel into one post and impossible to include all the photos so we will have to leave it at this.