And so what happened after all of that? Well, I went on holiday... Once I'd finished the contract with the Secretary of Education I flew down to Leticia at the southernmost tip of Colombia in the Amazon region. From there I walked across the border into the Brazilian town of Tabatinga to buy a hammock and hop a ferry down the Amazon to Manaus.
It was a four-day boat ride on an overcrowded ferry, sleeping in the hammock, beset by insects the size of airplanes and with food that tasted like cardboard. I loved it! There were next to no tourists. It was mostly Brazilians on their way home for Xmas. There was a group of refugee Haitians who were on their way to Manaus where they had been given work by a local Church. (One thing I found in even the most remote parts of Brazil is that there was either a church or a sex shop on every corner.)
Among the foreigners were an ex-pat Frenchman working for an NGO out of Peru who somehow managed to look dapper and well presented even in the most dire of circumstances; a crazy German who lived in California, hated Americans and had an inflated opinion about everything; an Anglo-Ethiopian merchant banker who constantly put his foot in his mouth whenever he opened it; two Colombians, Leo and Camila, who hitched themselves to me from the beginning and who remained by my side for almost the entirety of the following two months; and a young Peruvian, Segundo, on his first trip abroad and excited by everything he saw!
Going down that river was an experience I'll never forget. It was tough, boring, exhilarating, exciting, like going back to the dawn of time. On the third day, the Brazilian Navy boarded the boat because it was so over-crowded. They forced us to dock in a village port where everyone had to get off the boat. Waiting at the tiny port where there were only three huts amid the rainforest, the Marines took up arms around the boat and intermittently let people back on. The captain of the boat disappeared or hid amongst the pother passengers. One of the Marines told me I looked like a drug-dealer. (Because the 'sombrero' I had bought whilst in Meta. This became a running theme throughout the trip as you will see. Apparently, my hat was the favoured apparel of Colombian narcotraffickers or 'traquetos' as they are known here. You'll hear more about that later.) I said sheepishly that I was tourist.
Somewhere along the way Segundo and I failed to make our way back on to the ferry. I was being a gentleman saying this child or that woman had to be allowed back on. And suddenly we were stranded. Leo had tagged along behind Camila when the Marines allowed women back on. He hid beneath her skirt or something like that. The Frenchman, by virtue of the fact that he was so well attired, seemed to be the only one who never got off the ferry. I have no idea how the merchant banker got back on - probably bribed someone...
So there were Segundo and I stranded at the dock in the middle of rainforest with about fifty other passengers and a vain promise that a second boat would take us to a second port where we might or might not be able to catch a second ferry sometime in the coming days. I argued my way back on to the ferry so I could reclaim my belongings, say my goodbyes and make do. All the while Segundo clung onto my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "You won't leave me? You can't! Tell them I'm with you!"
The two of us boarded the second boat and got talking to some Brazilian girls to while away the time. We didn't know what might happen. We might be stranded in the jungle for days to come. A bit of female company was necessary in such circumstances. Someone to snuggle up to. (Better them than Segundo!)
About two hours out of port, our boat hitched itself up to the original ferry - it had all been a trick, a deal done between two boat captains. We grabbed out bags and in the dead of night jumped, in the middle of the Amazon River, from one boat to another. Much to Camila and Leo's surprise, Segundo and I were back on deck, restringing our hammocks in a jiffy. Some motherfucker had nicked my spot! But I wasn't having that...
And so we settled ourselves back in for the remainder of the journey. The following day I got the runs. (The shits on a crowded boat with only three toilets - not fun!) And a day later we pulled into Manaus, an ever-expanding industrial city port in the midst of the jungle. Strange place... Even more so in the run-up to Xmas... We went to the local beach and swam in the Amazon. Camila reminded Leo and I not to pee in the water as there were rumours of a local parasite that would follow the trail of urine right to the 'crown jewels' and clamp itself into the urethra. (A rumour probably started by a feminist but I wasn't going to take a chance.)
I ate little and drank guava juice to settle my stomach. (Still had the shits!) We attended a concert at the Cathedral and sang Xmas carols in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest. (Bizarre!)
And then it was out of Manaus. My original plan had been to head for the Brazilian coast by boat but on consulting the prices I changed my plans. Brazil is expensive enough as it is. But Manaus is a trap. There is no road out (unless you want to go to Venezuela which I do, only not on holiday!) and the ferry companies and airlines have it all tied up so that if you want to head for the coast it'll coast an arm and a leg to get there. Fuck that! I changed my plans and decided to head for Bolivia. Leo and Camila came along for good measure. (Their plans were even more ambitious than mine. They were going to do all of Latin America in about six weeks. I remember Camila outlining their route to me on the boat to Manaus and me nodding along, all the while thinking: "Are you nuts?! Have you any idea how big this continent is?)
So we said our goodbyes to Segundo. He had family in Manaus. (The others we had lost along the way.) And we boarded a second ferry, this time for some back-of-beyond nowheresville called Porto Velho, which was four days down the Rio Negro and about four hours from the Bolivian border.
The second boat was perhaps even more surreal than the first. Less packed, it had a more laid-back easy-going vibe. Again, there were few foreigners. A very cool Uruguayan, Gonzalo, an aloof Parisian girl and her Venezuelan boyfriend, a French couple and a pair of crazy South African hippy girls who spent the first day going on about how they were the creators of their own realities. The second day one of them came up to me and asked if they were on the boat to Belen on the coast. I replied: "No, you're on the boat to Porto Velho in the Brazilian interior about 2,500 miles from the coast." Creators of their own realities indeed!
Still, the time whiled away easily. I kicked back, listening to music, reading and learning to juggle. And the jungle passed us by. I truly enjoyed my time. We stopped off at a little village the day before docking at Porto Velho and I went for a wander to finds out how the locals lived. As I said, even in the midst of the jungle, there was a church and a sex-shop. And a small shop selling nothing but Brazil nuts.
The next day we pulled in to Porto Velho. The dock was in fact another boat which seemed to transporting nothing but potatoes. With full pack I jumped onto a sack and then scrambled over another to make my way to dry land. Which in fact turned out to be a favela (slum). So with that we made our way as a group in to town. (Moi, the Colombians, the Uruguay, the French couple the Franco-Venezuelan pair and the South African girls.) It was Xmas eve!
Along the way into we lost the hippies. They were so desperate to find an internet café, the importance of finding a bed to sleep in took second place and they disappeared into the night. The rest of us checked into a hotel and then went out to explore and to have some festive dinner. Porto Velho was a truly odd place. It has a reputation for being at the centre of the drugs trade and had an atmosphere to match. I found it to be like the Wild West with transvestites. (They're fucking everywhere in Brazil!)
We found a little hut with a very fancy menu with lots of nice photographs of appetizing treats. However, when we tried to order some mouth-watering delight they said they didn't have it. As it turned out, all they had was eggs and bread. And so that was my Xmas dinner...
The next day we walked into the bus station to book the passage out of town quick-smartish. I had only set one foot into the station when one of the South African girls jumped on me, flung her arms around me and cried: "God! I'm so happy to see you!" She then regaled me with the story of their night. The girls had got lost in the favela, been accosted by men offering them money for sex and so in order to keep their guard and stay awake for the night had taken some acid they had on them(!). Then they had checked into a hotel that charged by the hour -unbeknownst to them they had checked into a brothel - and watched the lines on the wall grow and grow into ever prettier shapes.
NUTS! But they gave me some acid as a thank you for being me, a couple of kisses and we said our goodbyes...
Camila, Leo and I boarded a bus for the town of Guayaramerin on the Brazilian-Bolivian border. The bus broke down about an hour outside of Porto Velho - I thought we would never escape the damn place! - at the gates of Brazil's most notorious maximum security gaol. Couldn't believe it! This was hardly the picture-book, bossa nova, girl from Ipanema image of Brazil I had garnered from the long nights I had spent with Brazilian girls back in London... They had fucking lied to me! Was there no way out of this place?!
Anyway, there we were, in the middle of the jungle, outside a prison. And then this Brazilian guy starts telling how, if the most dangerous man in Brazil (who had murdered 100s apparently and happened to be in that very gaol) were to make a break for it right now... how, indeed, he might survive and make it to civilization. "Follow water," he said, "'cause that'll lead to a river and that'll lead to a town." He also told us about the vines that grow in an arc shape, which when you walk under make you drowsy and you lose all sense of direction; that if you did walk under them, you had to stop and sleep it off. He told us about the bears and the big cats in the jungle and how to detect and avoid them. And he told us that he had ha malaria nine times and survived (!).
I thought: "This is too much of coincidence. Here I am at the gates of a maximum security prison with a jungle survival specialist - Brazil's very own answer to Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin." I was waiting for pandemonium, for the gates to blow, for the gaol-break.... And then a second bus arrived and took us on our merry way... I tried to sleep but the woman next to me decided she was going to talk to me all the way to Guayaramerin. Even if that meant waking me up... Bonkers! It was bonkers... And I loved it!