The Amazon

There’s always a bit of an ecstatic feeling the afternoon before we pull into port because once the last class is done, it’s gone for a long while. In the upcoming case of Brazil, the last class I had on Friday won’t materialize itself again until the following Friday. That’s because we’re hard at work in our ports learning through first-hand experiences. That’s the technical jargon for what we do, anyway.

Before I continue, I have to go back and tell a story that was supposed to be the anchor of one of my last posts, but completely neglected to include it. When I went to Desi (more commonly referred to as Archbishop Desmond Tutu) to have him autograph my copy of his biography, a thought popped into my head while I was waiting in line. I can’t just walk up, introduce myself, watch him sign my book, wish him a good day, and then go out on my merry way. He had to remember me. This task is a little more difficult than others because I have to make sure that whatever I say or do to Desi is in a realm of what most people would consider to be “acceptable, appropriate behavior.” And then it came to me.

I was two or three people back when one of the waitresses came over to Desi and gave him a strawberry smoothie with a straw. The waitress was so concerned with not spilling it on Desi, that she inadvertently dripped a fair amount on the poor guy that was having his book signed. Anywho, I found my inspiration. It was my turn, I walked up to Desi, and greeted him with, “Hello Father, how’s the smoothie?”

He said it was very good, with a small chuckle. I figured that line was safe enough yet effective, and I was right. My superior judgment strikes again! OK, that was the story I left out, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Every night before we enter port, we have Logistical Pre-Port, which is sort of the exact opposite of the jovial, fun-loving Cultural Pre-Port. In Logistical, they tell us more of the ins and outs of the port, as well as the things we really have to keep in mind. In Salvador, Brazil, what I’ve declared the crime capital of the world, there is a marked difference from what they told us to be careful about in Puerto Rico.

Don’t have anything remotely expensive looking on you, store your money in multiple places on your body, don’t eat the lettuce (because you don’t know what it was washed in) and don’t eat ice, travel in groups of at least three to five with at least one or two males, always take a taxi cab to go anywhere at night, do not walk off of the pre-designated areas on the pamphlets provided, and the list goes on from there.

In what was a lovely turn of events, the medical staff did their presentation in song and dance form, which was especially funny once they got to the STD and condoms verse. It was very well done and it helped to lighten up the somewhat heavy mood that everyone else had done a wonderful job in creating.

The doctor also announced during the meeting that they were holding a sale on Pepto Bismol (also included in the song) for everyone who wanted some. In addition to avoiding the water, lettuce, and ice, he suggested taking two tablets of the pink stuff before every meal. He says he’s traveled to rural parts of the world with groups that have been violently ill, and he says he never has been. The doctor would know best. So I got a box along with most other people, although I’m doubting that everyone will take his advice and taken the tablets.

At the meeting, they also announced that we were due to enter port an hour ahead of schedule, so this meant a very early morning for a bunch of us, which would only be at the start of what would be an eternally long day. So I went to bed ‘early’ which still could have been earlier, and as I would learn in the morning, should have been earlier.

Salvador, Brazil

I was up around 5:30, quickly dressed, and ran up to the front of deck seven at the bow of the ship for our entrance into Salvador. We were coming in during sunrise again, which was very pretty, but very, very different from what we saw coming into San Juan. There were far more clouds, and the water seemed a little darker, and it just looked different. After all, who wants all the port entrance sunrises to blend into one?

We have been told over and over again about the dangerous streets of Salvador, the poverty stricken landscape of the favelas, and the general frightening aura that exists around the city, but what they completely neglected to tell us was that a part of Salvador had a skyline with an array of skyscrapers. I almost thought that we were in the wrong port, just based on the word picture that they had painted for us. And as we know, the Global class isn’t always as accurate and politically correct as we would like it to be (when a photo of malnourished children shows their distended stomachs, the teacher’s comment should not be, “show us your belly buttons!”).

I stayed up at the deck with everyone else up there until breakfast opened at seven. We were down there and ready to go like bulls in a china shop. We’d been up for an hour and a half already and we were hungry. After breakfast, we had some time before anyone would be allowed off the ship because it had to be cleared. They did this by having the ship go up one group at a time to meet with immigration officials. My group was the last called in Puerto Rico and that was around nine or ten, still a few hours before. So I went back to bed.

No sooner had my head hit the pillow did an announcement come over that my sea was due to go to immigration. Sometimes things just aren’t supposed to go your way, and that’s the way it works. So we all drearily lined up in the faculty lounge and had our passports stamped. I had to take mine with me, which is a relatively nerve racking experience because if we lose it, there’s a very small chance that we’d be able to get back on the ship and continue with the program. It’s a huge amount of pressure that may be imparted just to scare us, but I’d bet that most of it is true.

After I had that taken care of, I started to get ready for our day’s morning expeditions. While my original plan was to again relax on the ship until my afternoon departure for a trip, that changed rapidly when my friends here had other ideas, and I felt obliged to join them in their exploratory pursuits of Salvador. Because we were scared so much in our briefings, I put on my off-boat clothing and lathered on bug lotion and sunscreen spray to avoid whatever may be out there in Brazil.

It’s actually very cool to think that you can look out the side of the window and see South America and Brazil. It’s always been so far away, and it’s always the topics that are glazed over because they’re on the Southern Hemisphere, the bottom part of the Earth that they don’t want to teach us about because they don’t want to confuse us. And supposedly the toilet water flushes in the same direction. However, all the toilets I can find have that jet-powered take-off that doesn’t spin at all.

Once I was all greased up in my layers, I went upstairs to watch the diplomatic briefing in one of the satellite rooms. I don’t like the Union. I can’t talk through them there. The briefing was given by a diplomat for the US in Salvador, and she’s been there about twenty years, which is supposedly not the norm for these people.

I’ll say this, they say she had spoken to the Semester at Sea people, and through the use of graphic, violent stories that I will not repeat here, she gave one of the worst, disheartening presentations that I have ever seen in my entire life. We had spent the past week sailing towards Salvador and we were all excited beyond our bounds to be here, and she just shattered all excitement that we had. Don’t get me wrong here, she wasn’t trying to give us a reality check that we were going to a dangerous place; she just brought the mood down all on her own, out of her own sick volition.

They cleared the ship after the briefing and a mass line started to form to exit the ship, of which we joined of course. You had to swipe your card to leave and the line moved so slowly that some people at the front of the line had to have difficulty with that concept. It’s really not hard: slide card through slot.

Once off the ship in the blistering hot air, in really direct sunlight, we wanted to figure out what we were going to do, now that we were off the ship. I was with a group of friends consisting of Elise, Bryan, and Leann, the generally usual group I hang out with on the ship, and we thought we knew where we wanted to go. Before we could decide, we were swamped with people tying bracelets on our wrists. They’re from the church Do Bonfim, and they loop it around your wrist and tie three knots on it, while making a wish. I didn’t know that at the time, so I did the wish part later, but the wish only comes true when the bracelet falls off by itself after the general wear and tear that it endures.

So the first place we wanted to go was to the Do Bonfim church, but the cab driver we asked said that it was closed because of Carnival. Carnival started a few days earlier and would continue until Tuesday, before Lent begins on Wednesday. Everything would be open then, but that’s the day I return from my Amazon trip, so I didn’t want to make any plans for that day yet. Not knowing where to go now, we decided to try to find the big Modelo Mercado, the big market in this part of town. We left the port area and walked to the right towards it.

The streets of Salvador are interesting, for lack of a better term. They’re dirty, smelly and just don’t look like safe places to be, even in the daylight. We stick out like sore thumbs because we’re the foreigners here in Salvador, not them. We’re the ones that need to be concerned about them, not them about us. You can find small remnants of the Carnival festivities lying around everywhere, even where the Carnival celebration didn’t take place. It’s poverty. It’s hard to put into words. Every country we go to on the itinerary has a degree of poverty, and even those at the same high degree have their poverty seen in a very different light. It’s hard to take in all at once. You can’t help but have some culture shock. It’s right there in front of you. You’re in it.

On top of it all, we had no idea where we were going, and looked lost, which is the exact opposite of what we’re supposed to look like. I kept telling the group to look like you know where you’re going, but I think I was the only one who did that. I wasn’t worried. I knew how to get back to the ship.

We were walking for about fifteen or twenty minutes until we came around a corner at the marina and took a left towards a large building people were eating in. We figured it was a restaurant or something and we moved around to the back where there was a small plethora of market stalls and shops with touristy treats. I wanted to stop and look around. The group wanted to go to Modelo Mercado to do their shopping and didn’t think this group of stalls was the market, so they wanted to keep moving, and I obliged.

From someone in another Semester at Sea group, we heard a rumor that the market was in the upper part of the city, and we were in the lower part. The upper part is up about a hundred feet from the street we were on, on a nearly vertical face. There are a variety of ways to reach the upper city, the safest and closest of which is the elevator. There are actually four elevators and they just run people up and down all day. And because it was Carnival, the five centavo fee was waived.

So we crossed the perilous street and got into an elevator that really didn’t look like it would make it to the top. Talk about Tower of Terror. The ride up was what most would call smooth, until the end. The elevator slows down faster than the people in it do, so we get a little weightless and it scares the living daylights out of you, like there’s something wrong. But apparently that’s how they do things down here, and I ran out of the elevator doors before the steel box had the chance to fall back down to where it came from.

The part of town that we came upon was the Pelourhino, and it’s the general place where Salvador has its big Carnival celebrations. We reached up there about an hour before noon, and they were still recovering and cleaning from the night before. Also, the market that was supposed to be right outside the elevator doors – was not there. So now we’re in a large square with other people milling around, and we have no idea where to go or what to do. It’s like we’re lost tourists, which is exactly what I was trying to prevent earlier.

We decide to walk to the left, just because that’s where most foot traffic was coming or going from. That walk opened up into a larger square filled with what first appearances indiacted was a large market place. We thought we had found the Modelo Mercado. We found the place where they feed everyone at night during Carnival. There were about four stalls open. Alas, the Modelo Mercado had escaped our grasp again.

At this point, we’re starting to get annoyed and realizing that we’re not going to find the Modelo Mercado. So we unofficially stop looking for it, so that we don’t feel dejected if and when we never find it, but can still claim victory if it’s around the next corner.

We turn down a more narrow side street with a bunch of shops, tourists, local revelers, and Carnival decorations. Now we’re kind of wandering around and passing enough time until we have to start heading back to the ship because we all have afternoon festivities, activities, and plans. I kind of wanted to stop and peruse some of the stalls, and another two of our group were racing a marathon through the streets of Salvador. I think they forgot that the running of the bulls is in Pamplona, not the Pelourhino. It’s an honest mistake, I’m sure it’s been made by at least three or four people prior.

Eventually, we come down into a more open street on a steep incline. I decide to stop and indicate that there’s another side street going back in the general direction we came from, and we can take that back leisurely. I said that because I looked down at where we were going and saw that we were approaching what I called the “Port-a-Potty Line of Demarcation” and didn’t see much going on the other side of this area. I figured it was best to stay where the people were.

My advice was taken and followed, which I was enthused about because it was the first time anyone listened to me all morning. Sometimes when you’re with four strong personalities it’s a good idea to take a backseat once in a while and bite your tongue. But anyway, we were moving along at a nice place, and I was looking for a shop where I could continue my shopping tradition and pick up something ‘tribal’ from each port.

I found a shop about five feet wide with a bunch of stuff in it that looked cool, so we diverted in. It was here that I decided to modify what I would be purchasing in each port. Here, I decided that I would get a mask of some kind from each port/country.

God bless the guy that was helping me in the store. If you ever hear anyone tell you that if you know some Spanish that you can get by in Brazil, the land of Portuguese, that’s a lie – trust me. I had no idea what he was telling me. I found a bunch of masks on the wall that I really liked, and I was just taking my time perusing what was up there on the wall. He kept pointing other things out to me in the store that he thought I might like, and then I kept walking back to the masks to figure out which one I was going to get. The rest of the group was perusing the store and the gentleman’s help would have been much more beneficial to them because they didn’t know what they were going to get. I knew what I was getting, just not specifically.

Eventually I picked one, but then I had to go pay for it. The currency exchange thing I did gave me 50 Reals in one bill, and apparently, the store can’t take bills of that size (1 dollar is roughly 2 reals, so I had ~$25). Now I needed to dip into my reserve dollars located sporadically on my person. After I gathered my money and flashed too many bills, but it was in the store, so it went generally unnoticed, I tried to figure out how many dollars it was because I had forgotten the price in Reals. Otherwise I would have divided it up in my head and been done with it.

It took me seven whole minutes to figure out how to pay for the darn thing. I don’t know where the time went, but thankfully I was able to leave the store having amply paid for my purchase.

Now we were walking back the way that we came, and ended up back at the elevator to go back down to the lower city, still confused that we had yet to find the Modelo Mercado. The place is supposed to be gigantic. We couldn’t imagine how we missed it.

The elevator ride back down was just as frightening as the ride up. This time, once the elevator starts moving, it freefalls for half a second and then goes to a manageable speed. Still, it was enough to make me happy that I wouldn’t be going back in the elevator during my stay at Salvador.
As the doors to the elevator opened, we saw a rather strange sight. The giant building we had walked around earlier, the one we thought was a large restaurant, had, written on the back of the building in gigantic letters, “Modelo Mercado.” We had found the place about two hours prior. We felt like idiots and enjoyed taking photos of ourselves in front of the sign so that we could forever remember our embarrassing foray.

We didn’t actually go into the market, which surprised me a bit, but we did have to get back to the ship, eat, and head out on our afternoon trips. I don’t want to say we were pressed for time arriving back at the ship, but we couldn’t dilly dally, and we all had different trips leaving within a half hour of one another.

The trip I was leaving on was the Panoramic City Tour – doesn’t that just sound thrilling? I figured I had one good day in Salvador and this was the best way to see as much of it as possible. The average age of the tour was about 60. I sure know how to pick ‘em. So we load into two buses and start driving around town, not the skyscraper part.

I did not bring my camera in the morning, because I was following the advice of every single person who was giving advice, but was told it was okay to bring my camera on the tour, so I did. I found that I could get some great photos without actually leaving the bus, which is like having the scenery brought to me. I can’t beat that unless the bus is moving, then my photos start to come out blurry.

The favelas are very interesting. Favelas are the lowest standard of living in Brazil, and they are littered throughout Salvador, in any place where land exists, which in some cases is supposed to be government park land. They start with one small structure in one spot and then others spring up around them. Once there is no more land to build upon, building upwards begins. Favelas right on top of one another, some three or four high. It truly is a remarkable, astonishing, and depressing way to see how so many people live.

One of the stops we took on the tour was at the Bon Fim Chruch. If you remember correctly, that’s the same church they told us earlier in the day would be closed today because of Carnival. When we arrived, it looked awfully open. The church from the outside does not appear to be anything spectacular. It’s kind of a boring white stone, but on the inside, it’s ornately covered in teal and gold. It was very, very cool to have experienced that. It had the architecture of the gothic churches of western Europe, but a very Brazilian flair about it.

After we boarded the buses, we drove around some more before they dropped us off on what looked like a shady side street. I wasn’t really sure what was happening, but we all got off like the good little tourists we were. The area we went into was on the crowded side, which makes keeping a large group of thirty or so kind of difficult, but I wasn’t concerned about losing anyone else, I was making sure that I didn’t get left behind. I didn’t know where the heck I was.

About a few minutes later, I see a long line of Port-a-Pottys, then I see that we’re at the bottom of a hill, then I realize that I was here earlier in the day. They dropped us off right next to the Port-a-Potty Line of Demarcation. And it appeared that we were going to be walking all the way back to the elevator, which is a good walk away.

Please keep in mind that we’re now in the Pelourhino – during Carnival. The evening’s festivities were already starting and it was about 4 in the afternoon. Our guide did a great job of stopping to tell us stuff at the absolute worst points possible. A large drum line, the drum line that plays for the Brazilian Soccer team, comes by, and she decides to tell us about the square that we’re standing in. As if it wasn’t bad enough, we could barely see her, let alone hear her. I didn’t learn one thing on the whole walk.

We were walking back in the opposite direction that I came in earlier on, so it was a slightly different view than on the way in, but it was pretty much my morning’s journey lock, stock, and barrel, but this time I had a camera, which made me a little leery. Supposedly the banditos stay away from the tour groups because the tour operators have really gone after them in the past and can keep them off. Nobody in our group had any trouble, but we were hours before the real party began.

About halfway through the walk, we come out of the little side streets and can get a good view of the sky. Coming in from the ocean is a huge, ominous, dark cloud, and it’s slowly moving towards us. Because I didn’t have a whole lot to gain in the rest of the tour, I was kind of itching to get back to the ship and put a fork in this. Our tour guide acted like it was a beautiful sunny day without a care in the world. I didn’t want to be soaking wet and lost in a thunderstorm. There aren’t many places to go.

We stopped and attempted to listen seven or eight more times before we drew near the elevator. The drizzle started and I knew that the rain would be coming down in buckets any moment now. We get really close to going towards the elevator, and then our tour guide hangs a dead right towards the precipice overlooking the Modelo Mercado. It’s like she wanted to remind me where it was. At this point, a couple other people in the group were noticing that there was a big storm coming, and that we should probably try to get out of it.

The group moved under the awning just before the tour guide took us under and back to the elevator. I didn’t think I’d be back here so soon. I wasn’t too fond of the last ride down, and here it was all over again. The same drop to start it frightened me just as much as it did the first time around, and I was just as happy to be back on the bottom as I was earlier. I’m okay with heights, I’m just not the biggest fan of them.

We boarded back on the bus that had moved down to meet us at the base of the elevator, and headed back to the ship, which is always an adventure because the ship is on a one way street and you have to drive a mile past before you can turn around and come back to it.

Dancing between the raindrops, we ducked back inside the ship just seconds before the great deluge began. This storm dropped buckets down like I’ve only seen a few times before. Anyone outside was completely drenched, and I’m very glad to have missed it, because that would have just made going out in the evening that much more difficult.

I had dinner before I left for my evening dining excursion, entitled ‘Bahia By Night.’ I know what you’re thinking, why am I eating dinner before I go out to have dinner? Well, I’ll tell you why: First, I didn’t know what time we would be eating, and I was hungry now; second, if I didn’t care for any of the food that they served us, I was covered because I already ate. It’s an ultimate contingency program.

Before we departed, the ship doc, who was bringing his family on this trip, gave us a quick once over on everything before we left and then told us that somebody had already been assaulted earlier in the day. I knew the town was dangerous, but boy, they don’t waste any time here.

This was a big trip. They had 90-120 of us on three buses heading over to a little restaurant that’s supposed to be five or six minutes away. However, it’s a Saturday night in Salvador, in the midst of Carnival. There’s traffic. We got there about a half hour later after the bus dropped us off about a tenth of a mile away because we could walk there faster than the bus could drive there.

The restaurant used to be an old mission house (I believe, I could be wrong) and it was gorgeous. It sat at the bottom of a hill, right on the water facing the bay. It had those low ceilings and curved archways littered throughout it that made it a very cool little place. The best part about it was that as you walked in, you could see all the awards this place one for its food. There were a ton of them up on the wall, but I failed to see anything from Zagat’s.

In addition to having dinner, there would be a professional performance of Capoeira. Capoeira is a martial-arts type dance that enslaved Africans created hundreds of years ago. Their owners would not allow them to practice any kind of defensive or offensive attack practices, so they developed Capoeira as a dance on exterior appearances, but in reality was a Brazilian martial art.

These guys that were doing this were unbelievable. I still don’t understand how human beings can swing their limbs around that fast and accurately. It just can’t be normal. If I had practiced that since I was four, I still don’t think I’d be able to do that today. One of them danced with his hands in feet in fire, then holding the fire and spinning around in circles. One slip and he burns down the place and kills us all. But he didn’t. Another one of the groups had two guys about a foot apart from each other and would do really high kicks to each other’s heads as they spun around in violent circles. I still can’t figure out how you get your body to do that. It was phenomenally impressive and was quite a fun evening. It also marked the first time that I took my two Pepto Bismol tablets. Doc said to do it for every meal off the ship. Why argue?

Here’s where the night got a little interesting. We all walked up the steep driveway of the restaurant back up to the main road to board the buses, which were not there. And nobody knew where they were. I was on bus 3, and I was glad about that when bus 1 pulled up – on the other side of a four lane roadway. Bus 1 people had to run across the street and avoid the oncoming traffic a al Frogger. It was kind of funny to watch until we realized that the degree of danger involved was tremendously high. I’m not so sure some of these cars and trucks would have slammed on their breaks had we really been in the way.

Thankfully the next two buses pulled up on our side of the road and we had to walk along the curb to get on. The issue with that was that so many of the roads here are one ways, and there’s no easy way to turn around. Driving now without traffic, it still took us a half hour to get back to the ship, just because that’s how to get back there.

Once I was back on the ship, I had one thing on my mind – my upcoming Amazon trip. It was just hours away, three to be exact. I wasn’t in any real rush because I had packed for everything the night before, which meant that I didn’t exactly remember what I packed. I knew last night that I had packed everything, so I wasn’t concerned about it and tried not to think about it. I packed my malaria pills, bug lotion, and sun spray, and that’s really all I was concerned about.

I grabbed my last shower for the next four days and tried to take a nap before I left. I think I squeezed in a half hour before I had to gather all my stuff and head over to meet in the Union. Our departure time was 1:20 in the morning. A day when most of us we up before 6 to watch us pull into port. They told us that we were allowed one carry-on, not to weigh more than 11 pounds, and no checked luggage. Nobody really knew how much 11 pounds was, I wondered why the number was in pounds and not kilos, but that was the least of my worries at the time.

Here’s a fact I want you to keep in mind for the remainder of this post: 180 people applied to have this trip, and only 60 of us go it. Remember that.

We already knew which boat and bus we would be on (I was on 2), and we were just waiting for a couple more people to show up. All of a sudden a shirtless and exceedingly drunk guy comes in, sits, and yells in a slurry way, “Hey everybody! Wait for me! I’ve got to get my passport!” And he ran off in a stumbly way. It was here I made a prediction with the person sitting next to me. The prediction was that I would be sitting next to him on the flights. It’s not a pessimistic prediction; it’s just most likely to happen in my opinion.

Eventually, he stumbles back in with an white sleeveless undershirt on and his passport hanging out of his back pants pocket, glasses cattycorner on his nose. How they let this wasted guy come on the trip at all is a mystery to me. It’s not like we were taking a bus somewhere a few hours, we had twelve hours of transit in front of us.

They passed out itineraries to us, which were so undetailed that they might as well have given us a piece of paper with a hand drawn monkey on it. What it did say was the flights we would have and when they would be leaving. Our first flight leaves Salvador at 3:20, about two hours away from now. Maybe drunkie would sober up by then. The itinerary showed a flight from Salvador to Sao Paulo, which is nowhere near Manaus, and then a longer flight from Sao Paulo up into Manaus. Half of the flying would be in the dark, and I just hoped to be able to get some sleep from the flights.

We loaded into buses and headed for the airport. I remember about two weeks prior going into JFK and struggled to find similarities, things like security walking around. I didn’t see any. None at the doors. None walking around with dogs or AK-47s, nothing. I’m sure there were security cameras, but I can’t guarantee that there was anybody watching them. They hand out our boarding passes, and we go directly to the terminal we’d be leaving from. Here, we actually did go through security. Our bags were put through the x-ray machine (I was surprised there was one, Managua, Nicaragua International Airport didn’t have one), and we walked through a metal detector.

After security, we wandered around the terminal, waiting for our flight to leave. We were on the hungry side, so most of us stood in line to get something to eat. Still leery of real Brazilian food, I got a carbonated water because it was twice the size of a normal water, and because I couldn’t tell what most of the food was. I’ve been two whole weeks without a donut. I want a donut. I love donuts, and the rest of the world doesn’t apparently. They don’t know what they’re missing – and I do.

Drunkie was stumbling all over the airport and sitting on people. It was disgraceful to watch. If I couldn’t believe they let him on the trip, I can’t believe that they even let him in the airport. The airplane would be the last straw. When they handed out the boarding passes, he jammed his in his pocket and when he got to the front of the line, he handed the guy a giant wad of crunckled papers, and he took the one he wanted. Somehow, they let this guy on the plane.

We started boarding about twenty minutes late, which started to get me concerned about our connection in Sao Paulo, but flights usually get where they’re going earlier than when they say they should anyway. The airline we were flying on, I had never heard of. It was known simply as TAM. I’m sure it’s an acronym for something, I just hope it doesn’t stand for Top Airplane Mishaps.

I get to my window seat on the plane and have to climb over sniffle-dee and sniffle-dum to get to my seat. The entire flight, I sat next to this touchy couple that clearly had some kind of head cold. With the circulated air of airplanes, I was really hoping to avoid getting what they had. But I was not sitting next to Drunkie – he was across the aisle. Close but no cigar. He was moving around wildly initially, but he fell asleep into himself not long into the flight.

I’m not the best flier. I was a good flier a few years ago, but ever since, I’ve been very apprehensive about flying, and I have no reason why. I’m supposed to keep thinking that airplanes are supposed to be in the sky and flying is much safer than driving a car, but I can’t help thinking that I’m in a flying death cylinder with engines.

I thought I knew what turbulence was like. When I flew into the Bahamas from New York, we went over the storm that caused all the tornadoes in Florida and that got pretty bumpy. I thought I knew what it feels like to fall out of the sky. Was I ever wrong. That flight out of Salvador we took was so bumpy throughout that I didn’t even try to go to sleep. I shut my eyes a number of times, but I can’t fall asleep when I’m flying in an aero-earthquake.

Before I left on my trip, one of my frequent flier friends who also is not a fan of flying told me their mantra to say, “everything is going to be ok, everything is going to be alright” over and over again to calm yourself down. I did that in between Hail Marys. It was such an awful flight, especially looking out the window. When the wing has a flux of four or five feet, I tend to get concerned. I wasn’t a fan of the flight, especially when the bumping underneath us started.

The flight to Sao Paulo was supposed to be over two and a half hours. About 75 minutes into the flight the thumping happened, and I thought we were going down. I thought it was over. Then a huge bumping noise and shaking, and the engines got really loud. I flipped out and looked out the window – we were on the ground.

WHAT? We were there already? There was no way we could have made the flight to Sao Paulo in half the time. There’s no way! We must have done an emergency landing, or something. Nobody told us anything about landing early.

And apparently, that was the problem. Nobody ever told us about the stop we were going to have in Vitoria. This made the journey into the Amazon a three flighter instead of a two flighter. Mind you, most of us on the plane had no idea where we were or what was going on, to the point where five people actually left the plane and got all the way to baggage claim before they realized the err of their ways and hustled back onto the plane before it departed without them.

I stood up, ready to get off, but because there was a general feeling of ‘something’s not right here’ I didn’t move. Within a short time, new passengers came on the plane, we were buckled in, and off into the air to where we hoped would be Sao Paulo. I don’t even think Drunkie knew we were ever back on the ground.

Just like the earlier flight, I didn’t fall asleep, even though it was still very dark outside. I never knew there were so many night flights. I thought most airports were closed until five or six, but not in Brazil. It might have been because of Carnival. That seems to be the reason for everything around here these days.

I’m a big fan of landings, largely because that means the ground is coming, and if I’m on the ground, I’m confident in my abilities to escape an airplane should there be trouble. Even so, they say in most airplane accidents, people don’t die from the crash, but not being able to escape from the ensuing fire. Anyway, looking out the window on Sao Paulo, the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, was incredible. The city is gigantic and I really wished I could have seen it on the ground, but that’s going to have to be another trip somewhere down the road. But all in all, Sao Paulo looked like an incredible city.

When we arrive in Sao Paulo, from a flight that was only mildly better, we still hit a lot of turbulence, we try to figure out what time it is. Armed with the information that Manaus is one hour back from Salvador, we figured we would have the same time, or have to turn our clocks back one hour. No, we had to turn our clocks back two hours, and then turn them ahead an hour in Manaus. I’m not sure how this works, I’ve yet to have the opportunity to consult a time zone map.

We get off the plane and have to go through security again to make sure that we haven’t brought anything illegal off the flight we just left. We get through security and after clearing up exactly what time it is, from the delays of our first flight, we have less than a half hour in Sao Paulo before having to board on another plane – but this one is bigger, to the point where it’s named ‘The Magic Red Carpet.’ I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to fly on a plane that has the word ‘magic’ in its name. That just makes me a little uneasy.

It was a big Airbus, seven seats across and two aisles. I’ve only been on a plane like this once before in my life, and that was about ten years ago on a flight to Florida from New York. Bigger planes are supposed to have a bit of a smoother ride, unless you’re in the back, which made me very excited, until I sat in my seat, in the back, next to Drunkie. Yes, that’s right, my prediction was correct, and when I sat down, the alcohol from his breath that washed over me was like astringent to my face. It was still so strong, now at least seven or eight hours after his last drink. I don’t understand that. But like the first two flights, he planted his chin into his chest and went to sleep; only falling on me twice during the three and a half hour flight.

The flight, unlike the first two, gave us headphones for fourteen channels of music and four of Brazilian television and American movies dubbed in Portuguese. I was happy to be able to drown out the sound of the flight. I still didn’t fall asleep, so by the end of the flight, I was ready to take a nice nap. But that wasn’t going to happen, it was only eleven in the morning.

I kept my backpack under the seat in front of me, and as we were leaving, I noticed sunglasses on the floor. I went to pick them up and saw that they were mine and they must have fallen out. I did not remember at the time however, that my sunglasses were inside of my hat, and my hat sat under my seat on the airplane. I only realized this once we got out meeting our tour guides outside the airport.

This was where I had a mild panic attack. I was about to spend a few days in the Amazon, and I didn’t have a hat to protect my head, neck, and face. I had my sun tan lotion, but having the sun beating down on me all day was going to be miserable, and I was already trying to formulate a contingency plan. By the time it was time to depart the airport though, I had failed to come up with one. I’d have to keep thinking.

From this point on, we were nearly always segregated into our two different groups of thirty each. We boarded two different buses and would sail on two different boats. The drive to the dock from the airport was surprisingly non-scenic as we went by Manaus, a city of two million in the heart of a dense, tropical jungle. I didn’t see anything that stuck in my head. It kind of looked like a city that was always on the verge of falling apart and into dilapidation.

The tour guides for our boat were two locals named Edvardo and Francisco and they would be our guides for the next number of days. We pulled up into a really seedy looking town that the boat would be leaving from and we backed the buses up to the dock and left them with all our stuff. Much to my happiness, they were handing out tacky palm woven hats on boarding the boat. I put mine on and breathed a sign of relief that I’d at least have this hat if worst comes to worst. My head was a little too big for it, so I really had to slam it down for it to stay, but it was a hat, and I wasn’t going to complain about that.

The riverboat we were on was two floors, with the eating and cooking facilities on the bottom and the hammocks up on top. There were thirty hammocks for us spaced right on top of one another in a very small enclosed area. I didn’t know which hammock to pick, so I picked an empty one and hoped for the best.

The first place they took us to was the meeting of the waters of the Rio Negro and the Salimoes River to form the Amazon River proper. The Rio Negro is blackish, or very dark if you will, and the Salimoes is muddy brown. When these two rivers meet, because of their different composition and pH values, they don’t mix until miles down the river. There is a clear, identifiable line where they meet and it is very cool. It looks like oil and water converging and running into one another. If you pull up satellite images of the Amazon River near Manaus on Google Earth, you can see this exact spot where we were. It’s not hard to miss.

After we left that point, we headed upriver. One of the thirty passengers on our boat was a 75 year-old lifelong learner named Donna. Remember Donna. Donna is so traveled all over the world that nothing fazes her anymore. The hour or so we were traveling upriver, she kept pitching real estate sales to us as we passed by small homes on the banks of the river. She would say something like, “I’ve got a two-story split level, waterfront, plenty of garden space, veranda, air conditioning, two bedroom, with an outhouse out back. How much will you give me for it?” And this went on for the rest of the day.

We docked at a floating restaurant. Anything that is built on the level of the river has to float because as the rainy season progresses, the river rises. The rainy season of the year is January to June with July to December being the dry season. Before we got on the boat, our guides told us that it hadn’t rained in the last three or four days, which is very unusual. But by the end of the rainy season, the water level can rise fifteen or twenty feet. It’s an incredible rise that you have to be prepared for. Build on the river all you want, just make sure that you can float.

They say we get two new bottles of water each day and can fill them up from the cooler all we want on the ship for all the days we’re there. I grabbed my water and left the boat after I spent the past five or ten minutes applying sufficient amounts of bug lotion (yes, it’s a lotion not a spray) and sunscreen spray (yes, it’s a spray not a lotion). I felt oily and a little sticky, but hopefully I wouldn’t get bit or burnt. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.

We walk through the restaurant and adjacent store on our way to the lake we were going to visit, and it was there. As we were walking through the store, I saw baseball caps. I got excited at the prospect that I’d be able to buy one on the way back to the boat. We walked on an elevated walkway coincidentally fifteen to twenty feet above the ground.

About three or four minutes into the walk we get to a large pool of stagnant water, and I start to see the mosquitoes. I make sure that none land on me, while still trying to enjoy the scenery. There’s a reason why they call this place crocodile lake, although it could have been a pond, I’m not sure how deep it was. I think there were about five or six crocs not moving on the lake. A cloud of herons (I think) sat on a tree all the way in the back, and the lake was littered with huge three foot diameter water lilies. A weird brownish red grime covered about half of the lake and made it look kind of moldy. I’m not sure what that was.

Francisco then decided to provoke the crocodiles, which is always a good idea. He apparently found it useful to make a guttural ‘oooo’ noise to draw the crocs out. It didn’t work. The doc on the boat (not the ship doc, a local doc) threw some meat down and we got one to move. Before I continue, let me make it clear that the doc on the boat is not a real doc. He can bandage you up and tell what bit you, and that’s about it.

After twenty or so minutes on the precipice overlooking the lake, we backtracked along the path and climbed down to the floor level (level with the annoyed crocs now, mind you) to go look at a really big tree. These people have not been to California. The size of the tree was not what was impressive. It was a beautifully ridged tree with its root system extending outward from the tree making them look like supports. I’m not doing a good job explaining what it looks like so go search on-line for a banyan tree and that’s what it looks like (I think).

There were more mosquitoes here, and on the way back to the dock I asked someone about the mosquitoes, to which he responded that he didn’t see any. Apparently, he does not know what a mosquito looks like.

When I went to Yellowstone, if one person parks onto the side of the road, everyone else follows suit because they think they see something. Nobody ever does see anything, it’s just what everybody does. On the walk back on the elevated walkway, somebody stopped because they thought they saw a monkey. There was no monkey. I kept walking.

When we got back to the decently sized, open-air shop, I found a baseball cap to fit my head, because it had the adjustable Velcro in the back. And as I was looking around, I found a group of masks that looked very different from the one I picked up in downtown Salvador, so I picked one up. It’s really cool and will fit in very well with the collection. And in paying for it, I finally got someone to take my 50 Reals. I was very glad to get rid of that and end up with two smaller bills. One for each shoe.

After a small snack on the boat, the thirty of us boarded into three smaller outboard canoes and set off into the Rio Negro. This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. What is the normal method of transportation for everybody on the river, is so alien and phenomenally cool to us. I couldn’t get over the rush of wind passing over me and the proximity to the surface of the water we were. It is such a placid water surface that with the blackness of the water, it’s like glass. Cruising up the middle of the river was incredible and was only unseated about five minutes later when we turned down a smaller twenty foot wide tributary, and it turned into the Jungle Cruise from DisneyWorld, except we were actually on a real jungle cruise.

I thought the trip through the Bioluminescent Bay in a two person kayak was incredible, but this one took the cake single-handedly. That was a really fun half-hour that’s really difficult to put into words how cool it was. So you’ll just have to take my word on it that it was an experience of a lifetime within a larger experience of a lifetime.

At the end of the jungle cruise, we did a u-turn and went back the way we came. Once back on the Rio Negro, the three boats split up to find fishing holes for our piranha adventure. My boat stopped on the edge of a smaller, tree covered lagoon, and I figured this would be a spot better than most. Let’s see how that went.

We fished for almost two hours. One boat caught fifteen fish. Another boat caught ten fish, and a third boat caught three fish. Which boat was I on? Of course, the one that caught three fish. An err of our ways was that our boat captain decided not to move once it was blatantly clear that we were not going to catch anything. The other two boats moved at least once or twice over the course of the fishing trip. We stayed put.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Was I one of the people that caught the three fish in my boat? I’ll give you the short answer first: no. Here the long answer: We were fishing with what was essentially a thin piece of bamboo with fishing line tied to the end. Larry Bud Fisherman we are not. On the end of the fishing line is a hook with a piece of meat attached to the end. When meat is in the water for a while, all the good stuff drains out of it. I was not informed that when my meat turns white, it should be replaced. In essence, I was fishing without bait. They kept telling us to shake the stick in the water to make it look like our bait was a struggling fish. Piranhas are smarter than that. That didn’t work, and I’m pretty sure it’s never worked – ever.

The seats we were on would not be classified as uncomfortable, but after almost two hours of not catching anything, I was sitting on a pile of rocks. It’s always really disheartening to hear a cheer rise on one boat, then hear it a few minutes later on another boat, and our boat has to remain silent because absolutely nothing is happening. And I came in with such confidence too, even though I hadn’t been fishing in ten years or so. I felt like I still had the hang of things. I think I did, the fishing hole didn’t. It’s not that I’m not blaming myself, I just think there were other factors involved more dubious than my own to blame.

I was actually kind of relieved when they told us to pass things down. It had gotten to a point where everyone on the boat realized that we were not going to catch anything else, and that was about 45 minutes prior. There’s only so much levity that can be exhibited when you get plunged in a really boring situation. I made the most of it – or tried to at least. The scenery is second to none, and the sunset was spendictacular. There’s nothing like a sunset over the Amazon. You’re not going to find water that’s much more placid on a body of flowing water.

It wasn’t back to the bigger boat yet, we were going crocodile hunting at sunset. I made the astute observation that this goes against absolutely every piece of advice that I was ever given about field trips on Semester at Sea. The advice was never go out at sunrise or sunset because that’s when mosquitoes feed and are at their worst. It was sunset, and we were going into deep jungle. I’m dressed in long sleeves and long pants, just because that’s advice I could follow, and some other people weren’t, and I looked at them like they were crazy.

At this point in the evening, it’s cooling off, but not nearly fast enough. Temperatures hit over 100 in the Amazon, and when the sun sets, it takes time to lose that heat because of the abundance of water in the area, which holds heat better and longer. Now, every time I sweated and itched, I thought it was a mosquito and I was being eaten alive. I get eaten alive at home by mosquitoes, so down here is like a red flag danger zone for me. With the light going away, I couldn’t see if I was getting bitten bad, so that would have to wait until we got back to the riverboat.

But on to croc hunting we went. It took me some time to figure out that we were not really hunting for full grown crocs (more fully referred to as Cayman Crocodiles), but more like baby crocs. Still a croc nonetheless. I’m not sure what has worked in the past for catching these crocs because our boats, now joined together as three again, would periodically drive into the tall grasses of the side of the river, and then keep going underneath the tree cover, and disappear, only to try to back out a few minutes later, with the propeller getting caught up in the grasses. I cringed every time the pilot pulled the propeller out of the water and pulled off the grass with his bare hands. That’s such a bad idea. There are no doctors out here to reattach fingers or a whole hand for that matter. Such a bad idea.

It was getting really dark and Edvardo was on our boat shining the flashlight to the side, looking for the sharp reflection of two dots, being the croc’s eyes. About a half hour into this process, we’ve had about fifteen or twenty false alarms, where we drove into the grasses because Edvardo thought he found a croc, and then “lost it” and we had to back out in the grasses and go a-hunting again.

On the way out, we go in and Edvardo swoops his hands down and picks up a baby croc. Baby crocs are just as cool as the big ones, mostly because you get to hold them and take pictures with them, which I did. Here you go:

After we hand sanitzed ourselves like the good little Americans we are, we named the croc Spike, and headed back for the riverboat and dinner. On the way back, I noticed flashes in the distance over the tree line in a huge group of clouds. The group called it heat lightning. I bit my tongue. Heat lightning technically does not exist. Here’s a quick Earth Science lesson: what you see as heat lightning is a faraway thunderstorm. You don’t hear anything for one of two reasons, either the storm is too far away, or the sound, through changes in air temperature and density, is refracted above your head, and you do not hear it. We did not see heat lightning, we saw a distant thunderstorm. Thank you.

When we got back to the boat, it was a little before 8, and we had dinner, which we were all starving for. And by 9, most of us were in hammocks trying to fall asleep. Don’t forget, today started yesterday – we were beat. Because I know the real and serious threat that mosquitoes pose, especially at night when malaria is out and about, I slept with my long sleeves and long pants on. It was hot, but I knew that all I had to do was wait for my body temperature to lower enough to the point where I’d be able to fall asleep. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would, and I was out like a light. I only woke up twice in the middle of the night, and one was to put a blanket on. It got chilly. And yes, I get that from my mother. The other one was bad. I pulled a muscle in my leg in my sleep, and it was phenomenally painful for a full thirty seconds. It’s one of those pulls where you want to scream at the top of your lungs, but press your face into your pillow instead. In my case, I had to settle for the side of my hammock, which was not nearly as effective.

The engines started back up at 5:30, and that’s when I started back up too, because I was wide eyed, bushy tailed, and not going to fall back to sleep. The only other people up were Donna, and the two professors that were also on our boat. I became thankful that the engines woke me up, because it was just a few minutes before the sunrise. If I thought Amazonian sunsets were impressive, sunrises were another story entirely. Just incredible. It’s the same sun I’ve seen all my life, and it’s the same sun I’ve seen in incredibly sunrises already on this trip, but it keeps getting better and better every time. It’s just another day in paradise.

Because we don’t actually have showering facilities, nobody bathes. I did my best to wash my face and limbs with a Stridex-To-Go. It really didn’t do a whole lot. And because we slept on fuzzy hammocks, I woke up on the fuzzy side, except I didn’t know it until I applied my new coats of sunscreen and bug lotion, and my hands got all fuzzy residue on them. Then I found a mirror, and saw that the same thing was all over my face. Not that I cared, I just didn’t want that to detract from the photos of myself I’d be taking.

We spent another couple hours or so moving upriver. We passed by some much larger riverboats that exemplified the way to travel the Amazon in style. I saw a four story luxury riverboat across the way. I’m sure there’s staterooms with air conditioning and mosquito nets in there. We sure didn’t even have mosquito nets on our boat, even though we were promised them. I’m not really sure what happened to that seemingly essential safety feature.

The riverboat stopped, literally, when it couldn’t go upriver any further. We departed the riverboat in two smaller outboard motorboats now, with fifteen people to a boat, and onward into the jungle we went. We were off to our morning jungle hike, and before we left, Edvardo told us that it would be a very good idea to wear long sleeves and long pants that can tuck into our shoes and socks. You know it’s a good idea when the guides do it. They don’t wear bug spray or sunscreen, but they tucked their pants into their socks and shoes. That’s either a good sign or a bad one. I wasn’t sure which one at the time.

I guess the pilot of my boat didn’t know exactly which tributary we were supposed to head into, because at one point we were in a dead end in the middle of an area filled with low branches. We all got konked on the head at least once or twice pulling in and backing out, where we had the lovely, toxic exhaust blow into our faces. Blowing the exhaust onto passengers seems to be a habit of the countries I’ve visited so far.

Eventually we get to our disembarkation point, which is a steep hill on the side of the riverbank. There was no parked path or indication this was where we should be walking. We all climbed out of the boats, Donna and all, and formed a single file line behind the guy in front with the machete. That’s right, this is no nature hike, we’re carving our own path and hoping we end up where we want to, which is supposed to be a waterfall some distance away.

Again, people who don’t know what mosquitoes look like were convinced that there were none. All I saw was mosquitoes. We’re in dense jungle next to large bodies of water, as well as smaller stagnant bodies of water, which are much worse because of the bug’s breeding prowess.

The first place we stopped at was a tree they queried us about how to climb. We were there for a half hour with people trying to climb this tree. About halfway through they gave us something to put around our feet that is supposed to help. I didn’t really notice a difference. Nobody could get more than four or five feet off the ground. It was actually disappointing.

Once we finally moved on, with the encouragement of more crocodile calls from Francisco, the next place we were going to stop was about five minutes later in front of a very big tree. I was about sixth or seventh on the line moving through. One of the people in front of me stepped on an anthill. That’s when the chaos ensued.

The ants were these gigantic, black army ants, and they were fast and angry. In seconds, our feet were covered in these huge ants, and they were moving upwards quickly. I fought them off my legs as best as I could, making sure none went above my knees and hoped that my pants were tucked in enough. I really didn’t want ants in my pants.

Just after the ants started to attack, we immediately tried to move forward to get away from the anthill and start getting the ants off us. We could only move forward as fast as the guy with the machete could cut through the jungle, which was not a rapid speed. The message didn’t get to the rear of the group fast enough because some people got to the anthill, and had absolutely nowhere to go. This is when cries of, “Keep moving!” broke out throughout the jungle.

The yells of “keep moving!” were initially few and far between – until the ants started biting. Then the “keep moving!” increased and introduced the painful cry of “OW!” It was almost a continual sound at one point because so many people were being bitten. Later I figured that half of the people bit had the ants crawl in thorough their tucked-in sock protection, and the other half were not quick enough in shaking the ants off before they crawled under their loose hanging shirts. People were getting bit anywhere and everywhere, and all anyone could yell was either “OW!” or “Keep moving!”

I didn’t get bit. So this whole episode was absolutely hysterical. I was laughing so hard that I was crying. I turned around at one point and everybody was bending over in anguish chasing the ants off their shoes and pantlegs. They were everywhere. And as I was laughing I would only laugh harder when one more person in the back would yell, “Keep moving!” It really was tremendous and was one of the highlights of my whole trip into the Amazon.

For the rest of the hike however, we were so paranoid about finding more ants on the ground or still more ants on us. Once we left the area of incidence, another “OW!” resounded from the group every three or four minutes from the people that neglected to heed the advice of our guides, who also thought us gringos were a laughing stock. After all, to them, the ants are the least of our worries. I’m sure they were taking us on a hike in a part of the jungle not known for its rampant wild animals, just based on safety issues alone.

Because our eyes were peeled to the ground, we weren’t really watching where we were going in front of us, and I was smacked in the head multiple times from low branches. Then I developed the strategy where I walked looking down with an outstretched arm in front of me to push away and warn me of the oncoming perils.

After well over an hour, they stopped us and asked us if we wanted to keep going, or turn back. God bless her, Donna wanted to turn back. They told us once we got to the waterfall we would have to walk back the same way we came, which none of us were looking forward to. In addition, they said it was still another twenty or thirty minutes to the waterfall. After not really listening to the consensus, we pushed onward. This was where we learned our lesson in Amazonian humor, which we all have no previous experience in.

We arrived at the waterfall about five minutes later, and both boats were there waiting for us, so we wouldn’t have to walk back. Donna was thrilled, to say the least.

Here’s where I’m going to give some background information before I continue. I’m a big Survivor fan, and they filmed one series within a few miles of where we were. They don’t make accommodations for the survivors very often, whether physical or medicinal. One thing they did during the Amazon season was distribute Speedos to the men to wear whenever they were in the water. This was because, in the water, there is a parasite that will enter the urethra, and if it infects you, will lead to a necessary amputation and loss of, well, you know what. If they prepared the survivors in this way, I would expect advice of nothing less from our guides.

We arrived at the waterfall, and everyone jumped in the water, and I stood back with my mouth slightly agape, trying to figure out what was happening. Obviously, the odds are in our favor that nothing will happen, but I really didn’t want to risk anything for myself. While everyone was in the water, I sat on the edge and dipped in up to my knees, and was completely satisfied with my “swimming in the Amazon” experience. One person told me that I would look back and regret not swimming in the Amazon. I don’t like the water in general, and I’m very happy I didn’t swim in the orange water (it was filled with oxidized iron, too) of the Amazon.

After over a half hour in the lovely colored water, we all got back on the two smaller boats and headed back to the riverboat for lunch. Believe it or not, after lunch was where the afternoon got really interesting. We were visiting a native village called Terra Preta. This village was prepared for when the river rises, because they were at the top of a 140 step climb. When we left the riverboat and landed on the beach beneath the village, it was early afternoon, around 1 or 2 o’clock. And don’t forget that we were four degrees south of the equator. This is not exactly the best time to be heading out, if you know what I mean. (Not that there really is a good time to head out – once it gets cooler, the bugs come out.)

While we were standing, waiting on the sand of the beach, the temperature had to be well over 100. It was boiling there, so a bunch of us smart ones waited underneath the shade of a tree, which brought the temperature down a good three or four degrees.

There’s a reason why we knew that there were 140 steps to the top. Donna counted. Out loud, for all of us to hear. This was a good thing because if she ever stopped counting, we all turned around to make sure she was alright. She stopped a couple times to catch her breath, but she made it to the top just fine. I will really be blessed if I can do that when I’m her age. Talk about impressive.

We get up to the top of the village, about 70 feet above the level of the water, and they give us a tour of the village. Using the strategy I discovered on the El Yunque Rainforest Hike (Do you remember?) I stayed in the back of the pack so that I would be able to take photos at my own pace, thus not really being able to hear what they were saying up in front, although odds are that it was less than fascinating. Although I could be wrong, I didn’t actually hear anything.

We walked through a part of the village and then moved into the jungle again. We asked before we left if it would be okay to wear short sleeves, shorts, and sandals, and they said it would be okay. I laughed when they said sandals would be okay, but I did wear a t-shirt and shorts with applicable coats coating my increasingly sticky and gross skin. I was alright, but some people were having a really tough going there for a while. This was its own mini jungle hike, coming up without warning.

Our guides wanted to take us to the hut where they make the manioc for the village. Manioc is the staple in the Amazon. It comes from a potato-like root, and once they’re done making it, you can do almost anything with it – it ends up being a rough, clumpy, yellow flour, for those of you bakers out there. It’s an overly long process to make it with the drying, firing, pressing, and so on and so forth (there’s six steps, and I only remember three).

After the short trek, we all took a big gulp from the one water bottle that we had, and figured we’d head back up to the village and walk around there some more. And we did. No surprises there. I still can’t figure out how the walk down was ten minutes longer than the walk up, but what am I going to do?

A fun story they told us once we got back up to the village was in response to the question of where the cemetery is. Francisco then elaborated that after someone dies, they are cremated and then mixed with bananas and served to the townspeople. That’s not one of the jokes. That’s what he actually told us. And I don’t think that’s some of that classic Amazonian humor. I hope you didn’t just have something to eat. I apologize if you did.

Now we’ve ended back where we started, at the top of the 140 steps. Our water bottles are empty, and we’re ready to go back down to the riverboat. We enjoyed our stay at the village, but now it’s time we be leaving. Unfortunately for us, this assumption, unlike the last one, was dead wrong.

They took us to their soccer field. (FYI – Brazil has won four World Cups, more than any other country.) They sat us down and told all the boys to come onto the field. There were 11 of us. Then they brought out our opponents. If the other team had been the kids from the village, I wouldn’t have cringed. No, instead it was the people from the village in their mid 20s, at the peak of their socceral prowess. I looked down at my water bottle and swore.

We got into our “positions” if you could even call them that, and off we went – to an annihilation. Come on, we were playing local Brazilians in the sport they played while coming out of the womb. That’s impressive. I haven’t played soccer since, well it has to be about 15 years ago. Over the whole season, I kicked the ball once, it was in the wrong direction, and was subsequently injured because of the kick. I don’t have fond memories of soccer. I kept thinking to myself in my head, “Just think of it as a great story – the time I played soccer with Amazonian Brazilians.” That only helps you get through it so much.

I think it was within thirty seconds of play time that we knew we were in deep trouble. At that time, with the intense heat and angle of the sun, we were sweating profusely and breathing heavily. I told one of the other guys that I felt like I was playing in Denver at a high altitude. The guy I told that to was from Denver and he said, “This is worse than Denver.”

Don’t get me wrong, don’t start calling us a bunch of sissy boys complaining about playing in the heat. We went out there the full time and played it out. We lost, but we played it out even when it was a foregone conclusion. They even let us score one goal. We let them score five or six. I’m not sure – I lost count.

After our match ended, they threw the girls out to play their set with the local girls. I looked for water. They told us someone went down to get us water. Five minutes later, upon no return, I knew nobody was going to get water. I grabbed as many water bottles as I could, and went down the 140 steps back to the riverboat. That wasn’t fun. To say I was soaking wet by the time I got there was an understatement. I felt like I just went swimming. But I made it to the riverboat and filled me with as much water as I could take at the time. Then I spent the next few minutes filling up the remaining water bottles that I brought down with me. Then I remembered something.

I had to go back up. It actually wasn’t that bad. I took my time and stopped for water once, and made it back up to the pitch just fine, no worse for the wear. The people who didn’t get me their water looked at me with wide eyes when I came up with water, and I distributed it as much as we could split it up. The water went pretty quickly.

After the girl’s match, they made us pick the best player on the other team and they got a brand new soccer ball. It was the Semester at Sea gift back to the village. That was special. But then it was time to leave. And we went back down the 140 steps, one last time.

As we boarded the boat, they told us that we would have a few hours of boating up the river before we reached where we were going, so that we would have most of the afternoon to relax. That would mean that we would get to our location just when— Oh, I don’t want to ruin the surprise yet.

I felt compelled to watch the scenery slip by as we slowly treaded up the river, just because it’s not something I’m going to see after tomorrow. What’s considered the norm when we’re on the riverboat is in no way close to the reality that we have waiting for us back on the ship in Salvador.

We were moving at a pace where I was reading and was able to look up from my book every so often to watch the Amazon drift by. Between the placidity of the water and the great expanse of it, it really is breathtaking. We moved by one spot where you can’t see to the other side of the river. It’s unbelievable. It’s amazing. It’s spendictacular.

Once we arrived at the beach we were disembarking from, we boarded our two smaller outboard motorboats, and headed off into the river, you guessed it, at sunset. But we did it for the purpose of watching the sunset. Another really pretty sunset that was even better because of the glassy surface of the water. And just as expected, I’m glad I lathered on another layer of bug lotion (no sunscreen, the sun was setting – if I don’t have to put on anymore layers, I’m not going to). The mosquitoes were out in full force, almost like they followed us from earlier and were back with a vengeance.

After the sun set, we moved into a smaller tributary for reasons I still don’t know. But down the river we went. The mosquitoes got worse, but only for a time. Then the night avengers came out – bats. I loved watching the bats because I knew that they were eating the mosquitoes. I think I explained that concept to people on the boat seven or eight times, and some still didn’t get it. That’s why the bats were swooping around or heads; the mosquitoes wanted to eat us. It’s the circle of life in action. And having bats fly within a foot of your head will always be really cool – unless you’re not a bat person, in which case, it will always be terrifyingly frightening.

We sat out in our boats doing nothing but watching the surroundings around us, which started to irk some of the people on some of the boats. They wanted to go back. (Remember that figure I told you to remember earlier? The 60 of 180 figure. Yeah, let’s keep that in mind for tonight and tomorrow.) As if watching the night come alive around us, the stars were coming out above us. I thought Orion was a Northern Hemisphere constellation, but it was directly overhead of us, and was brighter than I have ever seen it. All the stars were brighter than I have ever seen them. You’re not going to get much more remote than where we are right now.

After some additional bellyaching from some boats, surprisingly not because of the bugs, which were heavy and some people were still in denial, but because the wooden seat we were sitting on was getting uncomfortable. Talk about ‘show me the baby.’ (60/180)

They then moved us out into more open water, back into the Rio Negro. This gave us a much better vantage point to view the stars, and a much easier way of hearing about the people complaining about being on the boats. (60/180) I zoned them out for a while and just looked up. The Southern Cross is much bigger than I thought it would be. It’s not a little collection of four stars, they form a pretty big box, which makes me wonder why it’s the Southern Cross and not the Southern Box.

After a while, we all started to get antsy. An hour and forty-five minutes of sitting around does get to be on the boring side every once in a while. But you fight that off. Well most of us did, anyway. (60/180) We were sitting around so much so that we figured out what was going on. They were setting up a surprise party on the beach we docked at. It really came to the point where we were just waiting for them to be finished setting up.

Then the call came over the radio that they were ready. So the motors started back up and we headed back. Just as we came around the bend in the river and we could make out the lights they set up, there’s a huge explosion that scared the crap out of me. They set up fireworks for us and the first one they sent up was the one they play during the “bombs bursting in air” portion of the Star Spangled Banner on the Fourth of July. A more traditional number of fireworks followed, and I feared the rainforest burning down. I don’t want to be a part of that.

We docked at the beach with both riverboats, the group that we had been segregated from since our departure at the shady looking docks. It was here I learned the true dynamics of the riverboats. The other riverboat was the fun, sarcastic kind of group, and I was on the Frat Boy boat. Needless to say, I found that I would have had a better time on the other boat, but there really was no way to know that and not much I could do about it now. So I made the best of it and decided to enjoy myself at the beach block party. (I’m not sure what marks the difference between a party and a block party, but I’m pretty sure that we had a block party.)

They had a long line of dinner stuff for us, cooked on a nice big barbecue grill. You would think that between the lights they had strung across the entire beach, as well as the light from the grill, that you wouldn’t need flashlights to cook by. You would think that. But they do things differently in the Amazon. Do they ever.

The block party had all the staples of a beach party. The limbo contest was interesting. I looked at the level where they started and decided I would be more use giving the Howard Cosell play-by-play. It wasn’t until the musical chairs match that things got really interesting.

The ladies went up first, and that was a bloodbath. Donna made it three or four rounds before one of the girls pushed her out of a chair. This was not a good sign for when the boys’ turn would roll around next.

I don’t want to say that I reluctantly walked up to the ring of chairs that was set up, but I was sure that if not me, one of the guys was going to end up with bodily harm, starting with a black eye on the low end of the totem pole. I was hanging out with Leann, Jordie, Stacy, Danielle, and Jika from the other riverboat and before involving myself I told them that I haven’t played musical chairs in a really long time, so anything beyond the first round will be a victory for me.

The music starts, we get up and move in a circle, it stops, and my butt’s too small to fit into a chair and I’m gone almost before we started. The person who is out first is kind of always forgotten, so I made sure that I made a scene when I left. It worked in my favor actually, because then I had an audience as I gave the color commentary for the remainder of the bloodthirsty game. Surprisingly, no bones were broken, and nobody was killed in a fight for a chair.

And that was about it for the beach block party. Our boats were anchored about forty feet away from the beach, so we had to be shuttled over in the smaller boats, which was apparently much more difficult than it should have been. They dropped us off at the other boat and, because the two boats were next to each other, we had to jump the gap to our boat. I helped Donna over, which was funny because she loves to give color commentary about everything around her.

About now, it’s around 11. We’re all hot and tired. I decide to sleep in short sleeves and shorts, but with the blanket covering me, which was actually a few degrees cooler, so I was ready to fall asleep as soon as it quiet. Unfortunately, that was not a priority for a group that happened to be around me. But they were loud enough for everyone else to hear too.

Explain this to me. We’re 30 people in very tight, uncomfortable quarters. The vast majority of us want to go to bed because tomorrow is the start of what will be a very long day. But the guys and girls around my end of the riverboat had no maturity and respect for that. Donna told them to “be quiet” not once but twice over the two hour ordeal we laid there and waited for them to stop. If you want to talk, go to the other end of the boat and have at it. Don’t lay in your hammock, where everyone else is trying to sleep, and make fart jokes. If this went on for twenty or thirty minutes, I wouldn’t have had nearly as much of a problem. But this went on past 1 in the morning. It was bad, and I was annoyed to pieces. I guess I just don’t understand how some people can be so inconsiderate, that’s all. The level of immaturity and disrespect at their age is appalling. We’re on the trip of a lifetime. Let’s try to let as many people as possible enjoy it. Thank you.

And so we awoke from our “sleep” of the night before to face our final full day of fun and sun in the Amazon. I wasn’t as bright eyed and bushy tailed as I was the day before, but that goes without saying. And I had even more hammock fuzz on me, but by now I’d learned the technique of how to get it off. So that was alright. It was just a little more difficult when I didn’t sleep well the night before. But by now, my skin was getting a little on the annoying side for me now. I was ready to get a shower, but knew that that would unfortunately have to wait for over a day.

The morning of our last day in the Amazon we were going to attempt to go piranha fishing one more time. I saw an issue with this from the get-go. When we went fishing last time, it was at dusk, that’s why we did so well – the piranhas were feeding. By the time we left the riverboat, the sun had already been up for a few hours. The piranhas were not supposed to be feeding.

And they weren’t. I did however compensate my trip with picking a new third boat that materialized alongside the boat overnight. This boat could cruise at a speed at least twice that of the other boats. That’s how to go down the Amazon – in a really, really fast motorboat. Forget scenery, let’s pick the mosquitoes out of our teeth.

So we get to our fishing hole and throw the poles over the side of the boat and, not to say that I’m pessimistic, I really wanted and tried to catch one, our boat had three nibbles and no fish. The other boats each caught at least two or three piranhas. It must be me. Well, it has to be me – Donna was on my boat and she told me so.

This was also the piranha fishing expedition where I did the short film I posted on the blog earlier, in case you were wondering. We were at the fishing hole for at least another hour and a half, and I was having a tough time as it was. We were in the grasses and branches, so as a boat would go by in the river, the wake would push us further and further into the grasses until at some points I couldn’t actually get my pole into the water. To be able to fish, I wound the fishing line around the end to shorten its length so that I could actually fish. Then, one of the guides on the boat took my pole from me and unwound all the winding that I did. I took it back and wound it up a few minutes later. When he reached for it again, I pulled it away.

After fishing it was time for another thrilling, exhilarating, treacherous trek back into the dense jungles of the Amazon. (60/180) One of the girls didn’t want to go, and it wasn’t Donna. God bless her gung-ho spirit. The girl said that she didn’t feel well and wanted to go back to the riverboat. She may not have felt well. I believe there’s room for argument, but this isn’t the time or place to get into that.

On the second jungle hike, they dropped us off at another indiscriminate hill upon which we would disembark and travel inwards. This jungle hike was a little more of everything over the last one. The fauna seemed bigger and more dense. We finally saw a wild snake, that they wouldn’t allow us within 20 feet of. It was a small little one, but those suckers can pack a punch. And the mosquitoes were the worst that they were throughout the entire time I spent in the Amazon. They were everywhere. I think it was because we were walking near a dry creek bed that was not necessarily dry, just wet enough for the mosquitoes to breed in its standing water. We were walking through clouds of them at some points, and I still had my long sleeves, and pants tucked into my shoes. I wasn’t about to get complacent on the last day. And still there were the nonbelievers. “There were no mosquitoes! Hogwash!” Yeah, right.

The hike was about as long as the last one, but it felt longer. I don’t know why, but I found ourselves moving at a slow pace, so that the mosquitoes could keep up with us, and stopping frequently, so that the mosquitoes could round up some more of their friends. I spent the vast majority of my time swatting at anything that remotely felt like a mosquito landing on me.

I was just as happy to finish this time as I was the last time, just because that meant that we weren’t attacked by ants again, which was on everybody’s mind. And we were thankfully able to avoid them. I was happy I made it through without ever getting bit. Some people would say that that’s missing out on some of the experience. I laugh at them and say they’re crazy.

After we reached the riverboat (I got there a full five minutes before the other boats) we had lunch for about an hour and a half and then left again to visit another village. Perhaps by now you’ve noticed that on this day we’re doing things that we’ve already done before, except in different places. As Yogi Berra would say, it’s déjà vu all over again.

The second village we visited was called Acajatuba. How’s that for a memory, huh? This village seemed a little bigger than the last one, but more deserted. Everyone must leave town to go off to work. I got a little nervous when I saw the village’s soccer field, but they told us we weren’t going to be playing today. I guess in the US, we have town squares as the center of towns. Here in the Amazon, they have soccer fields.

We were walking through town, and I kept saying to myself that This Old House would have quite the remote project down here. Norm would be able to keep himself busy. At the end of the village we got to watch them build a boat. It takes a crew of two or three guys three weeks to do each boat. And they look like pretty good boats, Amazon-wise at least. A good boat in the Amazon is one that only leaks somewhat. There’s no such thing as a watertight boat in the Amazon. If you find one, it will rain on you and fill up your boat.

Something that I can’t wrap my head around in these villages is how their electricity works. There are power lines all over the place and there’s lights on inside the houses, but the electricity has to come from somewhere. I overheard one of the guides say that they have a generator for each village. But I didn’t see it, which means that it doesn’t exist, and there’s some sort of government conspiracy going on (I used to watch X-Files).

Our stay at the village was about an hour before we had to board back on the riverboat. We were about four hours upriver from Manaus and we had to get going back there. So we pushed off and then stopped a half hour later to let everyone go swimming. The water was orange again, though this time it wasn’t supposedly from the iron, so I had no idea what was going on, and was still scared of the parasites I described earlier. I had less than 24 hours to my shower, I was going to be okay and make it. And if I did go in the water, I’d still have to come back and put on the same old clothes. It’s like getting dirty all over again.

We had the afternoon to ourselves once we were off an moving again. I read some more, and watched the scenery around us. There were quite a few thunderstorms in the area. You could see the rain pouring out of the clouds like a wall of water in some spots. And we started moving towards one. Not long after that, the wind picked up very heavily. I can still vividly remember the tablecloths trying to be blown away, and Donna being there to save them. Over and over again she would fight to keep the tablecloths down – until the crew came out and removed them. It was a valiant effort.

The skies were getting incredibly dark and foreboding. We were heading into a storm on a half-rickety riverboat. I wanted to know how long it would take the crew to realize that they had to batten down the hatches. They waited for the rain to start before they decided to pull down the tarps. And then, some of the ties on the end of the tarps were missing, so they were left flapping in the breeze, working to untie the rest of the connected ties.

It was a true Amazonian storm. With all the wind and rain to boot. Granted, it could have been much worse. They moved us to the side of the river to ride out the storm while they served us dinner, and we tried to eat amidst the rain and billowing wind. It was another experience that I feel like I can cross off on the list. I survived a storm in the Amazon. I guess I’ll have to use the word ‘survive’ loosely, but it’s still applicable.

Our destination was the Tiwa Jungle Lodge for a few hours of Amazonian ritualistic presentations, and soda and beer. More on that in a moment. Once we arrived at the dock, the other riverboat docked up against us, and we were all ready and raring to go, but in the storm, the bridge connecting the dock to land had blown out. They spent fifteen minutes trying to fix it, and then came back in and told us to go single file, with about 20 feet of space in between us. The fact that it was still raining didn’t make me feel much better about crossing this bridge. But it held and we all made it over.

To have our drinks, they each gave us three beverage vouchers, stapled together in a little packet. They never gave us instructions with them, so I made up my own. I walked up to the bar, asked for one soda and gave my packet of tickets, assuming that he would rip one off, and then give them back to me. He gave me three sodas. I didn’t want three sodas all at once. I was hoping to stretch them out over the entire evening. Apparently, I failed “Asking for Something at the Bar 101.” What can I say, I’m still only 20 and four months.

The show was a native performance with some of the biggest and most colorful costumes I have ever seen. I don’t know how some of them moved around in those things. Some people were wearing too many clothes, and the rest of them were almost naked. It seemed like there was not a fair distribution of material during backstage pre-show.

But the show was very good. It was really loud, and Donna had to watch with her hands over her ears, but her head was bobbing along to the music regardless. I would have thought that an Amazonian presentation would have included local music traditions and styles. They had what I would call a band. There were guys on electric guitars, and a full drum set with another guy on a keyboard. There were no tribal drums or flutes, or anything I would have thought would be indigenous to the area. Nonetheless, it was a good show and we had a good time.

Towards the end they started dragging people on the floor to dance with the natives. I obliged and went up. There was a group of about twenty of us trying to follow their dance steps. I always felt like I was just one step behind them, and was always playing catch up. That was true for most other people, too. I say most because there were two girls in our group that dance back home, so they picked up the steps rather easily and looked like they knew what they were doing early on.

A little after 11, we had to depart because we were still about an hour away from Manaus, and that’s where our buses would be waiting for us. Because it was the first time since leaving Salvador that anybody could consume alcohol, I grabbed my stuff from the hammock and waited out on the back of the riverboat with a few other people and watched the recklessness ensue back on the hammocks. Let’s just say I was glad to be out of that area, and praying that I wouldn’t have to sit next to a select few on the upcoming flights. They were on the rowdy side. I was on the tired side, thanks to the rowdiness of the night before.

I was talking to Jordie from the other riverboat and she was telling me that everyone gets along and respects each other on that boat. She said people will stay up at night talking, but at least have the decency to go to the part of the boat where nobody is trying to sleep. As I said earlier, I was on the wrong boat.

But the boat separation ended once we arrived at the final dock. Here again, something was wrong with the bridge back to shore, and we waited an eternity on the deck of the ships, waiting to be let off. Once they did, we walked up to the buses, said goodbye to our tour guides and back to Manaus International Airport we were.

I felt like it was back in the Salvador airport all over again. We were going through security with inebriated people again. And they let them through again! I don’t understand airport security anymore these days. One drink is a different story. Some of these guys had three or four.

I did make an unknowing error at the airport however. On the first day we were flying, I wore my long pants. They were dirty enough that I refused to wear them anymore, so I wore the pair of shorts that I brought. This pair of shorts has more zippers, clasps, loops, and pieces of metal on it than any other article of clothing I have ever laid eyes on. I bring it because it’s easy to put stuff in it and not lose it.

The metal detector didn’t like it. I went through once. Beep beep beep beep beep. I went back through and emptied all my pockets and took everything off me. I told them it was my metal shorts. They sent me back through. Beep beep beep beep beep. I had to be wanded. If I remember correctly, this is my first airport wanding. So mark your calendars – Jeff’s first wanding, February 21^st, 12:30 am, Manaus, Brazil.

I didn’t always feel like reading on the flights to Manaus, so I found a Suduko book and purchased it. It’s in Portuguese, but the numbers and principle are still the same. Then people went over to a really scary looking “fast food” place to get something to eat. Thank goodness I was nervous about the flight and not hungry, because I did not want to eat there. It just didn’t look highly sanitary, and once people were drunkenly engorging in their food, I was rather happy to have skipped that meal.

We would be flying back on TAM again – at night again. That wasn’t something that I was really looking forward to. All I wanted was a flight smooth enough that I could fall asleep on. All I need to do is fall asleep, because once I’m out, I’m out. As usual, we started boarding late, and I didn’t get a seat next to one of the drunks this time. That was kind of new and exciting for me. Instead I was sitting next to someone who was feeling nauseous for the past number of hours, and had to use the bathroom on the plane before we started taxiing away from the jetway.

What I really hoped would be a smooth flight just wasn’t. I didn’t fall asleep on the flight, and I tried. The flight was a little under three hours into what we were told was Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. We had no information of a stop along the way, and this time there wasn’t one. I guess I either wasn’t tired enough, or am still a little too jittery on flights to fall asleep on them, because just about everyone was out cold.

When we landed in Brasilia, we had about a three hour layover before the last flight to Salvador departed. When we got the airport, we were so early that they didn’t have our gate information up yet. We stood around like lost tourists and foreigners for about fifteen minutes before they posted our gate. So we walked over and went through security again. But this time, my shorts didn’t set off the detectors, and that made me mildly concerned. How can one set it off, and another one not? I tried not to think about it.

Once the group got to the gate, we decided to try to sleep some more. I decided to try to start sleeping. Picture this: a large group of people in between the rows of seats outside the jetway desk, lying on the ground passed out. It looked like we were all dead on the ground. I made the decision that I didn’t want to lie on the ground, so I slept in a chair. I was in the minority. And I actually think I got a solid half hour in, out of the total three possible hours.

Then they changed our gate at the last minute, so we had to move and get on the new line, which didn’t move for 20 minutes. Brazil really doesn’t like to rush, or be punctual for that matter. It’s clearly not the US anymore (as if I hadn’t noticed earlier).

The flight back to Salvador was only about an hour, and was no better turbulence or sleep-wise for me. I gave up towards the end and just looked out the window from my middle seat. There was a time after we began our descent that I could see to the ground. Then as we kept going further down, we went through clouds. These clouds created the worst turbulence of all five flights. We were shaking like a leaf. The wings were flopping in arcs that did not look natural. It was not a pleasant descent, and I was very glad to be on the ground, and back in Salvador, where the ship was. It was a long journey here and back, but we all made it back in one piece.

We hopped on the buses waiting for us outside the airport and headed back to the ship. That was a sight for sore eyes, and my tired eyes were just that. I went back on the ship and grabbed something to eat because I didn’t have the gnarly midnight snack, and I was kind of hungry. Then, I went back and took probably the best shower I have ever taken. When I got out, I had no hammock fuzz on me, my skin was not shiny and sticky, and I smelled great. I was back.

A lesser person would have had to have called that a day. I didn’t. My stay in Brazil was about to be prolonged by just a few more hours. Sleep was to be held off just that much longer. And you’ll find out what that was in the next post. I thank you for reading this post. It’s 33 Word pages, and took a week to complete. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it, and come back soon to look for my upcoming adventures. Thanks!