Amazon Crossing, South America By Bus
Backpacking Eight Months On the Road
By David Rice
Backpacking Eight Months On the Road
By David Rice
| Amazon Boat Crossing Page Fourteen |
Amazon Crossing
The boat did return to my relief and just before sundown we were
underway aboard the double-decked wooden passenger ferry that
would take 38 hours to cross the Amazon Estuary.
They would serve us dinner and breakfast as part of the ticket price
but our sleeping arrangement would be to sling our hammocks on
deck were ever we could. This was no luxury cruise.
In the alizarin blaze of an Amazon sunset we lugged through the
maze of river channels, passing other boats coming and going in
every direction. Boats of all description scooted out from adjoining
streams and darted off towards all points with sparkles of water
trailing off their wake in the sunset.
After a dinner of rice and beans everybody hung their hammocks
and before long there were hammocks wall to wall bow to stern port
to lee; the entire deck was a sea of hammocks.
Seeing no room to string a hammock comfortably, I unfolded my
sleeping pad and laid it on the deck.
I slept fitfully that night as we passed camps and settlements on
shore illuminated by their fires. A low chugging sound would
announce another boat passing unseen in the dark Amazon night
where the jungle seemed to gobble all the light.
A voice would reach out from an unseen shore and the smell of
cigarettes or garlic, or fetid diesel would be the only hint that other
life was moving on the river in the black night.
Sunrise sent a rim of gold over the forest of the Amazon Estuary and
then the light revealed a green jungle in every direction and a
hundred islands in our path. We would slow and nose into a bank
and the crew would extend a plank for new passengers to climb
aboard.
Underway in minutes with new anonymous souls aboard, we would
weave in and out of islands, passing villages and lumber mills by the
hundreds. At lest every five miles on the banks there were workers
cutting the jungle into boards six feet long and eight inches wide,
rough cut and stacked in huge piles.
They were denuding the most diverse eco system in the world and I
knew now why the delta water had looked so brown from the air.
They were stripping the forest clean of trees and allowing unchecked
runoff that would eventually move large parts of Brazil down the river
and into the Atlantic Ocean.
Half way across the estuary we stopped in a town for more
passengers. With the hammocks taken up in the morning, we had
room for more, so the captain took every advantage to increase the
tally. After two days and one fitful night for me, we docked with a
loaded boat in Belem, Brazil.
I jumped off the boat, happy to be ashore in Brazil. I ran into the
street looking for local bus that would take me downtown. After
looking at the map I realized that the center was only two miles away
so I walked to my hotel, the Forteleza, in the middle of the old
section of town,
Built by the harvesting of rubber, a sustainable resource, Belem was
now a port important to the stripping of the forest, a resource that
would never renew. Belem might someday be gone when the forest
goes but for now, Belem revealed itself as a people-friendly place
where I could slow down and rest.
underway aboard the double-decked wooden passenger ferry that
would take 38 hours to cross the Amazon Estuary.
They would serve us dinner and breakfast as part of the ticket price
but our sleeping arrangement would be to sling our hammocks on
deck were ever we could. This was no luxury cruise.
In the alizarin blaze of an Amazon sunset we lugged through the
maze of river channels, passing other boats coming and going in
every direction. Boats of all description scooted out from adjoining
streams and darted off towards all points with sparkles of water
trailing off their wake in the sunset.
After a dinner of rice and beans everybody hung their hammocks
and before long there were hammocks wall to wall bow to stern port
to lee; the entire deck was a sea of hammocks.
Seeing no room to string a hammock comfortably, I unfolded my
sleeping pad and laid it on the deck.
I slept fitfully that night as we passed camps and settlements on
shore illuminated by their fires. A low chugging sound would
announce another boat passing unseen in the dark Amazon night
where the jungle seemed to gobble all the light.
A voice would reach out from an unseen shore and the smell of
cigarettes or garlic, or fetid diesel would be the only hint that other
life was moving on the river in the black night.
Sunrise sent a rim of gold over the forest of the Amazon Estuary and
then the light revealed a green jungle in every direction and a
hundred islands in our path. We would slow and nose into a bank
and the crew would extend a plank for new passengers to climb
aboard.
Underway in minutes with new anonymous souls aboard, we would
weave in and out of islands, passing villages and lumber mills by the
hundreds. At lest every five miles on the banks there were workers
cutting the jungle into boards six feet long and eight inches wide,
rough cut and stacked in huge piles.
They were denuding the most diverse eco system in the world and I
knew now why the delta water had looked so brown from the air.
They were stripping the forest clean of trees and allowing unchecked
runoff that would eventually move large parts of Brazil down the river
and into the Atlantic Ocean.
Half way across the estuary we stopped in a town for more
passengers. With the hammocks taken up in the morning, we had
room for more, so the captain took every advantage to increase the
tally. After two days and one fitful night for me, we docked with a
loaded boat in Belem, Brazil.
I jumped off the boat, happy to be ashore in Brazil. I ran into the
street looking for local bus that would take me downtown. After
looking at the map I realized that the center was only two miles away
so I walked to my hotel, the Forteleza, in the middle of the old
section of town,
Built by the harvesting of rubber, a sustainable resource, Belem was
now a port important to the stripping of the forest, a resource that
would never renew. Belem might someday be gone when the forest
goes but for now, Belem revealed itself as a people-friendly place
where I could slow down and rest.
Amazon Crossing, Macapa, South America
Backpacking By Bus, Eight Months On the Road
By David Rice
Backpacking By Bus, Eight Months On the Road
By David Rice
10 dead, 9 missing in Brazil shipwreck
Thu Feb 21, 3:07 PM ET
SAO PAULO, Brazil - A ferryboat carrying more than
100 passengers collided with a barge loaded with fuel
tanks and sank to the bottom of the Amazon River on
Thursday, officials said. At least 10 people died, and
another nine were missing and feared dead.
The Almirante Monteiro capsized at dawn near the
isolated Brazilian town of Itacoatiara in the jungle state
of Amazonas, state fire spokesman Lt. Clovis Araujo
said.
He said 92 people were rescued by several small
boats and the state's floating police station, a 32-foot
vessel that travels up and down the river and was in the
area at the time of the shipwreck.
Rescue teams recovered the bodies of four children,
five women and one man, Araujo said, and a check of
the boat's passenger manifest indicated nine people
were still missing.
"The chances of finding them alive are remote," he
said. "We will keep searching until the last body is
found.
He said he did not know how many people were on the
barge, but "no one was hurt and the barge was not
damaged."
Many of the missing were likely passengers who were
asleep in cabins inside the two-story wooden vessel
and were unable to get out before the boat sank, state
public safety department spokesman Aguinaldo
Rodrigues said.
Thu Feb 21, 3:07 PM ET
SAO PAULO, Brazil - A ferryboat carrying more than
100 passengers collided with a barge loaded with fuel
tanks and sank to the bottom of the Amazon River on
Thursday, officials said. At least 10 people died, and
another nine were missing and feared dead.
The Almirante Monteiro capsized at dawn near the
isolated Brazilian town of Itacoatiara in the jungle state
of Amazonas, state fire spokesman Lt. Clovis Araujo
said.
He said 92 people were rescued by several small
boats and the state's floating police station, a 32-foot
vessel that travels up and down the river and was in the
area at the time of the shipwreck.
Rescue teams recovered the bodies of four children,
five women and one man, Araujo said, and a check of
the boat's passenger manifest indicated nine people
were still missing.
"The chances of finding them alive are remote," he
said. "We will keep searching until the last body is
found.
He said he did not know how many people were on the
barge, but "no one was hurt and the barge was not
damaged."
Many of the missing were likely passengers who were
asleep in cabins inside the two-story wooden vessel
and were unable to get out before the boat sank, state
public safety department spokesman Aguinaldo
Rodrigues said.
"As far as we can tell, just about all
the survivors were passengers
sleeping in hammocks on the
deck," Rodrigues said.
Rodrigues said it was too early to
determine the causes of the
accident, but "visibility was very
poor" at the time of the collision
during the lunar eclipse that began
Wednesday night.
The survivors were taken to the
small town of Novo Remanso and
sheltered in the local church. They
were to be taken by helicopter to
the state capital of Manaus.
the survivors were passengers
sleeping in hammocks on the
deck," Rodrigues said.
Rodrigues said it was too early to
determine the causes of the
accident, but "visibility was very
poor" at the time of the collision
during the lunar eclipse that began
Wednesday night.
The survivors were taken to the
small town of Novo Remanso and
sheltered in the local church. They
were to be taken by helicopter to
the state capital of Manaus.
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