Beer and Hammocks.

We had been advised to get to the docks at about 10am Brazilian time in order to be in the front of the queue. So with this in mind we were up at 8 and after a quick shower I went to find some food for both breakfast and lunch while Mae went on the internet to e-mail the tour company in Manaus and tell them which boat we are on. About 30 mins later I came back having picked up some ham at the supermarket and two sweet buns and a loaf of bread from one of the bakeries which had been raised above the flooded streets. I found that Mae was having significantly less success as not only was the internet really slow it also seemed unable to load hotmail. She decided to give up and after asking if there was another internet cafe in town (apparently not!) we both went back out to find some rum for the journey. We picked up a small bottle in one of the other supermarkets around town and also a couple of bottles of drink as it was getting hot by now. With all our stuff ready we gave the internet one last try, managing to message Matthew with instructions as facebook seemed to be the only website which worked and then collected our bags from the hostel and caught a Taxi to the docks. Today we managed to get dropped off where we wanted to, after having to direct the taxi to the correct docks of course. We arrived to find that there was already a small group of people waiting and we dutifully joined the end of the line. It was about 10:30 by now and we ended up waiting until nearly half 12 before boarding actually started, while enduring the usual hoard of people trying to sell us a load of useless tat as usual. Of course there is little point showing up early in South America because as soon as the queue starts to move it turns out that every person there has some excuse for why they should be allowed to skip the line, more annoyingly they often actually get away with it and the person supposedly in charge just lets them through, as a result if your not latino it doesn't really matter when you show up because you end up being last on anyway. Anyway after a 'thorough police search' (well Mae's police officer got distracted by the coffee in her bag and mine couldn't be bothered to search my day bag) we were safely aboard and in our fortunately pre-placed hammocks waiting to leave. Surprisingly we managed to leave port a mere 20mins late and were soon travelling down river at a fair pace. We decided at this point that we should go up to the top deck where we sat down with a beer and watched the stunning scenery slip away. After about an hour we reached our first stop, the lost village of Benjamin Constant, which is at this point mostly submerged. This state of affairs seems to have no effect on the local population who carry on with their lives regardless sitting in the flooded restaurants and shopping in the flooded stores (sometimes arriving by boat). We we here for about an hour (the docks are in fact just another boat not currently in use) while we took on some more passengers and cargo leaving around 1 pm as the locals were already removing the temporary path they had made to the boat, clearly no other ships will be arriving for a couple of days. The rest of our afternoon was spent relaxing, marvelling at the scenery and mostly reminding ourselves that we were in fact sailing down the Amazon River. At one point we did spot some river dolphins playing at the edge of the river, amazing considering we'd only been on the move about 3 hours. Dinner was server at 5 o'clock and consisted of a pasta and beef stew with strange crumbled biscuit and hot sauce (for me only) which we both found delicious!! After dinner we went back up to the top deck where Mae read her book until just before sunset when we decided to get another beer so we could watch. Somehow we had managed to pick a perfect day (or night) to start our journey as after the wonderful sunset we were treated to a stunning full moon, which was golden in colour as it rose and shone brightly out across the river. We spent a good couple of hours looking at this scene with a couple of glasses of rum and a packet of strange Brazilian crisps which we both liked but neither of us can work out why!! We eventually went down to our hammocks at about 10 and despite the lights staying on all night, were soon fast asleep!