The boat was awake around 5:30am. I ignored everything and managed to sleep until 7am when breakfast was announced. We had grilled banana (pacoba), some local variety of orange, scrambled eggs, and some kind of biscuit. Delicious! Also a thermos of coffee I tapped into a couple times during the morning. We drink every liquid, whether water, juice, or coffee, out of the same little cups that feel like they’re made out of cellophane. (Even though you feel compelled to reuse them, not so fast! They disintegrate upon 2nd contact with your hands or more liquid.)

Today was another big-boat day. We left at 8am, and motored up the Jatapú tributary until about 5:30pm. I spent most waking hours in my hammock working on Black Belt KenKen. It was extremely relaxing! I haven’t felt this much at liberty to waste time in months. We did build a bit of a sun shade, so we weren’t total slackers.

Lunch was primarily delicious leftovers from last night’s dinner. Yum! But beef was the protein, so I supplemented with some salmon jerky I brought. I didn’t know what the food situation would be like for a pescatarian, so I brought two boxes of the stuff, but at this rate I’ll maybe get through half a box. The food on the boat is fantastic! Also, we didn’t realize they’d be providing alcohol. And since Moe doesn’t partake, that means 50% bonus for me and Eric.

At one point in the afternoon, the sky got dark and the wind started gusting. I saw one of our blow up star-gazing mattresses take flight, and I jumped out of my hammock to save it. I caught the mattress, but not the two articles of clothing laid out on it to dry: my red bathing suit and white Charitocracy running shirt. We circled the big boat (with big turning radius) around. By now it was full on rainforest raining, too! After I failed to pull it out with a kayak paddle, Moe jumped in and retrieved my bathing suit. The Charitocracy shirt was nowhere to be seen. I’d like to pretend it’s in a better place now, maybe with my wedding ring.

When we arrived at our parking spot for the night, we got back in the kayaks again for exploring. Since we’ll start downriver in the kayaks tomorrow, we went upriver a ways this evening. Though the river appears calm, it actually had a decent current pulling us back toward camp. Moe and Eric tried to swim after, but the current was too strong. [Melia, not because it was cold. 😘]

For dinner we had rice, spaghetti, soy meat substitute like veggie crumbles, salad, and whatever the local root vegetable is that they make tapioca from. [Future Benj says, “Manioc!”] Also a soda made out of some local fruit. (My Portuguese is not improving.) During dinner they ran the boat’s generator. The moths loved this lightbulb, and I managed a slow enough exposure to get their trails.

This is as far north as we’ll go on this river. The real kayaking part of the trip begins in the morning as we slowly head back south to where we started!

Maurice described the hotel shower as being like a waterfall, so I had to make this last one count. He was not wrong. At 7am we were walking down the long halls of the Tropical Manaus Hotel, where Erikes +1 would collect us.

Exiting the hotel, we saw the river, the river, for the first time. It was a glorious view. But way bigger than the vision in my head. For some reason I imagine a relatively narrow river with the rainforest canopy covering it, and all the wildlife up in your face out of sheer space constraints. What was I thinking? It was a giant sun-drenched river with the wildlife density of an ocean! (I know my children will fact-check this later, so I’m just claiming whatever I want here.)

Much of the day was spent driving to the portion of the river where we’d begin. 330 km in about 5 hours. I don’t know what the mph equivalent is, so I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. But I’m pretty sure this will prove the most dangerous part of our Amazon Tour. Erikes drove like a bat out of hell, probably max speed around 80 mph, but this was on roads of mixed quality with giant pot holes, where the minefield slowed us down to 10 mph. We spent about 20% of the time in the left (oncoming traffic) lane. Speed bump slow downs are optional.

We did slow down for lunch. The national sport is having some sort of televised international tournament.

After arriving at The Boat, it was already time to eat lunch. Some amazing fish, beans and rice, and salad. After lunch, Erikes’ S.O. got back in the car for the long slog back to Manaus. The 4 of us +3 additional crew embarked on our journey.

The boat has 2 levels. Below is the engine room, kitchen, head, and open area we used for dining.

Upstairs is a sun deck, shaded area for our hammocks, and the “bridge” with a cute steering wheel.

Our first 2 days involve chugging up the river to a place we can start the kayaking part of the adventure. Then each day will involve kayaking to where the boat parks each day. I’m guessing 4 hours of kayaking each day?

I took a 1.5 hour nap to test out my hammock. It worked! And I needed it. 3+ nights in a row of less than my usual 8 hours was weighing on me. I’m hopeful for tonight, too.

Today we parked in front of a termite-eaten tree. I don’t know how else to say where we are. There’s a few abandoned “houses” along the shores, but I’m sure they don’t have addresses, since there are no roads here. Maybe I’ll be able to pull up maps using photo GPS coords once I’m back in civilization and can post these blog entries? [Future Benj says, “Yes! I’ve sprinkled in maps!”]

We all went for a swim (warm water, but with refreshing streaks of cold) and then explored our “neighborhood” on kayak. The kayaks are the open top ocean variety, painted camo, and with comfy mesh seat backs.

After dinner, we lay on blow up mattresses on the sun deck to watch the stars. They are overly bright here. Like, unnecessarily show-off bright. “There’s the rest of our galaxy right there. Yup.” I’m thinking this close to the equator we’ll get sunrise around 6am and sunset at 6pm. We went to bed and I started blogging at 7pm. It’s 8:30pm now and feels like midnight! It also sounds like the jungle. We have natural white noise, and it’s louder than my usual! Here’s hoping for 8+ hours…

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about a good adventure! Now that I’ve uploaded my photos from Maurice‘s 40th birthday trip to the Amazon, I’ll post the daily diary entries I wrote while in Brazil the first half of July. But if you want to wait and binge the whole trip at once, come back in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you could read about my 40th birthday coast-to-coast hike across England on the Wainwright Walk, or my hut-to-hut hikes through New Hampshire’s White Mountains portion of the Appalachian Trail.

[Future Benj says, “It’s all up there now! Also, hover over images with your mouse cursor to read insightful captions. Or on Chrome mobile browser, press down on the photos for the caption to pop up.”]

I woke up to my alarm (which is actually just the fading out of my white noise) at 7:29am. I had been up until midnight at Maurice’s house doing final packing after enjoying dinner and ice cream at Kimball’s, and then a round of pre-birthday ice cream cake, too. But now it was game day! A shower and a banana later, and it was time to order our Lyft. Only $60 from Lancaster to Logan!

Our Lyft driver, Paul, was clearly nervous about driving into Boston. He repeatedly reassured us about how he’d get us there one way or another. It was 8:30am on a Saturday… He was reassuring himself, poor guy. By hook or by crook — or simply by following his smartphone’s map — he delivered us there safely and comfortably. And 3 hours early for boarding.

Luckily we were upgraded on the first leg to Miami. So we spent the extra hours in the Admiral’s Club getting in our final web activities. I posted an out-of-office Facebook and Instagram message for Charitocracy, finished a hair-raising last-minute 24GB data upload for my day job, and drank a fancy coffee.

Both flights were uneventful, and I watched the last episodes of Mr. Robot season 2. Halfway thru we met Eric in Miami, where he’d flown separately from Wisconsin. I don’t think I’d seen him since the Wainwright Walk (coast to coast across England). But we hugged it out like it had been yesterday. I’ve got a solid adventure crew.

Arriving in Manaus, we were met with the shortest passport control line I’ve ever seen. The officer didn’t even open his mouth. Just looked at my visa, stamped my passport, and that was that. The other thing we were met with, unexpectedly, was our tour guide, Erikes, and his partner. We weren’t expecting them to pick us up until the next morning, but they came out late to the airport and saved us a cab ride.

They dropped us at our hotel near midnight, where we sat in the lobby while Maurice gracefully performed damage control on a reservation he accidentally made for two beds instead of three. 45 minutes later, we were in a small room with three strange small beds each with one small pillow. That’s all we needed! White Noise on, though I was informed there would be no white noise on the river. [Insert foreshadowing here.] [Also insert PTSD flashback.] “Alarm” set for 6:29am!