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!

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…

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!

Last night the snoring was real bad. Who knew Eric had it in him? I tried watching Netflix (The Break with Michelle Wolfe I downloaded while back in civilization) for a while, but the snoring only got worse. It began to pour around midnight, but Eric’s snoring drowned it out. Even when the crew came up to batten down the hatches, headlights a-blazing, Eric snored through that, too. Uncanny! I don’t remember sleeping at all. Just dreaming of ways to smother Eric… Maybe I was sleeping while dreaming of that?

After breakfast, which included fresh papaya, we set out in our kayaks. I had picked up a flexible tripod that can clip onto anything, like the edge of a kayak. But it broke to pieces in my hands as I tried to clip it on. Luckily my camera wasn’t attached yet! Suffice it to say, no cool kayak POV time lapse videos on this trip. 😢

We explored a side-stream which is everything kayaking in the Amazon should be: narrow, full canopy overhead, not so much light sifting down to the bottom. Ma would love kayaking here, a lot like the mangrove swamps in the Keys where it’s fun to pick your way around and find critters (or ancient vehicle carcasses, which there aren’t a lot of here).

Several dolphins followed us in from the main part of the river to see what we were doing. The dolphins here are curious, playful, and abundant. One even did a full on vertical jump like you’d see at an aquarium show. I didn’t know they pulled stunts like that in the wild!

We had lunch, including a yummy Matricious (sp?) fish, Erikes’ favorite. Super good. Just watch out for those harpoon bones!

After lunch we had some down time.

Then at 2pm we set off for our afternoon adventure, a hike in the rainforest. We collected sneakers, socks, long pants, and long sleeve shirts. All I had with long sleeves was a rain jacket from Budapest (another trip Maurice happened to go on), so I put it on. All the rain would happen on the inside. I was sweating like Pat in The Silver Linings Playbook, jogging with a trash bag on. But we hiked up to the highest point in this region with a great view of the Jatapú valley, and saw some impressive spiders and a dead monkey along the way.

Back down near the river, we tested out a natural sunscreen made from little berries that you squash between your fingers. Moe went overboard, as usual.

Now we’re looking for caimans in the water next to tonight’s camp, a friend’s house, Renaldo’s I think. (Apparently he’s in town collecting his paycheck for providing emergency medical service on the river, but probably also watching World Cup.) If you shine a light out into the water, their retro-reflective eyes beam right back at you. They’re out there! Erikes is trying to catch one as dinner is simultaneously being prepared.

Word on the street is that tomorrow we’ll be setting up camp off the boat, in the rainforest. Wheeee!

Today is July 4, Moe’s 40th birthday, the reason we’ve all gathered here in the Amazon.

I woke up feeling groggy and off, like I was still full from the night before, and I couldn’t keep a train of thought going. I popped a multivitamin, which I’d forgotten all about so far, but barely touched breakfast.

In the end it turned out all I needed was a good shot of adrenaline.

The 1st four hours of the day were scheduled for kayak exploration of 2 nearby “lakes.” Eric got a 20 minute head start, and we didn’t run into him at all out on the water. He must have hit the other lake first. Moe and I hit the south one, more like a tributary river, and followed it until I spotted a cool “tunnel” through a passable wall of trees to another section of lake/river. Moe followed, as a Moe does. (“Moe-cuts” are his specialty!)

We kept exploring well beyond the point where Moe asked, “Benj, what is the probability you’ll remember our way back out of here? My memory’s not that good.”

“100%” I assured him.

It was a valid question. The river had turned into a pinball machine of bushes, I guess you could call them, that we navigated around while maintaining our same rough direction. [Future Benj: We thought maybe one of the bushes was the canopy of a Brazil nut tree, with the “lids” still on the tree, but turns out to be a relative, Eschweilera coriacea, known as machimango in Peru. Brazil nuts don’t live where it floods.]

Some twists and turns later, we reached what we considered a dead-end even by our low standards. More importantly, we were due back at noon, and it was almost 10am. We had been kayaking since about 8am.

I confidently marched us back through the turns and twists, back through the pinball bushes, and straight down into some other river. Maybe 20 minutes into it I finally admitted to Moe that nothing looks familiar. (I had been thinking those words for a while already.) Moe agreed, noting that the long grass dangling from the trees here was new to us. It clung like Velcro to your clothes, and according to Maurice the micro-barbs also cut skin. So we realize we’re lost on the Amazon while tangled in human-devouring grass.

Mind you, we had no maps, no internet to get maps, no compass, and our one survival tool, a machete borrowed from Erikes, Moe had accidentally dropped overboard. It was a total Blair Witch moment. “I kicked the map into the creek!” The water here was deeper than 10m: that’s how much the water is up now from it’s low season. [Future Benj: The Amazon is 320′ at its deepest. The Jatapú tributary is indeed 30+ feet deeper in the wet season than dry. But since we were lost over “dry” land, it’s not easy to say for sure whether there was 30′ of water below us. We could have been over a hill. All we can say for certain is it was deeper than Maurice’s paddle!]

But what I had done is taken a screenshot on Apple Maps of our farthest point, the dead-end, before we turned around to go back to camp. That map was very low-detail, not showing us on water at all — thanks to the wet season we were kayaking through the treetops of what’s dry land the rest of the year — but we could use it for comparison to at least get back to somewhere we’d definitely been. And far away from razor-grass town, please. Consider it a dot on a map where we’re lost, but don’t know it yet. This should save us, right?

Moe stayed perfectly calm, at least on the outside. We agreed on the general direction of our farthest dead-end point, and figured we’d head back to it, trying alternative directions, or really more like different off-ramps, from bushy pinball land. Off ramp #2 looked promising, but 15 minutes down that one we weren’t recognizing anything there, either. And then, you guessed it: more razor grass! Survey says? XX

The third off ramp we tried from bushy pinball land looked the same as the others initially. And to be honest, nothing I saw was recognizable beyond doubt. And we had so much doubt at this point. Part of it is we were seeing everything from the other direction on the way out. But I also kept looking back for some glimpse of something, anything I remembered from the way in. Instead, it was all beautiful green generic jungle along the banks. But no razor grass thus far, so Maurice and I were content to give this 3rd attempt the benefit of the doubt.

I was pleased to know, barring any more stupidity, that we would both be returning home to our families (eventually) once I saw that sweet, sweet tunnel through the jungle wall straight ahead. And we still had an hour left before lunch, so we started exploring another branch. 🤠

Freedom! We made it back to camp.

And just in time for this surprise: a birthday cake made of couscous (some finer Brazilian variety, apparently, but yellow like cake), frosted with something chocolatey, and sprinkled with coconut. How sweet of our crew?! We sang to Moe and he blew out a candle. Happy birthday, Moe, and happy birthday, USA! May you both prosper in the coming year and learn from mistakes of the recent past.

After lunch was a nice long siesta in hammocks on shore, since our boat hammocks, where we usually sleep, were being set up in the jungle. I’ve read over half my book, Everything Matters, a gift from my friend Matt about 3 years ago that I’m finally prioritizing. (Love it!) Mid-afternoon I was served a coconut with a hole drilled in it and one of those flimsy plastic cups. Delicious, as always!

Late afternoon we packed up and kayaked over to the same trail head we hiked yesterday, except this time, after dinner, we hiked up to find our hammocks hanging higher than usual over the ground, and with mosquito nets and rain tarps over them. That’s where I’m blogging now. We saw a tarantula hanging out in an armadillo hole on the way up.

Moe had an epic birthday. Mission accomplished!!

Today I woke up in the jungle. It was still dark out, maybe 5:15am, when I heard an intense fluttering in the 2 feet between my mosquito net and rain tarp, zooming back and forth through my no-fly zone for a minute or two. There was enough light that I was expecting to see the outline of one or more bats, the same ones that chase after the dragonflies both here on the river and back home in OBX at dusk. But I saw nothing. Maurice later proposed that it was probably a hummingbird, because we’ve seen plenty of those, too. And they strike me more as early risers. Wish I could have seen it!

My iPad was still on my lap in the hammock from blogging and watching Netflix last night. Since I’m one of the few humans out here in the first place, I must single-handedly be boosting Michelle Wolf’s ratings in Brazil’s Amazon river valley. But it’s really good! [Future Benj: Netflix cancelled her. The show’s crew found out on Twitter. 😭]

After breaking camp and hiking it all back down the hill, we had breakfast of watermelon and these blintz-like things made of tapioca, cheese, and some local orange root vegetable. [Future Benj: they’re simply called tapiocas.] I’ve also been drinking a mix of hot chocolate and coffee in the cellophane destruct-o-cups. Reminds me of whatever Dunkin Donuts used to call this combination. Dunkachino maybe? Except if it were a Dixie cup size instead of the XL I used to get.

Then we hit the kayaks, and did about 2 hours in the blazing sun downstream to the next camp site. Lots of weird plants, starting with ones clearly inspired by fellow Wainwright walker Ealish Wilson’s fiber art…

… another plant that wants you dead…

… these cute things…

… and these ones, by Dr. Seuss.

The butterflies were especially friendly today! A brown striped one landed on my big toe. And not the well-adjusted, perfectly healthy big toe. It was taking a liking to my funktastic half-claw. There’s no accounting for taste.

But the light green butterflies preferred my paddle or my neon green OBX Triathlon shirt. So they’re not all dumb.

The boat, whose name is Com te _____, and I can never remember the last word, which is a person’s name, passed us while kayaking and was docked at a nice property with cattle pastures, 4 border collies, and strange creatures I refer to as duck chickens. (They are sort of domesticated like chickens, sleeping under the camp houses, but look like ducks. Ugly ducks.) The multi-generational family who lives there ranged in age from about 7 to 60. It was kind of them to share their home!

While Eric did his best St. Bernard impersonation…

… Moe and I were guided on a walk across their giant pastures, through some (home-made) logging roads into the jungle which by contrast showed just how much work clearing the scores of acres of field must have been, and finally through plain old jungle.

The destination was a very cool (literally and figuratively) waterfall. This close to the equator, cold water as a concept is forgotten to us after less than a week. Not as cold as this waterfall, though. We went all in. And then to keep us relatively cool, it rained most of the way back to camp.

Two boys, maybe 7 and 12, were juggling a soccer ball back and forth, and Erikes suggested I join in. I watched them for a while, but then couldn’t resist. Football, the common language… along with smiles, laughter, moments of pride and embarrassment in equal measure. I held my own, but 20 minutes of that had my heart rate higher than any of the hiking or kayaking we’ve done all week!

A thumbs up to the boys, then I headed back to the boat with warm fuzzies. (As Jessica would metaphorically say, my cup was full.) And then Erikes handed me a margarita, also a cup, also full. [Future Benj: she actually says “my cup runneth over,” but maybe so does my margarita-filled Dixie cup.]

I finished another KenKen and another margarita (remember: destructo-Dixie-sized) and then dinner.

They made me a special veggie potato curry sort of dish, amazing! “What did you make for the rest of us?” Moe asked. “Meat,” Erikes said. I told him he should rename his company to Amazon Mystery Meat Tours.

Once it got dark, Erikes came back from canoeing with our first caiman, despite trying every night thus far. He was a cutey! Moe sent him back into the water after we all got some quality time, hugs and kisses, etc.

And now back to the hammock here to give you all the low down. Tomorrow afternoon there’ll be some civilization on our itinerary! And in completely unrelated news, Brazil plays Belgium tomorrow afternoon! ⚽️

The tapioca blintz things this morning had something like feta cheese in them. My name is Benj Lipchak and I approve this message.

Today we hit the river and steamed as fast as we could (or dieseled?) back to the nearest village on the river so we could watch the Brazil vs. Belgium World Cup match. First Moe gifted the soccer ball we brought along to the friendly tykes I juggled with yesterday. I took a few photos of the beautiful fog, and then back to the hammock! I completed a preposterous number of black belt KenKen.

We arrived in “town” (one “road” with about a dozen houses, only accessible by boat) during halftime. Brazil was already down 2-0. We walked up to a residence where a bunch of people were watching, and they set out some extra chairs for us, and even moved the television outside so we’d all have a good view. We drank a lot of beer, which helped us cheer in one solitary goooooooooooooooal. Every time I put my beer glass down between sips, one of our crew topped it off. We killed a lot of liter-sized bottles of beer in just 45 minutes! Brazil had control of the ball 95% during this 2nd half. If only we had shown up before the damage was already done! Things would have gone differently.

We had a decent signal heading into and out of town. I texted Jessica that I’m safe and sound. She texted right back that she pulled the car over and wanted to FaceTime. It was only 2 bars of 3G, but it worked pretty great! I gave the fam a quick virtual tour of the boat and a view of the river. What a great moment. I can’t wait to see them for real in another 9 days! I haven’t seen those kiddos in about 3 weeks!

We parked the boat for tonight about an hour or two back away from civilization. We all jumped in the water. It was shallow and sandy, with the obligatory dolphin swimming nearby. I’m wondering if they’re assigned monitoring duty by the dolphin high council. These dolphins are everywhere we go, in plentiful numbers. After splashing around a bit, I went to grab my biodegradable body wash and shampoo, purchased originally for Maurice’s and my Allagash river canoe trip, and got myself really clean for the first time on this trip. Eric borrowed my suds, too. (Maurice abstained, since it hasn’t been 6 months yet since his last washing.)

Eric was kind enough to propose I try his Bose noise cancelling headphones tonight so I can get a full night’s sleep. I already tried them out. His snoring stands no chance against my white noise pumping through these cans. Thanks, Eric! Zzzzzz