The appeal of taking slow boats up the Amazon
While still young children we must all have learnt that the Amazon is the biggest river in the world, along with Everest being the highest mountain and that bears shit in the woods. But once you’re on a boat in the middle of it, you soon realise that big is too small a word to do justice to its awesomeness: at times you struggle to even see the other side, that’s not big, that’s fucking gargantuan! It spews out five times more water than its nearest competitor, the Congo, which isn’t even a hell of a lot bigger than the Amazon’s biggest tributary the Madeira, itself the world’s fifth biggest river. In fact, around a third of the top thirty biggest rivers are tributaries of the Amazon. Three days travel upriver and it’s several kilometers wide, even at Manaus, 1500km from the sea it’s still 3km wide and deep enough to support huge, sea going, cargo vessels.
For the people living along its length, the Amazon is more than just a river, it is a link to the world, a source of livelihood and food. It is life itself. Many of the communities on its banks, even some relatively large towns have no road links to the rest of Brazil, beyond short forays into their verdant hinterlands. Almost all of the essentials of modern life, from toilet brushes to tractors and beer have to be brought in by boat. Consequently, all the large passenger boats on the river are just as much cargo carriers, dedicating at least one whole deck to goods, even things as big as pick up trucks. It was on these gently chugging hulks that I and my traveling companion Tom plodded our way 2700km up the river and its tributary, the Rio Maderia, to within reach of the Bolivian border.
The boats create their own little economies on their travels. Always waiting at each port are a gaggle of sales people bearing snacks, drinks and other essentials for the passengers, possibly seeking respite from the repetitive onboard food. The more athletic salesmen have often jumped or clambered on board before the crew have even finished securing the boat to the dock, in order to beat competitors to the customers. This is followed by a period of chaotic elbowing as those disembarking compete with those boarding over a narrow gang plank or the wavering gap between the boat and dry land. Once in a while a brave crew member will attempt to moderate the process, although they are more likely to have begun offloading cargo while all this is going on, in determined contravention of common sense and health and safety practice.
River commerce doesn’t even require the boats to stop however: at times, enterprising villagers from the multitude of riverside communities will urge their little boats over the churning wake and lash them to the sides to come on board. This task is even undertaken by young girls, who expertly and fearlessly negotiate the constant bucking of the waves and climb the ropes onboard with an agility and strength that can only be honed from a life on the water. One slip could could easily end up with being sucked under and pureed by the boat’s propellers. Selling jars of palm hearts, blocks of cheese and bags of the Amazon’s wonder juice, acai, would be a relatively undemanding task elsewhere but for some kids in the region it means growing up fast in order to survive. After maybe an hour on board they will deftly leap back in their boats, start bailing and bounce again over the wake and hopefully pick up another group of customers going back in the direction of home.
Commerce of course, goes on at a far bigger scale on the river but the numbers of big ships was relatively limited. A few container ships and tankers would come and go from the city of Manaus and some might dock at Santarem, the only other place of any real size away from the estuary region but we rarely saw more than one such boat in a day. Once in a while a vast train of barges methodically pushed by an overworked tug boat would slide slowly and inexorably past, laden with trunks of jungle trees.
The riverbed itself is a source of riches, at least for some hopefuls: well upstream, fleets of gold dredgers suck and sift the silt for grains of gold. Some operated by a pair of independent prospectors, other big barges clearly part of larger commercial concerns. Some locals spoke of the prospectors as dubious or even violent characters, whether justified or not it hardly seems the kind of profession to attract dull, conservative types. If anything it appeared to be a rather boring profession, just waiting for the pumps and sieves to do their noisy work, enlivened only by the occasional appearance of a gleaming nugget from the slurry.
The relentless green of the river banks is rarely broken and only by the bigger towns. The many farming communities were never more than family affairs in small clearings, the jungle always looming in the background. In the whole 2700km of the journey there wasn’t a single sign of large scale, intensive agriculture by the river. Cleared rainforest land is rarely very productive after a few seasons crops, so is often just used to graze cattle or water buffalo but we were a long way from the river before we saw big fields and large herds. The very real threats to the region’s environment, particularly with the recent election of President Bolsonaro are at least not as apparant as you might imagine on the riverbanks. No doubt the banks have been exploited for their timber a long time in the past but it demonstrates that as long as felling is not too intensive the jungle can recover given time.
Even the smallest of hamlets usually boasted a little wooden church, dedicated to one of a variety of denominations. One wonders if each church represented another minor conquest for some adventurous missionary a century or three back. Certainly Christianity had clearly left its mark a long time ago, as around 80% of the indigenous population have converted by now. Around 10% of indigenous people still retain their traditional, non religious beliefs and I can only assume after five centuries of Christian effort they are unlikely to change their ideas soon.
The relative isolation of towns meant that each displayed its own particular character, evident to even someone of my extremely limited grasp of Portuguese. At our first stop, Almerim, the vibe was very much party like its 1999, at least on the weekends. Mobile sound systems, towed behind pickup trucks patrolled the streets, taking up different residencies Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. The town square thundered to the sound of bass beats until three of four in the morning as the locals ate, drank and made merry on fairground rides, while their kids bounced and screamed on trampolines, well past the hour that many westerners would have deemed appropriate for their youth.
Parintins, home to the relatively famous, at least in Brazil, Boi Bumba festival, buzzed with arts and culture like no other place we visited. Murals and graffiti art emblazoned walls all over town, displaying political themes, traditional culture or simple artistic celebration. Huge figures, some over 15m high, are hauled through the town during the festival, where dedicated teams use them to act out a form of historically themed plays in the Bumbadrome, specially built for the occasion. The building is also home to classes in art and music, enthusiastically attended by young locals, one of whom was only to happy to proudly show me around this temple to her culture.
With its sandy beaches, Alter do Chao attracts holidaying Brazilians and a bevy of buskers to entertain them, so is less inclined to tropical torpor than some places, particularly during the week. One elegant Argentinian couple who treated everyone to a dance display, we later ran into in Bolivia – just one example of the many Latin American buskers we encountered who make a living or subsidise their travel around the continent in such a way.
Apart from the avian appeal for bird spotter types, the journey was a bit of a surprising disappointment as far as wildlife was concerned, with the exception of the river dolphin population. Pink, pointy snouted dolphins and their grey brethren could often be seen ploughing through the waters and occasionally leaping right out but at such a speed to make the task of snapping a photo almost impossible. In this age of Instagram obsession there’s much to be said, at least from my no doubt prehistoric viewpoint, of just sitting back and reveling in the beauty that nature has to offer at times and leaving the photography to the professionals. Trying to view everything through a lens develops a tendency to look without seeing, your focus distracted from the details and significances. Naturally an experienced photographer can overcome this deficit but maybe us rank amateurs could sometimes be better served with some more enduring memories and a few less likes. Alternatively you could just regard this as my crap excuse for not having a decent pic to show you. On occasion local fishermen could be seen interacting with a pod of dolphins as they indicated where the shoals of fish were or drove them towards the shore making them easier to catch.
The eerie early morning sounds of a troop of howler monkeys was the closest we got to seeing a monkey in the whole time but we were at least granted a view of a soporific sloth high up in the trees. If you want any guarantee of seeing wildlife you will have to get away from the river and pay to stay in the protected areas.
Should you chose to follow in our footprints you wont have any trouble having encounters of the human kind as your hammock will usually be well within swinging distance of the next passenger. By the end of the journey you’ll be intimately familiar with every interminable hit of Brazilian popular music, often at unnecessary volume from the bar on the upper deck that all boats provide to entertain the beer drinkers. You will also probably not want to see another plate of grilled chicken with rice and beans ever again in your life, even if you have developed a taste for farofa, the crispy, toasted cassava flour that is poured over every meal. Vegetarian travellers in particular will have discovered the entire range of Brazilian Pot Noodles, as one of the few non-grilled chicken options available. You will however have become a zen master of slow travel, having meditated for hours on end over the endless green of the jungle and from the myriad of textures the waters have to offer: from a muddy ooze to the million glistening reflections of sunlight on choppy, breaking wavelets, looking like a shoal of thrashing, silvery fish.
The appeal of the Amazon relies less on the intensity of peak experiences but more on the finer details and contemplation of its grandeur, being none the less magnificent because of that. It is surely one of the world’s great, iconic routes, its immense history written in green rather than the fashioned stone of the Nile’s human legacy or the cultural exchange of the Silk Road. Even a partial loss of that immaculate green could have incalculable consequences for mankind, if we continue on our destructive path. If the day comes that I could say that I saw the Amazon while I still had the chance I dread to imagine what kind of world we’ll be living in by then.
For a load of lot better photos and a different view of the Amazon, please check out my fellow traveler Tom’s blog at Menotlost.com
