Up the River
We took the only flight from Manaus to Tabatinga but
unfortunately it was delayed by several hours resulting in a domino effect.
We have never come across such complex immigration
procedures as apply at this triangle of Brazil, Columbia and Peru. From the Tabatinga airport, we caught a taxi
to the Brazilian immigration and formally exited Brazil. With zero English from the immigration
officers and the equivalent Portuguese on our part, the process was somewhat
convoluted.
We needed to cross the river to Peru to validate our
passports before our early morning departure.
The office was closed and did not open until 3 hours after the boat to
Iquitos departed.
We continued by taxi to our hotel in Leticia (Columbia)
and spent the night stateless between countries.
We could not catch our early morning boat and instead the
morning buying new boat tickets and going over to validate our passports. We went to the small port of Leticia and
negotiated with a boatman to take us to Santa Rosa in Peru. We walked up across the boards to the village
and eventually located the immigration office.
This village reminded us of a poor South East Asian settlement of the
1960’s.
Gail walking down to the boats to Santa Rosa
Down the creek and across the river to Peru.On the way back the outboard stopped several times with plastic around the prop but after it was cleared each time it was discarded back into the water!
Gail walking up to the Immigration Post
One of the Santa Rosa locals
With everything in order, we crossed back over and walked
back to our hotel and celebrated with a swim in the hotel pool, not the Amazon!
The next morning, we got up at 2.30 am, took a taxi at
3.00 am to Tabatinga port where it was much easier to get down into the
boat. We crossed the river, went through
immigration and readied ourselves for our long trip up the Amazon to Iquitos.
We saw small villages, local boat traffic including the boat carrying this little pig along with a cow. On the upper decks were the sleeping quarters.
It was a long and uneventful trip. Our cruise was due to depart at lunchtime and
we arrived at 3.30 pm! With the help of
our motokar (tuk tuk) driver, we got our bags to the top of the bank and soon checked
into the hotel where we were supposed to be the day before.
First thing we did was check our email as we had advised
the travel company that we were delayed.
To our surprise there was a message saying that we would be picked up at
the port at 5.30 pm and that the ship was waiting for us.
We checked back out of the hotel and arranged to be
picked up from there. We were really
pleased that things had not worked out too badly after all.
It took 2 hours to drive the 100 km to reach the port of
Nauto where the ship was. We arrived in
time for dinner ready to meet our fellow travellers. The ship is a little bit bigger than we
expected – 50 m. long and 4 decks high.
There are 10 cabins on deck1 (not 6 as we thought) and we are in one of
the 6 suites on the upper deck along with the dining room. The 2 top decks have lounges and hammocks.
The next surprise was there were no other guests. We had the ship to ourselves plus the 10 or
so crew. This has been a bizarre couple
of days but it was a very comfortable ship (not Seabourn of course) and the
scenery and wildlife were beyond belief.
