Still on the way

Wow!!!! The last week has been VERY exciting. We've been on so many boats -big and small ones- I can't count them any more. The most exciting one was doubtlessly the last one that took us here to Iquitos. When we got on that boat four days ago, there where four hammoks there. By the time we got here there where maybe 200. People would put them everywhere. We thought they might put maybe 2 more hammoks in the little space where we had ours -on the last day (we got off the boat early to take a faster one and safe 10 hours on that one) there where 13 plus 2 adults and 3 kids sleeping on the floor under them. What an experience!!! We hadn't had the faintest idea of what would await us -we had been warned about the food but in the end we were positively surprised: A huge old swimming "box". One floor for cows and bulls and pigs (plus the chicken they'd saughter on the way for food). And tons of bananas, sugar-cane and other stuff I'm not able to name plus the engines plus more hammoks plus plus plus... (just imagine the stink down there -80pigs? and the noise...). On our floor there were millions of hammoks -you couldn't get through by the end of the trip plus at least 6 huge turtles and a monkey (and dead monkeys the people had as "snaks"). The boat would go day and night and stop wherever there are people standing on the river-bank waving with a piece of white cloth. I have no idea how they managed to steer that ship in that absolute darkness duing the nights. The view wouldn't change too much, of course but I loved sitting on the roof of the ship (that's where they put tha maybe 600 chicken -they smell worse than pigs) and enjoy the sunsets. We also saw some turtles and parrots. The little straw-huts every now and then along the river seem to belong to another world, seem to belong to a set of toy houses. (They wouldn't have any electricity there, of course but apart from that I was pretty surprised how life and people don't seem to vary much from life and people in Talag).

It was a great trip and I enjoyed it very much. However, by the end of it we did get a little afraid of illnesses and stuff you can get when too many people are stuffed togehter in a too little place.

Iquitos is GREAT the people are very nice. There is little motor-cars all over taking you everywhere for 2 soles. It's a very nice atmosphere, quite some tourists. The wealth of the 19th century (thanks to the rubber boom that prevailed the area here) can be seen everywhere in the arcitecture, the streets, the promenade along the river etc.

Tomorrow night we'll catch a boat to the triple-boarder Peru-Colombia-Brazil and from there another boat to Manaus. I pressume all of this will take us another week. We should be in Manaus by Monday (I'd LOVE to go all the way down to the Atlantik-coast and from there into the Guyanas -however this "little side-trip" will be rather time consuming and not the cheapest neither).

By the way: Sleeping in the hammoks don't bother me at all. Quite the opposite: I actually enjoy staying in them very much and thanks to Martines ear plugs I was able to get a quite normal amount of sleep :)))