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Amazon River Boat – Day 2 and Motion Sickness

Believe it or not, I had a very good sleep on the hard and dirty ground of the river boat. Probably I was really tired and exhausted because I slept for twelve hours. I was just lying there in my skirt and fleece and the world around me drifted away. I also used my earplugs so that the noise of the engine and the surrounding people wasn’t disturbing me. Therefore, I woke up from the sun and the humid heath.

While I was sleeping that long and deep I had missed the drinking event last night ending up with Kim getting sick and vomiting only 2-3 meters away from where I was sleeping. She was still not recovered in the morning and needed some time to be back again.

I started the day with a breakfast in my hammock consisting of cornflakes and long life milk which I had purchased in the supermarket in Manaus. Along with it came a motion sickness tablet or better to say what I believed a motion sickness tablet was. Since I don’t speak Portuguese I used my hands and feet to explain to a bunch of guys in a pharmacy that I want to purchase motion sickness tablets. My pantomime was supposed to show a wavering ground and me getting sick from it and needing to vomit. I also made a drawing of the same situation and after a while the guys seemed to understand. They sold me a package of tables and signaling back to me that I should take one every eight hours. I took the first one when entering the boat yesterday and continued from there. Since I cannot read the text on the package, I’m actually not sure if I’m taking motion sickness tablets or something different. I spotted a word meaning antibiotic on the package which made me kind of unsure but as long as I’m not getting sick from the tablets I just take them as long as I’m on the boat. There were actually no big waves and probably I wouldn’t have needed the tablets at all but I took them just in case.

The day on the boat was very calm. I spent most of the day in my hammock reading, playing games on my Nintendo DS, chatting with other travelers or simply watching the world passing by. The Amazon River is really fascinating mainly because of the huge amount of water it is carrying and its dimensions. In the wet season the river can have a width of 48 kilometers or more. Sometimes it was hard to spot the shore and so I felt more like being on a lake than on a river. Compared to the Nile, which I was following during the past months, the Amazon River is much larger which I wouldn’t have expected. When the boat was driving closer to the shore you could also see the lush rainforest and little colorful huts in the middle of it.

The locals on the deck were also quite relaxed. While the kids were enjoying the open air showers, fed with the water of the river, the parents were chilling out in their hammocks and watching us strangers. The hammocks or the ground of the deck were the main spaces to sit since there were only five plastic chairs on the upper deck for maybe 50 people sleeping up there. When you were lucky to get hold of one of the chairs it was gone as soon as you needed to stand up for three seconds.

Dinner was served on the middle deck and you needed to go there with your plastic container to get some food which was mainly rice, pasta and chicken. I didn’t go to the cafeteria but self-serviced myself from the bread and crème cheese I bought in the supermarket in Manaus.

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